The Thesaurus Professionum now contains about 23.000 entries for occupational titles found in Early Modern funeral sermons and similar texts in German libraries and archives.
Illustration: Amman, Jost, Sachs, Hans: Eygentliche Beschreibung aller Stände auff Erden, hoher und nidriger, geistlicher und weltlicher, aller Künsten, Handwercken und Händeln …
Durch d. weitberümpten Hans Sachsen gantz fleissig beschrieben u. in teutsche Reimen gefasset, Frankfurt am Mayn: Feyerabend 1568
thanks to http://www.digitalis.uni-koeln.de/
Memorial tablet for the soldiers killed during the War of the Sixth Coalition (prootestant church St. Ägidius, Hergisdorf, Saxony Anhalt)
Data of baptism, mariage, and death of military personnel and often their families were kept in regimental and garrison church registers. For genealogical research in this kind of sources it is helpful to know the place or region of enlistment, the approximate dates of service, and the exact regiment.
A printed directory of the 4087 preserved military church records available in about 156 different archives or rectories in Germany can be found in:
Wolfgang Eger: Verzeichnis der Militärkirchenbücher in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Neustadt an der Aisch, 2 Bände, 1993/96
פ”נ
הישה הישרה והנכבדה
מרת
פיגלכא
אשת כ’ אברהם גרינטהאל
ז”ל
נפטרה ביום א’ ר”ח סיון
ונקברה ביום ב’ ב’ בו תר”ז לפ”ק
תנצב”ה
The example shows a tombstone with a typical Hebrew inscription from the database “Jewish Cemeteries in Brandenburg” The dates of death and burial are written in Hebrew according to the Jewish calendar, which starts its “year one” with the Creation of the World and came up with a calendar that begins 3760 years before the Christian calendar.
For example, the current jewish year 5769 will be written as 769, but the 5000 is usually left off. To compute the civil (Gregorian) year, simply add the number 1240 to the shortened Hebrew year. The letters of the Hebrew Alphabet each have a numerical value, specified in the accompanying chart.
In our example, we read from right to left Tav, Resh, Zain which in numbers is 400+200+7, the Jewish year 607. By using our formula 607 plus 1240 the civil year of death is 1847.
Round 1900 Georg Dehio established a guide to the German architectural monuments (Handbuch der Deutschen Kunstdenkmäler). It is a comprehensive reference book for people interested in the history of arts. At the same time the “Dehio” can serve as a detailed and compact guide for discovering architectural treasures off the beaten tourist tracks.
The “Dehio” series is expanded and updated constantly. Meanwhile buildings of the 19th century, of the modern era as well as technical monuments are part of this reference book. Information about single monuments are amended by introductions to municipal history of larger towns and cities considering which take into consideration also aspects of preservation and urban development. Maps, indexes of street and place names, registers of objects and artists and and a glossary make the use of the “Dehio” very easy and comfortable.
Reclams art guides (Reclams Kunstführer) are a similar series of reference books to art monuments. They are less encyclopaedic and addressed to a broader readership. Therefore they contain photographs and information about museums, collections, etc. The series was published between 1958 and 1994 and contains volumes to Germany (without the regions of the former GDR), Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Austria, Sweden, Spain, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Turkey.
A major collection of about 25,000 slides owned by the Insitute for the History of Arts at the University of Halle is being digitized and published in a picture database.
The photographs were taken for teaching purpose between the years 1895 and 1952. They show architecture and art objects from all over the world, that today in many cases do not exist any more.
Access points for the database are names of the artists, type/category of art and place names or names of landscapes. Unfortunately there are neither informations
how to use images in teaching and publication.
Current results in scientific research are particularly published and discussed in journals and anthologies.
Online catalogs of libraries very often do not contain bibliographical references to articles. The latter can be found in databases related to specific fields of research.
These databases mostly are not available online, but Litdok provided by the Herder-Institut Marburg is. Litdok contains bibliographical references to articles on the history of East Central Europe. A user interface
with the possibility to choose between ten languages and multilingual subject headings offer a comfortable search for literature in different languages.
The Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy offers reproductions of maps of the eastern regions that belong to Germany before 1918. Topograhic maps (1: 25 000,
1: 100 000) as well as general maps of East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia (1: 300 000) can be purchased online.
The data base “historical place names” provides information about various different names of villages and cities in the past and about the affiliation of the settlements to administrative districts.
A further project of JewishGen, the Online Worldwide Burial Registry (JOWBR) collects data from tombstone inscriptions of and death records.
The data base is searchable by names and regions, sometimes even photographs of the gravestones (matzevot) are displayed. JewishGen-volunteers also help with translating
and/or transliterating Hebrew inscriptions. The cooperating Jewish Cemetery Project, identifies jewish burial sites worldwide and offers closer information about each particular cemetery.
The JewishGen Family Finder (JGFF) is a database of ancestral towns and surnames currently being researched by over 78.000 Jewish genealogists worldwide. It contains over 100,000 ancestral surnames and 18,000 town names, and is indexed and cross-referenced by both, which makes the Family Finder interesting also for regional studies on jewish history. Researchers should check the JGFF for genealogists with similar research interests, and contact them for an exchange of information. Value-added services for contributors include an ALERT-system and enhanced database search features.
A shtetl (Yiddish: שטעטל) was typically a small town or village with a large Jewish population in pre-Holocaust Central and Eastern Europe. ShtetlSeeker is an online
feature hosted by the Jewish Gen Web site locating settlements in 31 countrys that are currently located in this region. It covers linguistic and historic variants for names. It is also possible to search by latitude and longitude to locate towns in close proximity and to display maps using links to MapQuest, Expedia, or MultiMap.
