Civil status archive (NRW)

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The civil status archives are part of the State Archive of North Rhine-Westphalia , the only documents of the civil status store. They are located in Duisburg (Rhineland civil status archive) and Detmold ( Westphalia-Lippe civil status archive ).

History and jurisdiction

The Personenstandsarchiv Rheinland custody and care of archival materials of civil status , ie church records , civil and civil registers, from the administrative districts of Dusseldorf and Cologne . Its origins go back to the time of the Second World War . After 1945, the new archive administration of the Rhine Province or its successor, the State Archive Administration of North Rhine-Westphalia , took over the written material as the so-called civil status archive and thus created the possibility of reliably storing documents relevant to personal status in one place and for the administration, as well as citizens seeking law and Last but not least, to make it available for family history research. Originally housed in the fortress Ehrenbreitstein / Koblenz, soon after the end of the war the church records were moved to Schloss Gracht (Erftstadt-Liblar), while the civil status registers remained on the Ehrenbreitstein. In 1953 the holdings were divided along the newly drawn political borders between North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate ; In addition, the parish registers that had been in the ecclesiastical possession at the beginning of the war had to be returned to the respective parishes. In contrast, the North Rhine-Westphalian register volumes could be supplemented, initially up to the border year 1900; Since 1953, the civil status archive has been in charge of the safekeeping of the civil status registers created until 1938. Also in 1953, the church book holdings were increased by relevant documents from the 19th century from the area of ​​the Essen Regional Court. In 1954/55 the two parts of the archive, church records and civil status registers, were combined in Brühl . Since then, the holdings have essentially only been increased by taking over the “collective files” (attachments) from a few large city registry offices.

The Rhineland civil status archive was an independent institution of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia from 1955 to 2004. In 2004, the Rhineland civil status archive became a department of the newly founded North Rhine-Westphalia State Archive, and in 2008 it was merged into the Rhineland department of the State Archive. Until the move to Duisburg in 2014, it was housed at the Brühl site in Augustusburg Castle and two other nearby buildings.

The Westphalia-Lippe civil status archive was created in 1964 based on the model of the Rhineland civil status archive. It was affiliated with the Detmold State Archives from the start . Together with the Detmold State Archives, the Westphalia-Lippe civil status archive became part of the North Rhine-Westphalia State Archives established in 2004.

The stocks

Duplicates from the Rhineland
civil status archive : Left: Duplicate of the civil status register of the Mayor's Office of Cologne (No. 44/1838) with the birth entry of the composer Max Bruch , 1838
Middle: Second volume of the duplicate from the register year 1852 of the marriage register of the Mülheim Mayor's Office in a contemporary half-leather cover
Right: duplicate ('Side copy') of the death register of the registry office Cologne (No. 1389/1876) with the death entry of Anna Rehfeld, b. Zaudig (1803–1876), known as Kölsches Original under the nickname "Böckderöck Wau-Wau"

Keep the civil status archives:

  • Church books (Duisburg, in Detmold only church books from Lippe)
  • Church register duplicates (only in Detmold)
  • Civil status registers: They were kept in the Rhineland from around 1798 (on the left bank of the Rhine) and 1810 (on the right bank of the Rhine) to 1875, in Westphalia, however, only from 1808 to 1814
  • Register of Jews and dissidents (only Westphalia-Lippe): since the early 19th century, the (separate) keeping of registers on civil status cases of Jews, dissidents, Quakers etc. was mandatory in many territories (1808/09 to 1875)
  • Civil status registers: These are civil registers created on the basis of the Prussian civil status law 1874/75 or the civil status law of the German Empire from 1876. So far, the civil status archives kept registers until 1938. Starting in 2009, further secondary registries will gradually be adopted.
  • Reproductions of lists of Jewish communities, residents and cemeteries, created by the Reichssippenamt (only in Detmold)
  • Name directories, genealogical evaluations and "mapping"
  • Estates and collections
  • Microfilms and microfiche and digitized holdings

Archive usage

The use of archive material from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia is based on the provisions of the North Rhine-Westphalian Archives Act. According to the Civil Status Reform Act (valid from January 1, 2009), civil status documents from the period from October 1, 1874 or January 1, 1876 can be viewed after the following periods have expired:

  • 030 years for death records
  • 080 years for marriage registers
  • 110 years for birth records.

The reading room of the Rhineland civil status archive in Duisburg offers PC workstations with print options, microfiche readers and microfiche scanners, also with print options. In Detmold, the reading room of the Ostwestfalen-Lippe department of the North Rhine-Westphalia state archive has 35 workstations, most of which are connected to reading devices for films or microfiches. A computer can be connected to each seat. As far as stocks are digitized or converted to microfiches, they are directly available to the user in the reading room. The originals of these digitized holdings are no longer presented for reasons of preservation .

Library

Both reading rooms each have a reference library which enables the direct use of relevant manuals and standard works on family history and genealogy. In Duisburg, the library of the West German Society for Family Studies, which supplements the service library there, is also available for inspection. The catalogs are also available online via.

literature

  • Archives, genealogy and history. Approaches and Tasks, ed. by Bettina Joergens and Christian Reinicke (= publications of the Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen 7), Düsseldorf 2006. ISBN 3-927502-10-3
  • Tobias Schenk, Jewish and dissident register of the 19th century from Westphalia-Lippe. An introduction to the history of archives and holdings, in: Westfälische Forschungen 60 (2010), pp. 593–615.

Web links

Commons : civil status archive  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Archives in NRW

Coordinates: 50 ° 49 ′ 42.5 ″  N , 6 ° 54 ′ 22.1 ″  E