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The Magic of German Church Records

Author : Katherine Schober

Publisher :

Page : 229 pages

File Size : 44,88 MB

Release : 2020-02-17

Category :

ISBN :

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Book Description

Learn how to extract your ancestor's information from German church records - without needing to speak German! If you are researching your German ancestors, it is more likely than not that you will run into church records at some point in your research. For years, it was the German churches - not civil authorities - who meticulously kept track of their members' births, baptisms, marriages, and deaths. Filled with information such as your ancestor's name, parents' names, occupations, dates, relationships, and more, these records are an amazing find for any German genealogist. But there is just one problem - they're not in English. In this how-to guide, learn how you can extract the information you need from German church records - without having to decipher every word on the page. Complete with handpicked examples from real German church records, this book teaches you to: Locate those valuable church records for your German ancestor Take yourself step-by-step through baptismal records, marriage records, death records - in both column and paragraph format - to pick out the details of your ancestor's life Recognize the different spelling variations of your ancestor's name and hometown Understand what church record phrases, symbols, and abbreviations mean and how these can help your genealogy research Convert names of commonly-seen feast dates into actual dates of birth, marriage, and death for your ancestor Work with the best technological tools and resources to make your genealogy journey easier - and more fun! Best yet, this book includes the German transcriptions and English translations of multiple sample records - as well as comprehensive German vocabulary lists with handwritten examples of these important genealogy words. Whether you are just starting out in the field or have worked with church records for years, this book will teach you the must-know methods to unlock the mysteries of your ancestor's past. Are you ready to get started?



Tips and Tricks of Deciphering German Handwriting

Author : Katherine Schober

Publisher :

Page : 105 pages

File Size : 25,86 MB

Release : 2018-02-18

Category :

ISBN : 9781980281528

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Book Description

Foreword by German Genealogy Author James M. Beidler. Have German genealogy documents but can't read them? You're not alone. Whether you are a beginner, intermediate or advanced genealogy enthusiast, these easy-to-use transcription and translation tips by professional German handwriting translator Katherine Schober will help you reach new levels in deciphering your ancestors' genealogy records. In this newly-revised, comprehensive collection of Katherine's most popular articles and blog posts, you will discover how to easily recognize a number of letters in the old German handwriting, become familiar with the abbreviations, occupations and outdated words that pepper German documents and learn how to use the very same resources as a professional genealogy translator when deciphering letters, diaries, church records, certificates and more. Complete with "real-life" handwriting samples, German word glossaries and additional lists of genealogy tools, this guide is a must-have for anyone working with the old German script. In this book, you will learn: How to easily recognize certain handwritten letters The "look-alike letters" in German handwriting and how to work with them Common ancestral occupations for both men and women in German genealogy Abbreviations and milestone words found in German documents Outdated German words no longer in dictionaries and their meanings today The typical spelling mistakes on German records and how to identify them How to read the standard German marriage certificate format The best online resources for transcribing the old German handwriting and more! Whether you've mastered the old German handwriting or are just starting out, this book will provide you with the knowledge necessary to delve deeper into the exciting world of German genealogy. REVIEWS OF KATHERINE'S ARTICLES: "Katherine's tips on how to translate old German script has been invaluable to my family research. Using her suggestions I have been able to decipher birth and death records from my great-great grandfather's family in Austria! From helpful websites to playing 'hangman', the suggestions she presents have expanded my family research capabilities not only in German, but with other languages as well!" - D. Thalner "Katherine's tips on deciphering German script has handed me the key to unlocking documents from my past. Through her tips on interchanging letters, I realized that the death certificate I thought was for my great uncle Karl was actually that of a more distant relative called Paul. The two names look almost identical in the German handwritten script! Thanks to Katherine, I stopped following the wrong branch of the family tree." - C. Thornthwaite "Not being able to read, translate or write in Old German, I found Katherine's tips helpful in finding which words were most often used in old German documents. The clues as how to tell similar letters apart helped me tremendously." - G. Scholl "The author's writing style makes it easy to understand and use her tricks and tips. Her articles are not about what she can do, but what anybody can do." - G. Haas "The articles have been an excellent resource in helping me apply the author's knowledge of German surname consonant variations in my German genealogy research." - L. Erdman "Katherine Schober's skill at translation of German script was very helpful for me as a professional genealogist working through German church information for my clients. Her writings on how to decipher German records have been a valuable resource as I review German birth and marriage records from the 19th century." - Rettammel Genealogy Service LLC



