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German records translations
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mcdonald0517
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Post Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2016 4:58 pm      Post subject: pls translate any part of this comment from birth record
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Hello all,

Can anyone make out any part of this comment that is part of a record for an illegitimate birth? I know this German script is hard to read, but would appreciate as many words as possible. I already know this part: "Michal Radzyminski from Frankenau" I am trying to make out the rest of it. I did find out that there were 2 Maria Radzyminskis (cousins) who were born only 3 years apart, so I think this comment is to identify which Maria is the mother of this child.

any help is appreciated!

Thanks you,
Cynthia



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Sophia
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Post Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2016 8:13 am      Post subject:
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Hi Cynthia,
When you got some help on this notation back in September of last year, http://forum.polishorigins.com/viewtopic.php?t=3264 Elzbieta pointed out that the two first words on the first line are "Die Mutter" = "The mother" and MaryWS explained that the third line says "Tochter der verstorbenen" = "daughter of the deceased" (referring to Michal Radzyminski, whose name shows up at the end of line 4 and the beginning of line 5). The end of line 5, plus line 6, say "aus Frankenau," as you say you already know.
So: of the two Maria Radzyminskis, do you know which one had a father named Michal who was already dead by the time she gave birth?
As for the words that have yet to be deciphered in this note, there are not many. A logical text might go something like this: "The mother of this illegitimate child is the daughter of the deceased something something Michal Radzyminski of Frankenau" where the something something is most probably his occupation. If you have any idea of the occupation of the father of either of your Marias, let me know, we'll see if we can't translate them into German and from there work out what the handwritten form ought to look like. This is the only way I can "read" the old German handwriting, is by guessing the word that should be there, going to a table that shows how each of those letters was written in the old script, writing it out myself, and seeing how good my guess was.
It would be so lovely if someone who can actually read it could help! Still, I admire your stick-to-it-iveness and am offering what I can.
Best,
Sophia
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mcdonald0517
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Post Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2016 10:07 am      Post subject:
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Hi Sophia,

Thanks for the reminder on the "deceased" part of this comment. I had forgotten that word. I reposted the comment because I finally found a more readable copy rather than the black background negative film I had posted earlier.

As to Michal's occupation, I don't know. However, I do know that sons of Andreas Krueger and Maria Radzyminski (possibly Michals grandsons) were settlers in Poland with occupations of wheelright and cartright per documents I have for them.

Right now, I am trying to figure out which Maria is my 2 great grandmother. Maria, daughter of Michal (cannot find her birth record) or Maria, daughter of Johann (I have her birth record). Both are cousins born about 3 years apart. The marriage record I have for my 2 great grandparents, Andreas Kreuger (Krygier) and Maria Radzyminski, does not list the parents, so it is a puzzle.

Perhaps I will post some of the other records I have so you can see the pieces of the puzzle. You may have some insights to offer.

Thank you so much Sophia! It all helps.
Best,
Cynthia
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Sophia
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Post Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2016 11:33 am      Post subject:
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Hi Cynthia,
Ah! I get it now. You cannot continue back in your tree because you do not know which Maria to follow. Go ahead and post other records (include the marriage one for Andreas and Maria, too, please). I may or may not see something in them.
Best,
Sophia
P.S. Yes, I see the image that you posted above is vastly easier to read than the white-on-black version from before. Nice!
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dnowicki
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Post Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2016 2:21 pm      Post subject: German Record Aids
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Cynthia & Sophia,

Since the German Records Translations page is basically a DIY with possible help from other readers project until someone with the ability to accurately read old German handwriting adopts the page I would like to share some tools I've found which may aid in the script reading process. The most recent one is a Legacy Quick Guide available from Legacy 8---"Deciphering Germanic Script: Common Words in Church Books" by Gail Shaffer Blankenau. I recently purchased it for $2.95 with the thought that it may prove useful for a genealogical research project my nephew asked me to do for my three year old grandniece since she has some German ancestors (mostly Germans from Russia aka Volga Germans). Like most guides which are titled "quick" it is not exhaustive but I do believe it is worth the price of admission. It contains 55 genealogical words with two examples of the handwritten form for each word found in church birth, marriage, and death records which comes out to just over 5 cents per word. Eight words from the short posted notation are found in the quick guide. I would gladly have posted the list were it ethical to do so. Since the author has a copyright for the guide, anyone interested in the booklet should purchase and download a personal copy.

The words in the record found in the guide which I recognize are: Line 1: Die Mutter (The mother); Line 2: Kinder (child) ist (is); Line 3: Tochter der verstorben (daughter of the deceased); Line 5: aus (from). The guide still doesn't help with the descriptive words but what can one expect for less than three bucks? A guide along the same lines for occupations and family relationships would be great but that animal does not seem to exist.

