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Guidelines for the
compilation & layout of Family Books or
Village Clan Books (Familienbuch)
AKdFF recommendations
Richard Jäger, AKdFF
Translated by Diana Lambing
1. Compiling a Family Book
Completeness
One should strive for as much
completeness as possible when recording data.
All groups of people should be recorded,
including those just passing through, strangers
to the village, soldiers etc. If individual
entries are illegible at source, then this
should be noted accordingly. Main sources are
the church registers. Further sources from 1895
onwards are the second copies of documents in
the diocese and parish registry offices.
Historical background
Every work should contain a
short historical introduction about the village,
e.g. the founding of the village, variants on
the village name, the origins of the immigrants,
the development of the settlement, special
features, the disbanding of the settlement etc.
Sources and literature
The academic quality of a
Family Book is measured by its ability to be
checked and scrutinised. The origin of every
entry should be comprehensive. Printed sources,
e.g. Family Books already published,
WK
(Wilhelm-Kallbrunner), collections of works,
‘Hacker’ books etc. also count as literature.
The foundation of our own bibliography (Stefan Stader’s collection of Danube Swabian
colonists), as well as easily accessible
standard works on immigration and emigration
(Hacker,
Pfrenzinger, Treude, Reimann etc.),
should be used when creating a Family Book.
Apart from these, Heimat Books and Family Books
from neighbouring communities should also be
consulted, especially when later immigrants can
be proved to have been billeted in other
villages, or to have come from there.
Maps
Maps, especially historical
ones, are very helpful in showing the location
of the villages and should not be omitted.
Current position of the
bibliography on origins of the Danube Swabians
The current position of the
bibliography should be given at the end of the
book. This can be requested from the editorial
staff or the AKdFF office.
2. The manuscript for
publication
A Family Book should normally
contain the following parts:
-
2.1. Title (+)
-
2.2. List of contents
(+)
-
2.3. Section of a map
(+) showing village and neighbouring
villages or region (e.g. Banat map)
-
2.4. Foreword and
greeting by the AKdff, the HOG and the
author
-
2.5. Historical
background (+)
-
2.6. Directions on how
to use the Family Book (+)
-
2.7. List of
abbreviations and symbols used (+)
-
2.8. Phonetic alphabet
(if used)
-
2.9. The families
numbered from A to Z (the main body of the
book) (+)
-
2.10. Appendix with maps,
village street plans, lists, tables and
photos
-
2.11. Register of village
names (+) and the surnames, with their
numbers, from those villages
-
2.12. Register of
surnames and the wives who married into the
families
-
2.13. List of sources and
literature (+)
The parts marked with (+) are
obligatory.
2.1. Title
Give the name and region of
the village, the religious denomination, the
period covered by the work, the author’s name,
the AKdFF coat of arms, the place and year of
publication, e.g. ‘Family Book of the Catholic
parish of Blumenthal in the Banat (and its
daughter parishes) 1770 – 2005, Part I, A – M,
by Hans Mustermann, Munich 2007’. The title on
the cover should correspond with the title
inside the book.
2.5. Historical introduction
The author must inform the
reader of the contents and the limit of their
work. They should state exactly what sources
have been used, what these sources specialise
in, what gaps they show and what period the
Family Book covers. All the villages of the
parish should be named and also the period when
these villages belonged to the parish. As well
as this, references to the political and
administrative history of the village, its
economic history, the development of the
population and the religious and ethnic
background of the inhabitants, are all welcomed.
2.6. Directions on how to use
the Family Book
As the Family Book should be
written in such a way that it can be used and
understood by non-genealogists and beginners
too, giving such directions is imperative for
every Family Book. The connections between
relationships are arrived at by linking the
<family numbers>. With every family, the family
number should be given for the man, as well as
his wife, in <pointed brackets>, showing what
families they later founded, or into which
illegitimate relationship they entered.
2.7. List of abbreviations
and symbols used
Details or abbreviations of
personal data may be dispensed with for the main
parish if it is obvious that only this parish is
meant. If several villages belong to the parish,
then often initial letters (L., A., Su.) are
enough to identify the villages clearly.
Christian names, professions and descriptions of
official standing should be abbreviated as
little as possible. One must remember that many
users of the book are only looking for a few
data and do not want to spend a lot of time
studying the abbreviations used in every book.
