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Private address book

An address book is a private, business or official directory or a publicly published directory of the addresses of individuals, authorities, institutions and companies. The best known public address book is the telephone book .

Usually, the surname , first name , address (consisting of street, house number, postcode, place of residence), which together form the postal address, are recorded, as well as telephone numbers of the landline and mobile networks and, if necessary, fax numbers , e-mail addresses and websites.

Often other personal information such as birthday is also listed. Address books are available in handwritten and printed form (e.g. in larger companies or authorities; see also the state calendar for these ). To make searching easier, address books often have alphabetical tabs that can be printed or punched.

Public address books (population books of a place)

3. Cologne address book 1797
Address book of the city of Zurich 1900

Initially, printed address books were only created for larger cities. They mostly only included the actual city area, possibly still nearby suburbs, which, however, did not necessarily belong to the administrative area of ​​the city. It was not until the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century that villages located near a town began to be recorded, but there are often no printed address books for remote rural locations.

Address books often contain several lists of more or less the same content, but in different order:

  • a list sorted by the surname of the residents;
  • a list of the residents of the houses, sorted by street and house number. Often the house owner is also indicated (e.g. if living in the house, highlighted, otherwise indicated with place of residence). The location of the apartment of the specified person is also given in some books ("3rd floor left"), alternatively information such as "rear building" or the like.
    Such a list can also mention intersecting streets, as well as mailboxes and telephone boxes.
    In some address books, the origin of the street names is also given.
  • a list of companies by industry;
  • Lists of residents of smaller neighboring towns;
  • Lists of the authorities, associations and doctors, as well as religious communities or institutions run by them can be included. The monks or nuns living in a monastery are not named individually, but only the community as such;
  • Old population registers are often supplemented with lists of post , telegram and telephone charges, postal regulations, service men’s fees , horse and car cabs , timetables and statutory provisions.

Old address books often only contain the names of the - male - heads of household , wives and children are usually not listed here, nor are servants or employees who lived in the household. In addition to the name, the job title is often recorded in old address books , such as B. "Railway driver", "Maid". An entry such as Eisele Dr., Arzt, Wwe. Indicates that the head of household, the doctor Dr. Eisele, deceased and his widow, possibly with children, lives in the apartment.

At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, the information content of the address books is often greater, here you can also find the names of wives, adult children who live in the parents' household or other roommates. However, it must always be checked in each individual case how comprehensive the information is, since this was handled differently depending on the publisher or publisher.

Sometimes the printed address books also contain maps, such as a city map.

Official population registers can also contain advertising entries. Book spines, margins, the intent , and possibly additional pages at the beginning or end of the book were often printed with advertising in order to finance the printing.

How important address books were in their heyday is shown by the fact that at the beginning of the 20th century vending machines were installed in public spaces which, after inserting a coin, allowed you to leaf through an address book. The aim was to create an opportunity for newly arriving travelers to orientate themselves in the city.

In the past, address books were mostly based on records of the registry office created (in the title often recognizable by additions such as "Official Address Book", "processed due to official documents". O. Ä) today happens on the one hand for reasons of, data protection (fewer and fewer people want be listed there), but also no longer in printed form due to the availability of the data on the Internet. For this reason, today's address books or electronic directories (see below) sometimes only contain the details of those persons or institutions who agreed to their being named or who even expressly requested them. They correspond to today's telephone directory in which only those subscribers are listed who have agreed to be named while the entry was previously mandatory.

In addition to address books that name all residents of a place, there were and are also special address books (or their electronic successors), e.g. B. with all farms in a particular region. Accordingly, they do not list all the inhabitants of a place, but also take into account rural places for which no general address book exists.

Examples

Electronic address books

Digital forms are becoming more and more popular due to the spread of electronic media . These can be stored as separate software specially designed for this purpose, programs integrated within standard office software, databases on single-user computers, in the intranet or on the Internet . This also includes telephone directories on CD. A comparison with a mobile phone , organizer or PDA replaces an address book on paper. Network platforms such as B. XING , go so far that the contact details are linked to each other and are therefore always up to date.

