Baden-Württemberg, Germany Genealogy

Europe Germany  Baden-Württemberg (Baden-Württemberg)

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

Welcome to the Baden-Württemberg (Baden-Württemberg) page! FamilySearch Wiki is a community website dedicated to helping people throughout the world learn how to find their ancestors. Through this page you can learn how to find, use, and analyze records of genealogical value. The content is variously targeted to beginners, intermediate, and expert researchers. This is a work in progress, your contributions and feedback are essential!

Baden-Württemberg

The capital, Stuttgart

Getting started in Baden-Württemberg research
Before starting your research in Baden-Württemberg, you need to know the name of your ancestor in its original or Germanic form, an approximate date when he or she was born, and the village or parish where he or she may have lived in Baden-Württemberg.

Civil registration began in Baden-Württemberg in 1876. If your research in Baden-Württemberg begins after 1876, then you should begin with the records kept by the local authorities of your ancestor's residence. If your research begins before 1876, you should begin with the parish registers for baptisms, marriages and burials kept in the church archives.

Once you have this information, you can search in the local archives for more information about your ancestor.

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

Administrative Districts
In April of 1952 Baden-Württemberg officially became a State in Germany. This occurred upon a referendum of the three federal states, Württemberg-Hohenzollern, Baden, and Württemberg-Baden that had been established a the end of World War II.

Today Baden-Württemberg is divided into thirty-five (Landkreise) and nine independent cities (Stadtkreise), then grouped into the four administrative districts, in German Regierungsbezirke (singular, Regierungsbezirk). The four districts are Freiburg, Karlsruhe, Stuttgart and Tübingen.