Since Germany did not become a united country until 1871 and since prior to 1874 copies of church registers served as civil registrations whatever can help in the reading of church records in handwritten German is a valuable research aid. Post 1874 freestanding civil registry offices became the norm. Examples of two page marriage records produced by the post 1874 registry offices are found here on pages 1 & 3. A few years ago Elzbieta posted links to forms which explain the printed sections of those records. Those forms act like an interlinear translation of Classical Latin literary works which were sometimes used by high school students in the days of yore and were commonly known as "ponies". The birth and the marriage "ponies" provide the interlinear translation in Polish which would make them less useful to anyone who is not able to read Polish but the death "pony" does provide the translation in English. Of course these "ponies" do not help with the handwritten German, but perhaps in tandem with the quick guide one could figure out the important stuff since most of it involves dates, places of birth and of residence and proper names. Attached are the "ponies" in PDF form. The other attachment is a sample of a word found in the "quick guide". (I believe a sample is ethical and does not violate the spirit of the copyright.)

Cynthia,
Your post in Latin Translations does indeed contain Latin entries. The translation will follow soon.

Wishing you both success,

Dave



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BobK
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Post Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2016 3:32 pm      Post subject: Deciphering old German handwriting.
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I found a useful "10 tips for Deciphering Old German handwriting" and
I offer it here as a FYI:

http://sktranslations.com/ten-tips-deciphering-old-german-handwriting
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Sophia
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Post Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2016 8:18 am      Post subject:
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Hi Dave,
Thanks for all the useful tools. The quick guide book you mentioned is something I was not aware of; I see how useful it could be. One of the things that can make it a bit of a challenge, though, is the way that grammar "gets in the way" of using such a guide. For example, if you take the phrase "the child" it is, in German, "das Kind" but if you have a phrase like "Mother of the child" it becomes "Mutter des Kindes." In fact, you see exactly that in the image Cynthia posted for Carl Kryger's birth record, top of the fourth column, http://forum.polishorigins.com/files/carl_kryger_birth_1846_pg_1_320.jpg which says "Taufname des Kindes" for the baptismal name of the child. Also, thank you for attaching the "ponies" (I did not know they were called that! great name!) for various records. The difficulty comes in when one is trying to decipher something written outside of what the ponies cover, as Cynthia is here for the notes in Maria's son's birth record.

Hi Bob,
Thank you for the link to the blog post on old German handwriting. It is a very nice explanation, and offers quite some encouragement to readers.

Hi Cynthia,
Just to try it, I transliterated Stellmacher (German for wheelwright as well as cartwright, the occupations you gave for the sons of Andreas and Maria) and that is not the word in front of Michael's name in the record you posted here. Still, make note of the fact that they were skilled tradesmen, as they are more probably descended from a skilled tradesman than from a farmer, for example.

Best,
Sophia
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Sophia
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Post Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2016 8:58 am      Post subject:
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P.S. for Dave - - not implying that you would have any difficulty with declensions, given how much translation work you do, just saying that someone using such a guide and trying to find exactly what they see written there versus what is in their genealogy document could have a tough go of it.
Best,
Sophia
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dnowicki
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Post Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2016 10:58 am      Post subject:
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Sophia wrote:
Hi Dave,
Thanks for all the useful tools. The quick guide book you mentioned is something I was not aware of; I see how useful it could be. One of the things that can make it a bit of a challenge, though, is the way that grammar "gets in the way" of using such a guide. For example, if you take the phrase "the child" it is, in German, "das Kind" but if you have a phrase like "Mother of the child" it becomes "Mutter des Kindes." In fact, you see exactly that in the image Cynthia posted for Carl Kryger's birth record, top of the fourth column, http://forum.polishorigins.com/files/carl_kryger_birth_1846_pg_1_320.jpg which says "Taufname des Kindes" for the baptismal name of the child. Also, thank you for attaching the "ponies" (I did not know they were called that! great name!) for various records. The difficulty comes in when one is trying to decipher something written outside of what the ponies cover, as Cynthia is here for the notes in Maria's son's birth record.


Hi Sophia,

The quick guide was just made available this year. The only reason I became aware of it is that a year or so ago I downloaded the free version of the Legacy 8 family tree software to use as a location to import and to backup the tree I have had on Family Tree Maker for years. When they ran a sale I upgraded to the deluxe version for a big ten bucks. There are a few things I like about Legacy like the ability to produce an ancestor book in paragraph form which makes it easy to share info with relatives in a form that someone who is not into genealogy will actually read. But anyway, Legacy sends a weekly email blurb and recently the quick guide for German script was featured as a newly available publication. (The author of the guide was the presenter of a webinar on German genealogy which was available gratis in Legacy's webinar library. I viewed it (actually listened to it while sowing tomato seeds in the basement) and found some things to be of interest and informational. One thing I found interesting is that German church records used status categories for farmers which were very similar to those used in Poland like freeholder for cmetho/kmiec/self-sustaining farmer in Polish records, and cottager for a chalupnik/tugurinus, and gardener for a ogrodnik/hortulanus, etc.