Citizens in a Strange Land

Author : Hermann Wellenreuther

Publisher : Penn State Press

Page : 370 pages

File Size : 19,75 MB

Release : 2013-08-05

Category : History

ISBN : 0271063599

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Book Description

In Citizens in a Strange Land, Hermann Wellenreuther examines the broadsides—printed single sheets—produced by the Pennsylvania German community. These broadsides covered topics ranging from local controversies and politics to devotional poems and hymns. Each one is a product of and reaction to a particular historical setting. To understand them fully, Wellenreuther systematically reconstructs Pennsylvania’s print culture, the material conditions of life, the problems German settlers faced, the demands their communities made on the individual settlers, the complications to be overcome, and the needs to be satisfied. He shows how these broadsides provided advice, projections, and comment on phases of life from cradle to grave.



Witchcraft & the Papacy

Author : Rainer Decker

Publisher :

Page : 290 pages

File Size : 19,26 MB

Release : 2008

Category : History

ISBN :

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Book Description

In 1996 Decker was one of the first of a small group of scholars allowed access. Originally published as Die Papste und die Hexen, Witchcraft and the Papacy is based on these newly available materials and traces the role of the papacy in witchcraft prosecutions from medieval times to the eighteenth century. Decker found that although the medieval church did lay the foundation for witch hunts of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, the postmedieval papacy, and the Roman and Spanish Inquisitions, played the same kind of skeptical, restraining role during the height of the witch-hunting frenzy in Germany and elsewhere in Europe as it had in the trial that was the initial focus of his research.



Barbarian Rites

Author : Hans-Peter Hasenfratz

Publisher : Simon and Schuster

Page : 171 pages

File Size : 48,78 MB

Release : 2011-06-23

Category : Social Science

ISBN : 1620554488

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Book Description

Discover the untamed paganism of the Vikings and the Germanic tribes prior to the complete Christianization of Europe • Explores the different forms of magic practiced by these tribes, including runic magic, necromancy (death magic), soul-travel, and shape-shifting • Examines their rites of passage and initiation rituals and their most important gods, such as Odin, Loki, and Thor • Looks at barbarian magic in historical accounts, church and assembly records, and mythology as well as an eyewitness report from a 10th-century Muslim diplomat • Reveals the use and abuse of this tradition’s myths and magic by the Nazis Before the conversion of Europe to Christianity in the Middle Ages, Germanic tribes roamed the continent, plundering villages and waging battles to seek the favor of Odin, their god of war, ecstasy, and magic. Centuries later, predatory Viking raiders from Scandinavia carried on similar traditions. These wild “barbarians” had a system of social classes and familial clans with complex spiritual customs, from rites of passage for birth, death, and adulthood to black magic practices and shamanic ecstatic states, such as the infamous “berserker’s rage.” Chronicling the original pagan tradition of free and wild Europe--and the use and abuse of its myths and magic by the Nazis--Hans-Peter Hasenfratz offers a concise history of the Germanic tribes of Europe and their spiritual, magical, and occult beliefs. Looking at historical accounts, church and assembly records, mythology, and folktales from Germany, Russia, Scandinavia, and Iceland as well as an eyewitness report of Viking customs and rituals from a 10th-century Muslim diplomat, Hasenfratz explores the different forms of magic--including charms, runic magic, necromancy, love magic, soul-travel, and shamanic shape-shifting--practiced by the Teutonic tribes and examines their interactions with and eventual adaptation to Christianity. Providing in-depth information on their social class and clan structure, rites of passage, and their most important gods and goddesses, such as Odin, Loki, Thor, and Freyja, Hasenfratz reveals how it is only through understanding our magical barbarian roots that we can see the remnants of their language, culture, and dynamic spirit that have carried through to modern times.



Eavesdropping on Hell

Author : Robert J. Hanyok

Publisher : Courier Corporation

Page : 226 pages

File Size : 48,9 MB

Release : 2005-01-01

Category : History

ISBN : 0486481271

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Book Description

This official government publication investigates the impact of the Holocaust on the Western powers' intelligence-gathering community. It explains the archival organization of wartime records accumulated by the U.S. Army's Signal Intelligence Service and Britain's Government Code and Cypher School. It also summarizes Holocaust-related information intercepted during the war years.



