Bavaria (Bayern), Germany Genealogy

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Guide to Bavaria (Bayern), Germany ancestry, family history, and genealogy: birth records, marriage records, death records, census records, parish registers, and military records.

Bavaria (German: Bayern) named for a Teutonic tribe, the Baiovarii, who defeated the Romans and settled among the Romano-Celtic peoples of the area around the 6th Century of the common era (CE). During the Reformation, Bavaria became a centre of the Counter-Reformation. During the Napoleonic period, Bavaria acquired large territories in Franconia and Swabia. Its ally, Napoleon, elevated it to a kingdom. After the collapse of the German Reich at the end of World War I, it briefly became a Republic and in 1919 a German state. At the end of World War II, Bavaria's social composition was changed with the influx of 2 million refugees expelled from the east. In 1949, Bavaria became a German federal province.

Find Important Information About Your Ancestors' Town

 * To begin using the records of Germany, knowing that your family came from Hessen will not be enough to use the records of Germany. Records are kept on the local level, so you will have to know the town they lived in.
 * Details about the town will also help:
 * the county or "Kreis" of that town,
 * where the closest Evangelical Lutheran or Catholic parish church was (depending on their religion),
 * where the civil registration office ("Standesamt") was, and
 * if you have only a village name, you will need the name of the larger town it was part of.

Gathering Information to Locate Place of Origin
If you do not yet know the name of the town of your ancestor's birth, there are well-known strategies for a thorough hunt for it.
 * Use Gathering Information to Locate Place of Origin as a guide in exhausting every possible record to find what you need.
 * Also search the German Emigration Database at Bremerhaven.

Meyers Gazetteer
Once you know the town name you need, the other facts you need are contained in Meyers Orts- und Verkehrs-lexikon des deutschen Reichs, the gazetteer on which the FamilySearch catalog for Germany is based.
 * Use MeyersGaz, the digital gazetteer, to find the details you need, particularly the Kreis (county) it belonged to, found after "Kr" and the Regierungsbezirk (Administrative District) Niederbayern (RB).
 * MeyersGaz Help Guide
 * Abbreviation Table
 * Here is part of an entry from MeyersGaz.org. (The whole entry can be studied at Passau, MeyersGaz.)

Administrative Districts
Bavaria is divided into 7 (seven) administrative districts, in German Regierungsbezirke (singular, Regierungsbezirk).

Research Tools

 * German Word List
 * Latin Word List
 * Handwriting
 * Handwriting Guide
 * German Handwriting Tutorial
 * http://www.kurrentschrift.net/index.php5?s=schreiben (enter German genealogical word, click on "umwandeln", view your word in Kurrentschrift (Gothic handwriting)
 * German Chronological Jurisdictions
 * Websites
 * Death notices for the city of Würzburg can be found at this link. These are called the Würzburger Totenzettel.
 * Websites
 * Death notices for the city of Würzburg can be found at this link. These are called the Würzburger Totenzettel.