Home > Databases > Local heritage books > Kreise Arnswalde und Friedeberg (Neumark) |
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Local family database Kreise Arnswalde und Friedeberg (Neumark)As I began, some years ago, to research the history of my family I stepped into uncharted territory with my mother's ancestors. My mother Doris (born Hhnerfuss) was born in Braunsfelde, Kreis (county) Friedeberg in 1935, and her father Willie likewise was born there, although his father, Frederick, was from Mansfeld originally. It was not long before I discovered that most churchbooks from the Neumark area have been 'missing' since World War II, and very probably these were somehow destroyed and are hence irretrievable. For this reason research can only be based on secondary sources that originated before the war from original records. Since my mother's ancestors were mostly from the (pre-war) counties of Arnswalde and Friedeberg, I have worked very intensively with these counties. If one considers that before the First World War there were still, in very many of these country parishes, original churchbooks which began around the end of the Thirty Years War (1648) and in some cases even before this time, one realizes that the situation for family researchers nowadays is very modest in comparison. Probably the only possibility for reconstructing missing or destroyed church records is to collect, on a world wide scale, information from all birth, baptism, marriage or death certificates, transcriptions of records from churchbooks, family tree charts, published family histories, family information from an Ahnenpass (passports from the Nazi period which documented several generations) or similar records or documents. Other references might be found in literature. In short, we would be assembling all available information based on original records and making it available to the general public as soon as we are able. I have begun doing this for the counties of Arnswalde and Friedeberg, since for these areas there are hardly any existing church books, unless some might be gathering dust in the many yards of unsorted records in German or Polish archives and would not be available anytime soon. Admittedly it will in no way be possible to reassemble all the information from these missing churchbooks, yet quite a bit should still be possible to find. I hope that everyone who finds this page will look through any documents in his or her possession, then pass on any information that will supplement what I currently have. These should be fairly reliable facts, though, and not speculations. If certain branches of a family tree extend into neighboring counties or even into areas further away, these should be included for the sake of completeness. At this point a heartfelt thank you to those who have already helped out in the collection of information! Norbert Gschweng
Remarks about Sources:
Up to this point the following sources have been used (some are still under examination):
Translated by Christopher Wolter |
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Last status Local family database Kreise Arnswalde und Friedeberg (Neumark): 21.02.2023 |