Vienna Military Parish records

JacobVl

Hello,

Apologies if this is the wrong place to post such a query.

I have been doing genealogical research in Austria for quite some time my special interest being early 20th century military officers. Since Austro-Hungarian Army garrisons, units etc. had their own church books, the paucity of online military parish records from Austria-Hungary has been somewhat of a handicap for me.

It is known that FamilySearch has digitized pretty much all military parish records from the Kriegsarchiv Wien (Military Archive Vienna) (mainly here: https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/results?count=20&placeId=50551,50551,50551,50551,50551&query=%2Bauthor%3A%C3%96sterreich%20%2Bauthor%3AArmee&subjectIndex=2500). The fact that most are not available online can be, of course, explained by contractual obligations, and I think there is no need to dwell on that. This is the reason, I presume, that non-available films are marked as "GS number xxx: no circulation" at the top of each collection page.

My specific questions are:

1. In some cases, for example "Kirchenbuch, 1775-1921, Feldsuperiorat Wien" (the records of the Vienna military garrison, https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/430359?availability=Family%20History%20Library) there is only one film marked as "no circulation" (DGS 7609012, that is, marriages 1867-1872). Does this mean that other films (of this collection, at least) could be theoretically made available in the future?
2. According to Austrian privacy legislations, the data privacy protection of all these records has expired (save for the 1921 births, in which case the expiration is on January 1, 2022). As far as I can tell, military births-marriages-deaths were generally made available online as far as no records in the film were newer than about 1887 were included. Is there any plan to make parts of garrison/regimental church book films available until that date, or to bring the collections up to date with respect to the newer Austrian privacy law?

It goes without saying that, having a deep interest in the issue, I would be more than happy to offer my assistance in any activity regarding these particular records.

Best regards

Jacob

Mckenna Cooper

@JacobVl I've forwarded your question on to our collections team at FamilySearch and they are going to look into it for you. I should hear back from them on Monday with more details.

A van Helsdingen

Note that the film 2376189 has multiple Items. If you search for this film number in the Catalog you'll see that there are 5 Items, each from a different collection of records. There is a DGS number, which means FS has digitized the film. However they need the permission of the owners of all 5 Items before they can publish the digitized film. Evidently this has not occurred . This is annoying and affects thousands of films, but currently there's no way around it. However FS has said that eventually they will split these films so that each Item is separate. That will allow them to publish the Items that can be published, and leave the remaining Items unpublished. However this could be several years away.

If there is a 100 year privacy limit for births/baptisms, then there are many films that could be published immediately. Hopefully a FS staff member will read this and alert the appropriate department so that they can investigate it further. However the contract between FS and record owner may specify a longer privacy limit than what Austrian law allows. I know of a collection of records in New Zealand where this happened- this was a collection of wills that had no privacy limit , but the Archives only let FS publish records that were 50 years old.

Have you tried the website Matricula (https://data.matricula-online.eu/en/oesterreich/)? They have most church records from Austria. Have you tried the FamilySearch Wiki's page on Austrian Church records?

JacobVl

Hello,

Thank you for your answer. I have been using the Matricula database for some years now and pretty much anything from Austria-Hungary online from FamilySearch, but there are extremely few military church records there, hence the FamilySearch collection would be indispensable in that matter.

The new privacy limits in Austria came in effect in 2013 and specify limits of 100, 75 and 30 years for birth, marriage and death records, respectively (the "Personenstandsgesetz" or "PStG" for short, of 2013: https://www.ris.bka.gv.at/GeltendeFassung.wxe?Abfrage=Bundesnormen&Gesetzesnummer=20008228, section 52, par. 5).

The Kriegsarchiv in Vienna, which hold the original church books, says the following in its description of the said archival collection (Militärmatriken, i.e. military church books, quoted from https://www.archivinformationssystem.at/detail.aspx?ID=3102):

"Für die Benutzung (Einsichtnahme, Anfertigung von Abschriften, Urkundenausstellung etc.) gelten daher nicht die Bestimmungen des Bundesarchivgesetzes, sondern die des Personenstandsgesetzes in der gültigen Fassung für Altmatriken, insbesondere die mit dem PStG 2013 festgelegten, unterschiedlichen Sperrfristen für Geburts-, Trauungs- und Sterbeeintragungen"

"Thus, for the usage [of the church books] (viewing, production of copies and certificates etc.), the provisions of the Federal Archive Law do no apply, but rather those of the Personal Status Law, in particular the variable protection period for birth, marriage and death entries, which were established with the Personal Status Law of 2013" [the one quoted above by me].

At the end of the page, there is a "Schutzfristende (=end of the protection period) 31.12.2038". That covers the births from the newer church books of the post-WWI Austrian Army, dissolved in 1938, that were not digitized by FamilySearch and thus do not concern us here.

To make things even more peculiar, the Kriegsarchiv itself published (some years ago) a number of records from the military parish of Vienna online (https://www.crarc.findbuch.net/php/main.php#4f657374612d572d4653), births until 1905, marriages 1908 and deaths until 1904.

I, of course, understand very well that all decisions come from the Vienna archives. That said, I posted my original question out of curiosity, in case anyone knows if any changes in these particular collections could be expected in the future, be it 2021 or 2038.

Having doing research in this field for quite some time, I am extremely grateful to all FamilySearch members for bringing all these records online. I am not sure if I could reach a staff member, but I would certainly appreciate any comments regarding this particular issue.

Regards

JacobVl

Dear Mrs. Cooper,

I am very grateful to You for bringing this issue to the attention of the staff.

I would be extremely interested in learning the official position of the parties involved and the corresponding ramifications.

Best regards