Genealogical Society Hamburg

The Genealogical Society Hamburg e. V. (GGHH) was founded on May 25, 1918 under the name "Central Office for Lower Saxony Family History" . It had two previous clubs

the local group of the "Roland, Association for the Promotion of Regular Customers", which has existed in Dresden since 1902, founded in Hamburg in 1908

the Hamburg Association for Family History, Seal and Heraldry, founded in 1909 . V. "

history

It was the Roland local group from which the GGHH finally emerged. The name of the new organization was borrowed from the "Central Office for German Personal and Family History" in Leipzig, which has existed since 1904 . The Association for Family History, Seal and Heraldry joined the new central office on March 12, 1919.

Wilhelm Weidler became the first chairman . At the end of 1919 there were already 320 members , many of them from old Hamburg families. The new association also created a publication organ with the title "Journal for Lower Saxony Family Studies" .

The establishment of a library went hand in hand with the establishment of a library , to which an archive was soon added , in which the family and ancestral tables of the members, personal documents, newspaper clippings and family advertisements were kept. From the very beginning, the archive was under the direction of Theodor Ros , whose name is still used by today's library.

The time of National Socialism brought profound upheavals. “Völkisch ethos, blood and soil , clan research ” were the new keywords that the GGHH could not avoid. An outward sign can still be found today in the 35th year of the magazine, which had to be converted to the larger A4 format. In addition, the GGHH had to join a new “Reich Association for Family Research and Heraldry ”, whose position was taken in 1937 by a “People's Association of German Family Studies Associations”.

From May 1945 to October 1946 the central office did not exist in the legal sense, as all associations were forbidden by the military government at the time . Then there was another general meeting. After the state of Lower Saxony was established in 1946 , the name gave rise to misunderstandings. First, in 1962, the association's publication was converted into “Zeitschrift für Niederdeutsche Familienkunde” and finally the association name - after long quarrels - was changed to Genealogical Society, Headquarters Hamburg e. V. changed. In 2002 the association was given its current, shortened name.

After the first chairman, the teacher Professor Wilhelm Weidler (1875-1953), was from 1933 to 1935 in that time the director of the State Archives of Hamburg appointed Reincke Heinrich Chairman. He was followed by the chief physician of the former Bethanien Hospital in Hamburg-Eppendorf, Friedrich Bonhoff (1883-1966) from 1935 to 1945. Despite his early membership in the NSDAP from 1931, he was again chairman from 1949 to 1962. During the period of the revival of the association after 1945, the journalist August Holler (* 1883), classified as "unencumbered", was chairman from 1946 to 1949. The philologist Walter Kaestner took over the management of the association from 1962 to 1983, followed by Rolf Hillmer (1923–2011). The association has been managed by the archivist at the State Archives of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg , Ulf Bollmann (* 1966), since 1998 .

In 2018 the association celebrated its 100th anniversary with a ceremony in the Warburg House and a lecture by Detlev Kraack on the matriculation of the Plön School of Academics from 1832 ff. In 2019, the association's magazine also celebrated its 100th anniversary and published the eventful history in its first issue its editors from the last days of the German Empire , the Weimar Republic , to the time of National Socialism , the division of Germany and today's Germany after 1990.

Local group Bergedorf

Before the Second World War , the society had numerous local groups, including in Hanover , Hildesheim , Hameln , Harburg-Wilhelmsburg , Lüneburg , Flensburg , Lübeck and Bergedorf , which were established between 1924 and 1934. The group's own library still exists in Bergedorf today. It was housed in Bergedorf Castle until May 2013, briefly at Chrysanderstraße 2d on the second floor above the fire station and has now been in the Bergedorf registry office building, Wentorfer Straße 30, since October 2017.

The library

The association's first library was housed in the Museum for Hamburg History . There, however, she had to move out by order of the authorities and found her new location in an elementary school in Mühlenstrasse in Hamburg-Neustadt , where she was completely destroyed by an air raid in July 1943. A new library was created immediately, but was initially hampered by constant relocations until it finally found its current home in the Alsterchaussee in Hamburg-Rotherbaum. Today there are again over 23,000 book titles.

The magazine

In 1919 the "Journal for Lower Saxony Family Studies" was founded as the association's publication organ. After the Second World War it was renamed "Zeitschrift für Niederdeutsche Familienkunde" . It was published as an independent magazine until 1987, with interruptions due to the war . Then it was merged with the magazine “Norddeutsche Familienkunde” published by Degener-Verlag . With this it was transferred to the Helmut Scherer Verlag in Berlin in 1992 , which renamed North German Family Studies "Family History in North Germany", but kept the subtitle "in connection with the magazine for Low German Family Studies". The journal has been independent again since 1994 and was published under its old title until the end of 2018 in cooperation with the associations " Die Maus " (Bremen), Genealogical-Heraldic Society Göttingen and Lower Saxony Regional Association for Family Studies eV (Hanover). In 2019 the magazine was published under the sole editor in cooperation with the two previous editorial associations in Göttingen and Hanover. Since 2020 the journal has been carried exclusively by the Hamburg Genealogical Society.

literature

Sabine Paap and Ulf Bollmann: 100 years of the magazine for Low German family studies. In: Zeitschrift für Niederdeutsche Familienkunde, Volume 94, Issue 1, Hamburg, 2019, pp. 3–10 [with portrait photographs of the editors].