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Digital Family Research

The State Archives are seeking to digitise their family history records step by step. Any sources that have already been digitised can be accessed in the Reading Rooms of the State Archives and partly also on the internet. However, this project has its limits, due to the large number of records coupled with legal constraints. A list of online records can be found below. Church registers, duplicate church registers as well as civil and Jewish registers have been published by the State Archives of North Rhine-Westphalia in collaboration with a ...

The State Archives are seeking to digitise their family history records step by step. Any sources that have already been digitised can be accessed in the Reading Rooms of the State Archives and partly also on the internet. However, this project has its limits, due to the large number of records coupled with legal constraints. A list of online records can be found below.

Church registers, duplicate church registers as well as civil and Jewish registers have been published by the State Archives of North Rhine-Westphalia in collaboration with a publishing company, Patrimonium Transcriptum, on CD and DVD since 2004. Edition Brühl, which focuses on church registers, covers today’s administrative districts of Cologne and Düsseldorf. Edition Detmold contains duplicate church registers, civil registers and later Jewish registers from Westphalia-Lippe. To find out about the latest developments of Edition Brühl and Edition Detmold, please refer to the Patrimonium Transcriptum website (in German).

The State Archives have compiled all the important details required by family researchers in the brochure below.

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Westfalen-Lippe digital copies

Digitised copies of the following collections are available online:

P 2 Juden- und Dissidentenregister des Regierungsbezirks Detmold

P 5 Juden- und Dissidentenregister des Regierunsgbezirks Arnsberg 

P 8 Juden- und Dissidentenregister des Regierungsbezirks Münster

These registers are currently being developed in more depth in collaboration with the Westphalia Society for Genealogy and Family Research under a cooperative project entitled Jews in Westphalia and Lippe (JuWeL) Click here to get to the project page (in German).

Digital access is also available for the following collection:

P 7 Kirchenbuchduplikate und Zivilstandsregister des Regierungsbezirks Münster

Working together in partnership with FamilySearch from 2015 to 2021, the State Archives of North Rhine-Westphalia have digitised the auxiliary death registers of the Civil Registry Archives of Westphalia-Lippe from 1874 to 1938 and have made the records available online. The project is now being continued to include auxiliary marriage registers. However, for legal reasons, we are required to limit ourselves to the years until 1899. Furthermore, as quality assurance can produce varying results, we are unable to predict the order in which records are presented online.

The following list, which is continually updated, should show you the progress of the project. Please note the letters after the registers. They tell you which registers can be viewed online. H stands for a marriage register, and S means death register.

The following registers are currently online (H = marriage register, S = death register):

 

 


 

Rhineland digital copies

The collection PA 3103 (death registers 1874/1876 – 1938/I) is being digitised under a cooperative venture between the State Archives and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Germany (Frankfurt am Main), via the organisation FamilySearch, which is run by the latter. Today’s online stocks, which currently run to 23 HTML pages, are continually being expanded to include further batches. However, the timing of such influx is unpredictable, due to pandemic restrictions.

The following parts of the collection PA 3103 (death registers 1874/1876 – 1938/I) have been digitised so far and can be accessed online: