Baden Directories

The German state of Baden-Württenberg was created in 1945 by merging the German Empire states of Baden, Württemberg, and Hohenzollern. When searching in the FamilySearch Library catalog, use the German Empire state name, as that catalog was organized by place names in the 1871 Meyers gazetteer.

Address Books
Address books can be a very helpful aide in research. Some of these books go back to the early 1800s. One the one hand, they can confirm the existence of a person in city. They can also be used to identify a parish that a person attended. You can locate the address on a map and look for churches in the near vicinity. Also, you can perhaps determine a death date from address books, as odd as that might sound. If the address books from one city cover a long time and your person appears for many years and suddenly disappears, it could be that the person died. Shortly after the last time he appears would be a good time to start looking for death records.

The Organization of Address Books
Most address books have two parts—one for businesses and one for residents. Entries for residents will be more of less like this: surname, given name, occupation, address. You will notice that the vast majority of entries are of men. Women are often listed only if they are professionals or widowed. If widowed, they are sometimes listed under their late husband’s name with the note as being a widow.

Locating Address Books

 * You can find a large collection of online address books at GenWiki.
 * For others, in the FamilySearch Catalog, search under place name. When the list of records for that place comes up, choose "Directories." There you will see the list of address books, if there are any, the years they cover, and the film numbers.

Baden
The Family History Library has a few address books from Baden in its holdings, including some from Heidelberg, Villingen, and Karlsruhe (Intl 943.46/K1 E4a 1892).