[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Re: Deutsche Geschlechterbuch

[William Remus]

The Deutsche Geschlechterbuch is actually a German Language Magazine 
that has been around since the 1800's and is a wonderful source of 
German family history. A typical volume consists of the genealogy of a 
particular German family from a particular region of Germany; each is 
pretty long spanning hundreds of years and many hundreds of people. A 
typical volume covers a dozen major family names and fills around 500 
small size pages. Some volumes are special issues dealing with 
families from one particular region like West Prussia. 

The articles are easily readable even if you know only English since 
most are just lists of who begat who with details about birth dates 
and locations, death dates and locations, marriage dates and 
locations, and occupations. On the down side, volumes prior to 1940 
are printed in old German fraktur script which takes some getting use 
to.

Each volume is indexed with all names including wive's maiden names. 
Subset indexes appear like all names in vol 1 to 100. And the entire 
set of names to date are on a CD Rom that costs about $30 (of which I 
donated my copy to SGGEE).

You dont have to be nobility to be in this. My Remus family were 
postmasters in Vandsburg, West Prussia and research and published 
their history during the 1920's in Vol 62 starting on page 450 and 
running about 30 pages. Other West Prussia names like Klawitter, 
Tesmer and Tetzlaf also appear.

The paper versions are available at the Family History Library in Salt 
Lake City, Newberry Library in Chicago, and a few other places in the 
US. They are also available on microfilm from LDS although hard to 
find in the catalog.

Regards Bill Remus