How to place a smaller German village in a bigger context

KalleLilja

Hello Everyone!

This is my first attempt at posting a message here so please be gentle with me. 😀

I also have no idea if I manage to post my question in the "correct place", if i didn't any mod would be more than welcomed to move it to a more appropriate location. :)😀

What I was curious about would be this:

I have found some German living people in my family line and well now I would like to “write down their place of living” in some sort of “correct way”. What I mean by this is that I sometimes just have a name of a small village for instance and well, I would like to place that same small village “in a bigger context” so to speak.

I am also curious as to how this “bigger context” should be constructed. I mean for my US migrants it is pretty simple, there you can usually just go with village/city-county-state. What would a proper context in this case be for Germany? ( And maybe this differs depending on where in Germany someone lived, not mention if the family in question where Lutherans or Catholic. )

Just to make things a little bit more clear let run with this example:

I have the village of Holtheim as a place of birth. To which parish did this village belong? What county ( or similar ) would this parish be situated in and finally what “state” or maybe a more correct word to use here would be “small kingdom” did this parish belong to? ( I would also like to add here that I do know that the closest “somewhat big” city would Lichtenau and I do know that we can find Holtheim situated in Nordrhein-Westfalen. )

How should a “proper bigger geographical context” be created for the village of Holtheim? ( Also here given the fact that the family in question were Catholics. )

To conclude I guess I am actually asking two questions here really:

·      How do I find out how to place a small village in a bigger context

·      How should a “proper” bigger context for a German place of living “be constructed”

I am also realizing here that it is likely that there is no “right or wrong” answer here so suggestions, recommendations or common practices would be very welcomed from a reply point of view.  

I am not sure if I managed to describe my question well enough, but something tells me I should probably stop writing before I manage to create more “confusion then clarity”. 😀 ( Read if something isn’t clear, please don’t hesitate to ask questions about this. )

Any help would be most appreciated.

Thanks for making it all the way down to here! 😀

Kalle

 

JohnsonGreg

Hi KalleLilja,

It depends on whether you want to describe the location in a present day description or whether you want to describe it when your ancestors were living there. Present day can make it easier to locate now but loses the historical aspect.

Presently Holteim is actually a southern part of the municipality of Lichtenau and can be described as follows:

Name: Holtheim (Holtheim)

Status: Place

Municipality name: Lichtenau

Region name (Level 3): Kreis Paderborn

Region name (Level 2): Regierungsbezirk Detmold

Region name (Level 1): North Rhine-Westphalia

Country: Germany

see https://germany.places-in-the-world.com/2900135-place-holtheim.html

But that may not be the description when your ancestors lived there. According to wikipedia: In the 17th/18th century, Holtheim was devastated by foreign troops in several wars, including 1734 in the War of the Polish Succession. In 1802/03 the Bishopric was occupied by the Kingdom of Prussia. In Napoleonic times the place was part of the Kingdom of Westphalia. Since 1815, Holtheim belonged to the Kingdom of Prussia, and from 1871 it was part of the German Empire. From 1945 to 1949 Borgentreich was part of the British zone of occupation, from 1946 it was governed by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and from 1949 also by the Federal Republic of Germany.

I think the historical perspective is very important. It enriches your family story if you can understand whether your ancestors lived during say the Napoleonic times and how that history impacted their lives. So you may want to spend some time studying the history of the area so that you can describe it as your ancestor experienced it.

Cheryl Viering

For historical jurisdictions and places, http://gov.genealogy.net/search/index is very good for places in or near Germany. Although you may find quite a lot of information, at times some places changed jurisdiction every few years, as armies came and went, and administrators had newer, more brilliant ideas of how to organize their territory.

https://www.meyersgaz.org/ is also very good, but it only covers the German Empire (1871-1918).

KalleLilja

Thank you for the great replies.

I have to admit that I haven't been forced to really consider the question about "modernity" or "historical correctness" before. ( I guess this depends on the fact that Sweden has been a very stable country for a very long time so this hasn't been much of an issue really. )

I am thinking that you should pay honor to history in this case. ( And then just make a note of "the modern way" In case you might need that sometime. :)

I am thinking though that the historical route might be a whole lot more compicated to run with, especially if you want the "middle layers" between town and "kingdom" that the town belonged to. ( Or, I could just make it somewhat simpler here perhaps and just use "Erzbistum Paderborn" as the "middle layer". Something tells me that they might not have changed that one too much over the years. :)

KalleLilja

I am now also realizing another thing here. Since the church in Sweden was tasked with all "census-related information" up until 1991 I have always used the church "organization" to place someone's place of living in a bigger context.

So now I also need to decide if I should go with the "church option" here or if I should run with the "poltical one" instead.

So many questions.... So few answers... :)