German Genealogy Tip #5: Lots of Free Resources on Genealogy.net

For those of you who research German ancestors, did you know about the existence of a website called Genealogy.net (also accessible at CompGen.de)? The website is mostly in German, but you can use Google Translate to translate pages (either copy and paste the text into Google Translate, or paste the entire URL of the website and it will show you a translated version of the whole webpage), or you can use Google Chrome as your browser and a pop-up will appear asking you if you’d like the browser to translate the website into English, or you can use it as an opportunity to brush up on your German language skills.

Genealogy.net has all kinds of German resources for family history research. It includes a sort of German version of our American-based FindAGrave resource under the heading “Grabsteine” (grave stones). Click here for a list of Friedhöfe, or “cemeteries,” in which you can search interments.

There is also an amazing collection of historic address books dating back into the 1800s. You may be able to find your ancestor living in a German city, if it is one of the cities included in the address book database.

Another great resource on Genealogy.net is the GEDBAS database. The GEDBAS database includes family history data that mainly German genealogists have uploaded to the website. These German researchers may have gotten their data from small village church parish books and other little-known sources that are not yet available online. When you find a file for a pertinent ancestor in the GEDBAS database, scroll to the bottom of the page to see the name and email address of the German researcher who uploaded that data. You can then contact that researcher for more information on that ancestor or that village.

There are countless other German resources on the Genealogy.net website. Explore away and Viel Glück!