Brunswick (Braunschweig), German Empire Genealogy

The German Empire, Meyer's 1871 Gazetteer, and FamilySearch Records
Germany was first unified as a nation in 1871. The German Empire consisted of 26 states, most of them ruled by royal families. They included four kingdoms, six grand duchies, five duchies (six before 1876), seven principalities, three free Hanseatic cities, and one imperial territory. An important gazetteer, Meyers Orts- und Verkehrs-lexikon des deutschen Reichs, "Meyer's Gazetter" for short, details the place names of villages, towns, counties (kreise), and higher jurisdictions used at that time. As FamilySearch began microfilming the records of Germany, those records were organized in the Card Catalog using those place names. That system is still in use today in the FamilySearch Catalog and FamilySearch Historical Records.

At the end of both World Wars, the boundaries of the states were changed dramatically, as areas of Germany were distributed among the Allied nations. Eventually, after re-unification in 1990, the states of Germany settled into what they are today. It is also necessary to understand Germany by this system, as it affects the locations of archives and mailing addresses used in correspondence searches.

Geo-political Changes
After World War II, Brunswick (Braunschweig) was divided between the state of Lower Saxony, West Germany, and Saxony-Anhalt, East Germany.

Finding Birth, Marriage, and Death Records for Brunswick (Braunschweig)
'''Most of the information you need to identify you ancestors and their families will be found in two major record groups: civil registration and church records. To locate these records, follow the instructions in these Wiki articles.'''

1. Find the name of your ancestor's town in family history records.
Records were kept on the local level. You must know the town where your ancestor lived. If your ancestor was a United States Immigrant, use the information in the Wiki article Germany Finding Town of Origin to find evidence of the name of the town where your ancestors lived in Germany. Also, see:
 * Emigration lists of the former Duchy of Braunschweig,1846-1871, index
 * Niedersachsen Archives Search Page, enter "Auswanderung" and surname.

2. Use gazetteers and/or parish inventories to learn more important details.
Your ancestor's town might have been too small to have its own parish church or civil registration office. Find the location of the Catholic or Lutheran (Evangelical) parish that served your ancestor's locality. Find the name of the civil registration office (standesamt) that serves your ancestor's locality. Use the Wiki article Studying Your German Locality for step-by-step instructions.

3. For birth, marriage, and death records after 1 January 1876, use civil registration.
Follow the instructions in Brunswick (Braunschweig), Germany Civil Registration.

4. For baptism, marriage, and death records, use church records or parish registers.
Follow the instructions in Brunswick (Braunschweig), Germany Church Records.

Other Record Types
Other record types can sometimes be used to add details or to find necessary clues about the family. For links to these, see the sidebar in the Wiki article, Germany Genealogy, and in the Germany Record Finder.