Archives of Saxe
18
JULY
2012
The microfilm collection of the Jewish civil and church records in the Saxon State Archives in Leipzig, as a result of the activities by the “Reichssippenamt”.
The history of the formation and preservation of the genealogical collections of the “Reichssippenamt”, which are now in the Saxon State Archives in Leipzig, is closely connected with the history of Germany between 1933 and 1945 and also with the history of the two German states after 1949.
The lecture will be presenting the two main record groups, first the state documents of the Jewish registers of birth, marriages and deaths since the end of the 18th century and secondly the Jewish community collections from 18th to 20th century. The former German agency for genealogical research, which was founded on march 1935 as an institution of the German Ministry of the Interior (from november 1940 until the end of World War II called “Reichssippenamt”), took first all efforts to the state records about Jewish births, marriages and deaths from the district and local courts, from the town halls and courts of appeal to be archived in film form. Then, after the November-Progrom, they confiscated all records from the “Gesamtarchiv der Juden” in Berlin and with the participation of the “Zentralstelle für jüdische Personenstandsregister” (established 1939 under the leadership of Jacob Jacobson, 1888–1968), they built up systematically a microfilm-collection about Jewish people and families to make it useful to the Nazi racial extermination policies. The filming activities were completed in the last days of April 1945. Since many records were destroyed or missing, these films now are the primary sources searching for the history of Jewish communities and also for Jewish family histories. This complexity will be shown to the scientific community.
| Speaker | Location |
|---|---|
|
Martina WERMES |
Seine A |