Civil Status Archive Rhineland
Church records
4,315 church records and duplicates from the period 1571 to 1798/1809 and 1,127 more recent duplicates from the period 1806/1813 to 1874.
Registry of civil status
106,473 duplicate registry of civil status from the period 1796/1798 to 1875 (left bank of the Rhine) and from 1810 to 1875 (right bank of the Rhine), approx. 100,000 banns registers and approx. 20,000 supporting documents.
Civil status registers
123,448 subsidiary registers of civil status registers created in accordance with Prussian civil status law (October 1874 to December 1875) and in accordance with the civil status law of the German Empire and the Federal Republic of Germany from 1876 to June 1938 (death registers until 1986).
Civil Status Archive Westphalia-Lippe
Church records
Collection of Lippe church records from 1611 to 1969 (134 units). Deposit of the Lippe Regional Church (inventory L 112 A).
Duplicate church records and registry of civil status
Approximately 6,000 duplicate church records and registry of civil status, as well as supporting documents from the period from approximately 1750 to 1875. Duplicate church records are copies of church records ordered by the state. Registries of civil status were kept during the Napoleonic period in accordance with French law or based on its model. In Westphalia, the practice of church register duplicates was reinstated in 1813/14. (Holdings P 1A Lippe, P 1B-D RB Minden, P 4 RB Arnsberg, P 7 RB Münster)
Jewish and dissident registers
Approximately 900 Jewish and dissident registers and supporting documents for the period from 1808 to 1874. Since the early 19th century, many territories were required to keep (separate) registers of civil status cases involving Jews, dissidents, Quakers, etc., e.g. in the Kingdom of Westphalia since 1808 and in Lippe since 1809. These registers were kept until 1875. Some duplicates exist.
These holdings have been completely digitised. An overview can be found here. See also the crowdsourcing project JuWeL for more information on these sources.
Civil registry subsidiary registers
Over 170,000 civil registry subsidiary registers or secondary registers from 1874/6 to 1938 and 1941/1991 (family registers/secondary death registers) (as of 2022). The secondary death registers up to 1938 and the secondary marriage registers up to 1899 were digitised between 2015 and 2022. An overview can be found here.
Reproductions from the Reichsippenamt
Reproductions of Jewish birth, marriage and death registers, synagogue books, cemetery lists, gravestone inscriptions, membership lists of Jewish cultural associations (50 units) (Inventory P 10).
The Wittgensteiner Familiendatei
Jochen Karl Mehldau spent decades combing through numerous sources for his genealogical research, first all the church records of the old district of Wittgenstein, then other sources such as the Wittgenstein wine purchase letters. He initially recorded his findings on index cards, later transferring the results of his work to a form-based database application he created himself using Microsoft Access.
Lippische Ziegler Online
The Lippische Ziegler Online internet portal is a joint project between the Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen and the International Institute of Social History (IISG) in Amsterdam. The internet portal on the IISG website provides a wide range of information on the phenomenon of seasonal labour migration from Lippe and is linked to the ‘Archive in NRW’ portal. The portal also contains digitised archive material from the Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen and explanatory texts on the archive holdings.
The internet portal was officially launched on 20 June 2011 by Ute Schäfer, Minister for Family, Children, Youth, Culture and Sport of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Holdings in the Westphalia Department
Although church records and civil registers are the most prominent sources for family research, other archival materials are also suitable for genealogical research and, in terms of content, are often even more informative...
When researching your own family history, it is sometimes worthwhile to consult tax rolls, assessment lists, bill books, land registers, the original cadastral register, land registers, farm records, personnel files, court records, emigration records and a variety of other sources of personal history.
The Westphalia department will be happy to advise you!
Contact us at: westfalen[at]lav.nrw.de.
Detmold ‘church register card index’
The indexing of church records is an analogue card index system originally used to search for names in the church records of the former Principality of Lippe. The civil status records contained therein were recorded according to the names of the persons concerned. The analogue version is located in a large wooden card index box in the reading room of the east-westphalia derpartment in Detmold. The digital version allows for online use.