If you have German ancestry, you will love/hate this resource. However, this resource is one of the best for locating towns in the German Empire (1871-1918). Meyers Orts-und Verkehrs-lexikon des deutschen Reichs (or Meyers Orts) is the most important German gazetteer. Meyers gives the location, civil registry office and parishes for each town in the German Empire from 1871-1917, plus other information about the location. This is the time period most German immigrants came to the United States. The issue with Meyers, the book, in the past is, well, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Not only are the entries in German, but they are written in German script which is hard to read. There is an alternative to the book version – the online one. Meyersgaz.org has taken the book and made it easier to search online. When you go to the website, on the home page, there is a search box for you to type the place name you are looking for. You can use a wildcard (* asterisk) if you don’t know the spelling for the whole name. No punctuation is needed, like umlauts, to search. Once you hit Enter, you will get a listing of places that match your search. You can filter by region to narrow the list or scroll down until you come to the location you are looking for.
For example, if you search for Berau and you just enter ”ber”, the list you get will have every place with ”ber” somewhere in the place name. Scroll down until you get to Berau (a village in Baden). Select the village and the next screen will show you the entry from the book. There will also be a map showing where in Germany the village is located. This page will list the locations where certain records can be found.
Remember, not everything is online and European countries do not have a central location for records. If you are looking for birth, marriage, or other records for your German ancestors in Germany, you will need to know where locally to find them. Check out our blog for more information on this. These are the jurisdictions and parish information. Nice!
There are also menu options near the top of the page if you want to see a map from the original book, Ecclesiastical information (where Protestant and Catholic parishes are), Related information (other towns that refer to your town as another jurisdiction), Email (to post surnames you are looking for so others looking for those surnames can contact you or you can contact them), and Feedback (to pass on corrections, suggestions for improvement, etc.). If you need more information on what the abbreviations mean, check out FamilySearch.
Meyers is an important research tool for tracing your German ancestors, check out the online version. Have you used this resource? Let us know your experience in the comments below. Happy researching!
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