Therefore, three-letter words should never be
abbreviated (e.g. ‘a.’ for ‘and’). Common
abbreviations, such as ‘S.’ for ‘son’, ‘T.’ for
‘daughter’ (Tochter) should be used and listed
in the list of abbreviations, as well as the
usual symbols for personal data, i.e. * for
‘born’, oo for ‘married’, + for ‘died’, ~ for
‘baptised’, € for ‘buried’.
2.8. Phonetic alphabet
Because of the regional
differences in dialects, only general ground
rules can be drawn up. These should be altered
or supplemented, depending on the peculiarities
of the village. The following rules apply to the
German language area:
Similar-sounding names are
listed together after the following sound
alphabet for the initial letters:
A
= A
B, P (not Pf, Ph) = B
D, T, Th (not Tz) = D
E, Ä, Ae, Oe, Ö = E
Ei, Ai, Ay, Eu, Äu, Oi = Ai
F, Pf, Ph, V = F
H = H
I, J, Ü, Ue, Y = I
K, C (hard), G = K
Qu = Kw
L = L
M = M
N = N
O = O
R = R
S = S
U = U
W, V = W
X = Ks
Z, Tz, C (soft), Tsch = Z
No
notice should be taken of any lengthening or
sharpening in the middle of names. Double vowels
and double consonants are treated as single
ones. Elided (not spoken) consonants are
disregarded. Otherwise, the procedure within a
name is the same as with the initial letters.
aa,
ah = a
ä, ae, äh, aeh, ee, ö, öh = e
ie, ih, j, ü, ue, üh, ueh, ui, uy, oy = i
bb, pp = b
ck, kk = k
ss, ß = s
Names which sound the same, with or without an
‘e’ in the middle or at the end, are listed
under those without an ‘e’:
Arend, Arnd = Arnd
Lang, Lange = Lang
Similar sounding names with an ‘h’ in the middle
are listed with those without an ‘h’:
Berthold, Bertold = Berdold
For further rules and explanations see:
Allgemeine Richtlinien für eine Ordnung nach der
Lautfolge (Phonetische Ordnung). Berlin:
Beuth-Verlag 1933 (= AWv-Merkblatt 3); und:
Themel, K.: Wie verkarte ich Kirchenbücher? Der
Aufbau einer alphabetischen Kirchenbuchkartei.
Berlin: Verlag für Standesamtwesen 1936.
2.9. The main body
of the book: Families from A – Z
-
All surnames of people listed in the book
should be written in capital letters.
Variants of the name should also be given.
-
Dates (days and
months) should be written in double numbers,
i.e. beginning with a nought if the number is
singular.
- Individual families are
listed in alphabetical order of the
husband and are given a number.
- Within the same surname,
the families should be listed chronologically,
never by Christian name. The criterion of the
chronological order is that the date of the
marriage takes precedence or, if this is not
known, the date of birth of the earliest known
child. Illegitimate children whose father is not
known are also built into the mother’s surname
chronologically. Godparents, witnesses, house
numbers, cause of death (up until 1907) and
profession should also be included.
- The registration in Vienna
(Wilhelm-Kallbrunner) should be included;
details from the Stefan Stader collection of
works and, for the 20th century, the date of
emigration / expulsion / resettlement overseas,
Austria, Germany etc.
- A list of priests who
carried out the sacraments should be given.
For data protection reasons,
the causes of death during the last 100 years
(from 1907 onwards) should not be published in
the Family Book.
The
card indexing of a
Family Book begins with the register of
marriages. The contents are extracted – not word
for word, but just all the important facts – and
immediately transferred to the family cards or
into the relevant computer programme. One starts
appropriately with the beginning of the period
to be worked on, or in a period from a detailed
and legible church register. To begin with, a
period of about thirty years is worked upon and
the children born in this period are then
extracted from the baptismal register and
transferred to the family cards. For families
who moved into the village later, but whose
marriage is not recorded in the village church
register, a separate family card should be made.
Next, the death register should be consulted.
Then a further thirty-year period can be added,
and so on.
When all the family cards
have been filled in for the appropriate period,
they should be put into phonetically
alphabetical order and numbered throughout. The
next step is to link the numbered families, i.e.
the numbers of the parents of the married
couples should be given, and the numbers of the
couple’s children’s own families should also be
given. If the links are done by computer, then
their accuracy should be checked.
The family cards are then put
into the computer with a word processing
programme, or printed with the data bank
programme used specifically for this from the
start.
[Contributed by Richard
Jäger, AKdFF.
Translated by Diana Lambing.
Published at
DVHH.org 27 Sep
2007 by Jody
McKim Pharr] |
