How do I go about looking up living relatives? I am overwhelmed. My granmother has much information about her father and mother and grandparents who were from Germany. We are travelling there in April 2019 to do family history but we want to do as much as we can before we go. We want to find any living relatives. She never stayed in contact with any relatives and I don't know where to start. We have dates of when people were born and where. Any suggestions?
Posted by
Holland Michigan
87 posts
do you have their names from geneology sites or family members?
If so, then there are online sites to investigate. It depends where you are in the process.
Posted by
OP
2 posts
We have many of their names- familysearch.org is one place we have with many names and dates. It is just overwhelming. I think I may just start with tracing each person starting from her grandfather who was born in Burghausen castle.
Posted by
Berlin
2212 posts
German cities and counties have name and address archives ("Adressbuch").
Burghausen is located in county Altötting (Upper Bavaria). E-mail address of archive: archiv@altoetting.de
Viechtach is located in county Regen (Lower Bavaria).
Additionally you can search in online databses (German) based on birth and marriage announcements and obituaries.
For Viechtach: http://familienanzeigen.genealogy.net/projekte.php?PID=148
Burghausen I would contact the archive mentioned above.
If you want to find out actual addresses from relatives etc. (private use only) you can contact the citizen register (Einwohnermeldeamt / Bürgerauskunft), e.g. Burghausen: hotlinB@akdb.de
Posted by
Augsburg, Bavaria
2331 posts
If you want to find out actual addresses from relatives etc. (private use only) you can contact the citizen register (Einwohnermeldeamt / Bürgerauskunft)
I am not sure if that is a promising approach. Residents' registration offices in Bavaria may not hand over private data. And if the ancestor had a common name, such as Maier, Müller or Gruber, the material soon becomes confusing. After all, until the beginning of the First World War, family books and baptismal registers were not kept by the state, but by the churches, so that registrars are usually unable to help. If the exact name and date of birth is known, it is easy for the responsible diocesan archive in Passau to find out all the descendants. It will cost a bit of money, but certainly not break the bank. They also run a genealogical database (http://gendb.bistum-passau.de/). I would inquire there: archiv@bistum-passau.de.