The vCard is an electronic business card that can be automatically added to the address book . The automatic creation of several letters to addresses in an address book is called a serial letter .

Use of historical address books

Old address books are an important source for historical research.

For many places whose archives were lost during the Second World War or for other reasons, the printed and therefore more widespread address books are the only sources today to determine the exact place of residence of a certain person. Occupational or name designations or house numbers can also be determined later.

But the address books of the 1930s and 1940s also play a major role in determining the last freely chosen apartments of victims of fascism ; not least for the laying of the stumbling blocks by Gunter Demnig .

In addition to information on the individual or family, address books can, depending on the level of detail, also answer overarching questions, such as social topography, ie which social classes lived in a certain street or city district; facts about economic history can be determined through the information on companies and traders, etc.

literature

  • Hermann Ebeling: Between the lines. A short history of the Karlsruhe address book. 1818-1993 . Braun, Karlsruhe 1992, ISBN 3-7650-8119-1
  • Klara van Eyll (Ed.): Old address books tell… life and everyday life in Cologne . Greven, Cologne 1993, ISBN 3-7743-0277-4
  • Christel Wegeleben: Address Books . In: Wolfgang Ribbe, Eckart Henning: Pocket book for family history research . 11th edition, Degener & Co., Neustadt an der Aisch 1995, pp. 301-329, bibliography. P. 329.
  • Christine Fischer-Defoy, Susanne Schaal (Ed.): Berlin ABC. Paul Hindemith's private address book 1927 to 1938 . Transit, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-88747-148-2 , example of a private address book for a well-known composer.
  • Hartmut Jäckel: People in Berlin. The last telephone book of the old capital in 1941 . DVA, Stuttgart a. a. 2000, ISBN 3-421-05421-5 , biography research of celebrities and non-celebrities using the Berlin telephone directory from 1941.
  • Otto Ruf: The address book. A historical and economic study . Dissertation, University of Würzburg 1932 (on history, production, publishing and economic importance)
  • Karl Schlögel: Berlin address books . In: We read the time in space. About the history of civilization and geopolitics . Hanser, Munich a. a. 2003, ISBN 3-446-20381-8 , pp. 329-351
  • Arthur Ritter von Vincenti (Ed.): The Magdeburg address book from 1817 . Modifications made by Maren Ballerstedt. Reprint of the edition by Degener, Leipzig 1932 . Magdeburg City Archives, Magdeburg 2003, ISBN 3-9808534-1-1
  • The living Leipzig . Reprint of the Leipzig 1701 edition. Schmidt-Römhild, Leipzig 1994, ISBN 3-7950-3907-X . Reprint of what is probably the first German urban address book, digitized ( DjVu )
  • Peter Guttkuhn: With a highly noble and highly wise Raths Privilegio: Lübeck address book . In: Vaterstädtische Blätter , Lübeck. Vol. 28, 1977, pp. 24-25.
  • Ulrich Hagenah: Hamburg address books - a historical sketch with comments on the digitization project of the Hamburg State and University Library. In: Journal of the Association for Hamburg History , Vol. 97, 2011, pp. 57–97
  • George Poland Henderson: Current European Directories. European Address Book Manual . Beckenham / England 1969 (A CBD Research Publication)

Web links

Commons : Address books  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Commons : Directories  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: Address book  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Historic address books on the Internet:

Wikisource: Address Books  - Sources and Full Texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Helmut Knocke in: Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein (eds.) U. a .: City Lexicon Hanover . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , p. 12.
  2. ↑ https://www.koblenz.de/bilder/stadtarchiv_was_ist_ein_adressbuch.pdf
  3. ↑ From pages 301 to 328, German-language address books are named according to locations and issues with years from Aachen to Zwittau.