The Magic Lantern

Author : Timothy Garton Ash

Publisher : Atlantic Books Ltd

Page : 162 pages

File Size : 32,42 MB

Release : 2014-11-06

Category : Biography & Autobiography

ISBN : 1782396845

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Book Description

The Magic Lantern is one of those rare books that capture history in the making, written by an author who was witness to some of the most remarkable moments that marked the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe. Timothy Garton Ash was there in Warsaw, on 4 June, when the communist government was humiliated by Solidarity in the first semi-free elections since the Second World War. He was there in Budapest, twelve days later, when Imre Nagy - thirty-one years after his execution - was finally given his proper funeral. He was there in Berlin, as the Wall opened. And most remarkable of all, he was there in Prague, in the back rooms of the Magic Lantern theatre, with Václav Havel and the members of Civic Forum, as they made their 'Velvet Revolution'.



The Myth of Ritual Murder

Author : R. Po-chia Hsia

Publisher : Yale University Press

Page : 260 pages

File Size : 21,98 MB

Release : 1988-01-01

Category : History

ISBN : 9780300047462

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Book Description

From the mid-fifteenth century to the early seventeenth, German Jews were persecuted and tried for the alleged ritual murders of Christian children, whose blood purportedly played a crucial part in Jewish magical rites. In this engrossing book R. Po-Chia Hsia traces the rise and decline of ritual murder trials during that period. Using sources ranging from Christian and Kabbalistic treatises to judicial records and popular pamphlets, Hsia examines the religious sources of the idea of child sacrifice and blood symbolism and reconstructs the political context of ritual murder trials against the Jews. "This volume combines clarity of thinking, elegance of style, and exemplary scholarly attention to detail with intellectual sobriety and human compassion."--Jerome Friedman, Sixteenth Century Journal "Hsia has... succeeded in turning established knowledge to illuminatingly new purposes."--G.R. Elton, New York Review of Books "This meticulously researched and unusually perceptive book is social and intellectual history at its best."--Library Journal "A fresh perspective on an old problem by a major new talent."--Steven Ozment, Harvard University R. Po-chia Hsia, professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is also the author of Society and Religion in Münster, 1535-1618



Witch Craze

Author : Lyndal Roper

Publisher : Yale University Press

Page : 376 pages

File Size : 27,82 MB

Release : 2006-01-01

Category : History

ISBN : 9780300119831

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Book Description

A powerful account of witches, crones, and the societies that make them From the gruesome ogress in Hansel and Gretel to the hags at the sabbath in Faust, the witch has been a powerful figure of the Western imagination. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries thousands of women confessed to being witches--of making pacts with the Devil, causing babies to sicken, and killing animals and crops--and were put to death. This book is a gripping account of the pursuit, interrogation, torture, and burning of witches during this period and beyond. Drawing on hundreds of original trial transcripts and other rare sources in four areas of Southern Germany, where most of the witches were executed, Lyndal Roper paints a vivid picture of their lives, families, and tribulations. She also explores the psychology of witch-hunting, explaining why it was mostly older women that were the victims of witch crazes, why they confessed to crimes, and how the depiction of witches in art and literature has influenced the characterization of elderly women in our own culture.



Exorcism and Enlightenment

Author : H. C. Erik Midelfort

Publisher : Yale University Press

Page : 233 pages

File Size : 48,35 MB

Release : 2005-01-01

Category : History

ISBN : 0300130139

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Book Description

In the late eighteenth century, Catholic priest Johann Joseph Gassner (1727-1779) discovered that he had extraordinary powers of exorcism. Deciding that demons were responsible for most human ailments, he healed thousands, rich and poor, Protestant and Catholic. In this book H.C. Erik Midelfort delves deeply into records of the time to explore Gassner's remarkable exorcising campaign, chronicle the official efforts to curb him, and reconstruct the sufferings of the afflicted. Gassner's activities triggered a Catholic religious revival as well as a noisy skeptical reaction. In response to those who doubted that he was really casting out demons, Gassner marshaled hundreds of eyewitness reports that seemed to prove his exorcisms really worked. Midelfort describes the enormous public controversy that resulted, and he demonstrates that the Gassner episode yields important insights into the German Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment, the limitations of eighteenth-century debate, and the ongoing role of magic and belief in an age of scientific enlightenment.