[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] [G-P-V] G. Mig. to Vol; NOW certificate requests for citizenship

[albertmuth at aol.com]

Paul,

Can you describe the nature of these "certificate requests"?
What kind of information was there? that is, did they
offer any information of genealogical interest, such as date 
of birth and/or birthplace?

Is this a resource that some nice, young-at-heart, enterprising
genealogist should mine for information?  And, if so, do you
know if they are only available in Berlin at the Secret State
Archives, or have these records been microfilmed?

We all know how difficult that it is to find the origin of many of
these colonists.

Al Muth






-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Rakow <rakow at ifh.de>
To: ger-poland-volhynia at eclipse.sggee.org
Sent: Fri, Apr 23, 2010 2:45 pm
Subject: Re: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] German Migration to Volhynia



 Dick,
      I was very interested in your comments about Kostiuk's book,
 and particularly his reference to a decree from 1868, requiring
 settlers to register with the local authorities.
       A couple of years ago, in the "Secret State Archives" in Berlin,
 I found hundreds of requests made by German colonists in Volhynia,
 asking for certificates from Germany, to prove to the Russian
 authorities that they were still Prussian citizens. Even Germans
 born in Congress Poland were given these nationality certificates,
 if they had Prussian ancestry, and had never taken on Russian
 citizenship. Most of these requests were from the early 1870s, so
 it sounds like they may have been connected with these decrees from
 1868 and 1872, discussed in Kostiuk's book.
      I'd been able to find a lot out about the German nationality
 law of 1870, but I couldn't find much on the Russian side to explain
 just what had changed, and made all this paperwork necessary. The
 decrees you mentioned may well fill in that gap.
      I will try to get hold of the German version of Kostiuk. All
 I've seen is the Ukrainian version, which didn't do me much good,
 apart from a short German summary.
            Paul Rakow
            rakow at ifh.de