Bavaria (Bayern), Germany Genealogy

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



Information about Bavaria, Germany
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.

For German Research, You Must Know Your Ancestors' Town

 * To begin using the records of Germany, knowing that your family came from Bavaria 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 "Bezirkamt" 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.

Research to Find the Town
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.
 * Or watch this webinar: Online Class: Finding German Places of Origin
 * Also search the German Emigration Database at Bremerhaven.

If You Know the Town, Next Use Meyers Gazetteer
Once you know the town name, 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 Bezirksamt it belonged to, found after (BA) and the Regierungsbezirk (Administrative District) Niederbayern (RB).
 * MeyersGaz Help Guide
 * Abbreviation Table
 * Here is part of an entry from MeyersGaz.org. 

Figure Out the Parish for Your Town
Your town might be too small to have its own parish church. Or it might have a Catholic church, but the Lutheran church is in a neighboring town. You might have to do a little reference work to determine where the church (and therefore the church records) was for your ancestors' town. Methods for doing this are described in:
 * Finding Aids for German Records.

Historical and Clickable Map
Current Administrative Regions of Bavaria This map is clickable and leads to instructional articles for each district. Not shown on this map is the Palatinate/Pfalz district which was part of Bavaria until World War II. Click here for the instructional article for the Palatinate/Pfalz.

Research Tools

 * German Word List
 * Latin Word List
 * German Handwriting Tutorial
 * Kurrentschrift Converter (enter German genealogical word, click on "convert", view your word in Kurrentschrift (Gothic handwriting)

Latin Records
Records of the Catholic church will usually be written in Latin:
 * Latin Genealogical Word List


 * Websites