Review of Autro-Hungarian Military Records
They are located at
Military records, 1865-1930
The history of those records is not explained, They are marked as Vienna files, but reside in Ukrainian Lviv archive. I assume they were seized by Soviets after taking Vienna in 1945, most likely NKVD since they held detailed records of of former soldiers who were drafted later to German army in WWII. Files went missing until Ukraine has separated itself from the Soviet Union. Going through over 56,000 pages of records I found prewar Polish Police and Army records added to soldiers files. Does this mean they were seized by the Red Army after Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland, and later added to the collection? The Vienna files were maintained by Nazis till 1945 as seen with carbon copies of entries replying to German Army queries about military records, and service queries to acquire German citizenship by Poles and Ukrainians, those files would show if they represented themselves in the Austrian Army as Germans, or not. The whole set of records is massive, and can have more than a million pages, but is is incomplete. Based on my rather small sample, I noticed a lack of records of soldiers drafted from Kraków and Rzeszów areas, specifically Kraków, Niepołomice and Wadowice whose garrisons had tens of thousands of soldiers. Few existing records were left as by mistake. Were those records sorted out to be handed to Polish communist secret police (UB)? It will be interesting to find out. Well represented are records of soldiers drafted in Śląsk/Schlisien/Silesia Bielitz/Bielsko-Biała and Dąbrowa, then Nowy Sącz/Neu Sandetz, Czortków, Tarnów, Bukowina, Zbaraż, Tarnopol, Czerniowce, Skałat. Don't expect records to be in alphabetic order, at letter K, I found records with letter H, S and L. The 2 Letter-K sets 2444410 Item 1 and 2444410 Items 2 - 4 should be marked as sets K-L, 2c sections of each have letter L.
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Krys, Thank you for letting me know about this microfilm. It is really amazing the extent of those records. I do not speak or read German, but I will share it with people who could use it to help those who are are interested in researching these records for their ancestors. I appreciate your sharing this information with me. Maria Eppich
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You are welcome, Maria. Most documents were written Sütterlinschrift, no longer taught in schools, there is a number of online guides how to decipher writing. There is also online OCR software to convert Sütterlin into typed text, and such text can be also auto translated let's say on Google. The description of the microfilms says that they are mostly of Kraków / Krakau area, but this is only partially true. Microfilms show people transferred to Kraków area, but no people that originated from that region, and most served locally, like my grandfathers who served in Krakau Landwehr and Landesgendarmeriekommandos Nr. 5.
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Here is the Sütterlinschrift OCR link https://www.transkribus.org/old-german-scripts
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Thank you, Krys. I will consider reviewing transkribus.
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