Thuringia (Thüringen), Germany Genealogy

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

History
After the extinction of the reigning Ludowingian line of counts and landgraves in 1247 and the War of the Thuringian Succession from 1247 to 1264, the western half became independent under the name of "Hesse", never to become a part of Thuringia again. Some reordering of the Thuringian states occurred during the German Mediatisation from 1795 to 1814, and the territory was included within the Napoleonic Confederation of the Rhine organized in 1806. In 1930 Thuringia was one of the free states where the Nazis gained real political power. Wilhelm Frick was appointed Minister of the Interior for the state of Thuringia after the Nazi Party won six delegates. In this position he removed from the Thuringia police force anyone he suspected of being a republican and replaced them with men who were favourable towards the Nazi Party. He also ensured that whenever an important position came up within Thuringia, he used his power to ensure that a Nazi was given that post. 

Thüringia (Thüringen): Reuss Older Line, Reuss Younger Line, Saxony-Altenburg, Saxony-Meiningen, Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach, Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, Schwarzburg-Sondershausen
Today's state of Thüringia was created after the Second World War by uniting the countries Reuss Older Line, Reuss Younger Line, Saxony- Altenburg, Saxony-Meiningen, Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach, Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, and Schwarzburg-Sondershausen.

Finding Birth, Marriage, and Death Records for Thuringia

 * How to Find Births, Marriages and Deaths Records
 * Civil registration
 * Church records
 * Town genealogies

For German Research, You Must Know Your Ancestors' Town

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

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
 * Immigrants From Sachsen-Coburg, Germany 
 * This database contains the names of 1,890 people who immigrated from the province of Sachsen-Coburg, Germany. This list is taken from newspapers of the period and passport information.


 * Immigrants From Sachsen-Meiningen, Germany
 * This database contains the names of 3,152 people who immigrated from the province of Sachsen-Meiningen, Germany. This list is taken from newspapers of the period and passport information.


 * Emigrants from Sachsen-Meiningen
 * index of all emigrants from Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt and Schwarzburg-Sonderhausen for the years 1834-1914 online.

If You Know the Town, Next Use 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".
 * MeyersGaz Help Guide
 * Abbreviation Table

Here is part of an entry from MeyersGaz.org. (The whole entry can be studied at Heusenstamm, MeyersGaz.)

Research Tools

 * German Word List
 * Latin Word List
 * Handwriting
 * Handwriting Guide
 * German Handwriting Tutorial
 * Kurrentschrift Converter (enter your German genealogical word, click on "umwandeln" and view your word in Kurrentschrift (Gothic handwriting)
 * Thuringia Gazetteer