Austro-Hungarian Empire
My ancestors were ethnic Germans living int he Austro-Hungarian Empire (AHE). How do I enter a birthplace for them when I am not sure of which member state they were born in?
My choices from the drop down menus are limited to Austria, AHE or Hungary AHE. What about other member states like Romania or Slovakia, for example? Right now I want to enter their birthplace as a generalized Austro-Hungarian Empire given my uncertainty.
Thank you for your help.
Mike Cusack
Best Answers
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Neither Romania nor Slovakia were in any sense "member states" of the Empire. Slovakia simply hadn't been invented yet, and Romania was a separate country, east of the border.
The Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy consisted of two halves, corresponding to the two different crowns: Cisleithania or the Austrian Crown Lands, and Transleithania or the Lands of the Crown of St. Stephen (or the Lands of the Holy Crown). (Towards the end, Bosnia-Herzegovina was added as a neither-fish-nor-fowl jointly-governed territory.)
The Austrian Crown Lands were Bohemia, Bukovina, Carinthia, Carniola, Dalmatia, Galicia, Küstenland, Lower Austria, Moravia, Salzburg, Silesia, Styria, Tyrol, Upper Austria, and Vorarlberg. They each had their own governments, with varying levels of autonomy, but had in common that they were ruled by the emperor (Kaiser).
When the monarch switched roles and put on the Crown of St. Stephen, he became the king instead of the emperor, and ruled over the Kingdom of Hungary and the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia. Both kingdoms were divided into counties (63 for Hungary, 8 for Croatia), but they otherwise had different administrations.
Exploring FS's Places database just now, I see that very little of this is in there correctly. In particular, there isn't an entry for "Austria-Hungary"; it's just listed as an alternate name for both Austria and Hungary. This means that when all you know is "somewhere in A-H", you have to make a guess as to which half. This is not ideal, and I will be submitting a suggestion to the Places database after I finish writing here.
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Grr: the "Suggest a new place" button doesn't allow suggestions of anything bigger than a city, and it doesn't allow hyphens. This is asininely stupid, as probably 90% of 19th century Hungarian placenames used hyphens.
I guess I'm submitting a new thread somewhere here in Communities.
Grrrr.
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Found the email address for place suggestions: [email protected]. (I remembered that it existed at one time, but not what it was or where to find it.) There's a Help Center article containing it here: https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/how-do-i-request-a-new-place-in-the-database-of-standardized-places
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Thanks for you help Julia. I appreciated it. My best guess is my family were ethnic Germans, some living in what is now Slovakia and some in Hungary. Stay well
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