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Guide to Saarland, Germany ancestry, family history, and genealogy: birth records, marriage records, death records, family history, and military records.

Historical Background

 * The area which became Saarland was included in the First French Empire as part of the much larger département Sarre between 1798 and 1814. Prior to the French occupation, its territory had been divided between the Electorate of Trier, Nassau-Saarbrücken and the Electorate of the Palatinate (the Duchy of Zweibrücken and the County of Veldenz).
 * After Napoleon was defeated in 1814, most of the Sarre department became part of Prussia, with smaller parts assigned to Duchy of Oldenburg (Birkenfeld) and Bavaria.
 * Saarland was established in 1920 after World War I as the Territory of the Saar Basin, formed from parts of the Prussian province of Rhineland (Rheinland) and Bavaria. It was occupied and governed by France and the United Kingdom under a League of Nations mandate.
 * Saarland was returned to Germany in the 1935.
 * Following World War II, the French military administration in Allied-occupied Germany organized the territory as the Saar Protectorate from 1947, becoming a protectorate of France. The Territory comprised portions of the Prussian Rhenish Trier Region and the Bavarian district of the Palatinate.
 * Between 1950 and 1956 Saarland was a member of the Council of Europe.
 * Saarland joined the Federal Republic of Germany as a state on 1 January 1957. Wikipedia

Getting Started
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