Church tracing service

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The Church Tracing Service with its hometown lists (HOK) was founded in 1945, shortly after the end of the war, on the first of August of that year, by Caritas and Diakonie as an aid service for German refugees, displaced persons, repatriates and their descendants. On September 30, 2015 - one month after the 70th anniversary of its founding - the tracing service ceased operations.

Short profile

The “General Survey to Clarify the Fate of the German Population” commissioned by the Federal Ministry of the Interior in 1953 and carried out by the Church Tracing Service made it possible to record the German population residing in the displaced areas in 1945 almost completely. Not only could the fate of around 17 million people be traced through the overall survey, a population register was also created with the names of each individual person and their place of residence with details of place and street over almost a quarter of the German Empire and also large areas with high German population.

In the extensive documents of the Church Tracing Service, more than 20 million people from the former German eastern and expulsion areas were registered by name according to their former home. In addition to personal data, there was also information on family structures, relatives, residence before and after the Second World War and, in many cases, information on the path of fate. The documents, which came together centrally at the tracing service, were regularly updated, supplemented and updated. The Church Tracing Service issued over 15,000 information on the basis of this data each year.

Termination of the tracing service

On February 2, 2015, it was announced that the tracing service would end its activities on September 30, 2015. The reason is the falling number of inquiries. Paul Hansel, acting director of the KSD, explained in an interview that ten years ago there were around 20,000 inquiries per year, which have now fallen to 6,000 to 8,000. The focus is no longer on searching for missing people, but on clarifying family structures. The collected data was handed over to the load balancing archive in Bayreuth in August 2016 , where inquiries should be possible again from January 1, 2017.

tasks

For decades, one of the main tasks has been to clarify fates and bring people together. Through its investigations, the Church Tracing Service helped to reestablish the links between the families that had been severed by flight and displacement . With the help of the tracing service documents, the fate of the displaced persons could be traced, the current addresses of those affected or their relatives could be determined and the contacts established. The existing documents, which were handed over to the Federal Archives, also offer a well-founded source for genealogy and family research .

As an officially recognized information center, the tracing service provided support in official matters such as:

In many personal questions in connection with the consequences of the Second World War, the Church Tracing Service performed the tasks of a “ registration office for the former East German expulsion areas”.

Available stocks

The tracing service had documents on the areas:

Upper Silesia , Lower Silesia , Sudeten Area , Slovakia , Gdansk-West Prussia , Pomerania , East Prussia , Estonia , Latvia , Lithuania , USSR , Bessarabia , Bulgaria , Dobruja , Romania , Yugoslavia , Hungary , Carpathian Ukraine , Mark Brandenburg , Wartheland

Search service documents are z. B. census books , community target lists, address books of cities and districts , local books / community directories, business directories , imperial address books , goods directories, telephone directories, parish directories, professional directories, maps and city ​​maps as well as specialist literature

About 1.3 million field post letters and prisoner-of-war mail were handed over to the hometown lists in 1950 via the investigation center established at the Berlin Post Office , which could no longer be delivered due to the events of flight and displacement. Over 120,000 of these original pieces of mail were with the Church Tracing Service. The paths of fate could also be traced on the basis of these important documents.

organization

The tracing service worked at three locations: Stuttgart , Passau and Munich . It was sponsored by the Caritas Association and Diakonie and is headed by the main representation in Munich of the German Caritas Association. The recipient of the grant is also the Deutsche Caritasverband e. V., Freiburg im Breisgau . Thanks to the institutional funding from the Federal Ministry of the Interior, aid for refugees, displaced persons and repatriates and their descendants was ensured.

literature

  • Church Tracing Service (ed.): 25 years of Church Tracing Service. A quarter of a century shared task of Caritas and Diakonie . Munich 1970.
  • Ferdinand Kösters (ed.): The history of the church tracing service . HOK, Munich / Gebr. Geiselberger, Altötting 2005.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Church Tracing Service ceases its work , from: September 28, 2015; Retrieved on: April 3, 2018.
  2. ↑ https://www.evangelisch.de/inhalte/125278/28-09-2015/kirchlicher-suchdienst- stellen-seine-arbeit- ein
  3. ^ Church tracing service stops work, SWR Landesschau Baden-Württemberg, February 2, 2015.
  4. ^ Church tracing service. Archived from the original on September 30, 2017 ; accessed on December 18, 2017 .
  5. ^ Catholic News Agency , February 9, 2015.