I agree that it can be difficult for someone whose only language is English to get a handle on changing case endings but my advice for using any kind of guide would be to concentrate on the stem of the word and to ignore the case ending in order to get the base meaning of the word. In that way a guide can still be useful without worrying about case endings and singulars and plurals. Yes, it could pose more of a problem in paragraphs and is far from perfect but it still can help.

Yesterday evening Cynthia posted Johann's B. & B. in Latin Record Translations. The Latin to be translated is minimal, but it does provide an opportunity to deconstruct the record in order to analyze the structure for better understanding of similar future records. If you should be interested, the post will magically appear at some point today.

The prime time for "ponies" of Latin and Greek literary works was the late 19th Century. They were still used by some Latin students in the 1960s. Properly used they can be a learning tool but for students who used the refrain "Latin killed the Romans, and now it is killing me" they were a way of producing a translation without understanding how and why the English was derived from the Latin. Sometimes a prof would remark to such a student that his or her translation sounded like a one pony trot. Other polite names for ponies were trots, crutches, and cribs----an then there were the names not to be mentioned in polite company.

Until next time,

Dave
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mcdonald0517
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Post Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2016 4:29 pm      Post subject:
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To BobK,

Thanks for the website for the 10 tips on deciphering old German. It was very helpful!

Cynthia
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nercell
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Post Posted: Thu May 12, 2016 6:27 pm      Post subject: Geography and Statistics in German
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Sophia et al,

I have used the tools previously posted by various members and have been successful in deciphering most of my marriage and birth records. Unfortunately, I haven't found a way to decipher the column headings from an old Prussian geography and statistics book. There are 15 headings. I tried Google translate -uber haupt= 'at all' ? Everything else I tried did not even translate. Obviously, I am not interpreting or transcribing the letters properly.

I would be happy to know what any one of them meant as I have several towns mentioned in this book. I am guessing it notes population of the village-perhaps it breaks it down by sex, religion etc ? Perhaps there are even more interesting tidbits that will better depict the lifestyle of the villagers themselves....we can only hope : Wink

Thanks for ANY help at all,

Nancy



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dnowicki
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Post Posted: Thu May 12, 2016 7:16 pm      Post subject:
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Nancy,

Sophia is able to read the old German typeface (Fraktur) and has some command of the language but perhaps the alphabet page from Jonathan Shea's book "Going Home..." can serve as a do it yourself aid to converting the old typeface to the contemporary Roman alphabet so words can be entered into Google Translate. It never hurts to have one more DIY tool.

Dave



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nercell
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Post Posted: Thu May 12, 2016 7:19 pm      Post subject:
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Oh this is wonderful !
Thanks Dave
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Sophia
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Post Posted: Fri May 13, 2016 7:19 am      Post subject:
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Hi Nancy,

With the great key that Dave provided, you are probably off and running on this. Let me help you, at least, with the meaning of “überhaupt.”

I do want to say that the document you put up is rather fuzzy. Is there a place that I can view it online, or if you have it as a paper document, can you post a sharper image? Also, I am wondering whether this is only the left-hand side of a two-page form. Do you have and/or need the other page of it?

What you have here is a form for "Provinz Ostpreussen, Regierungsbezirk Gumbinnen" which is "Province of East Prussia, Administrative District of Gumbinnen." Let’s look, for the moment, at columns 12, 13 and 14.

12: überhaupt = at all
13: deutsch = German
14: polnisch = Polish

So, how to make sense of it? All of these fall beneath column superheadings. At the top is "Religions" and then "Evangelische" which are of no trouble to you. Columns 13 and 14 are beneath “davon sprechen (Muttersprache)” which means "of which speak (native language)." Now you can add it up. Column 13 are people of the evangelical faith whose native tongue is German, Column 14 are people of evangelical faith whose native tongue is Polish, and the mysterious Column 12 is people who are evangelical "at all." I think that if I were devising the form myself today, I would have used the word “total” there, but I am not saying überhaupt actually translates to total, I am just saying that is the intent here. Who, the form is asking, is evangelical at all? Makes me wonder if there is not a second page, asking the same language questions for catholics.

Hope this helps!
Sophia
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nercell
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Post Posted: Wed May 18, 2016 10:05 am      Post subject: Follow up Columns
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Sophia wrote:

I do want to say that the document you put up is rather fuzzy. Is there a place that I can view it online, or if you have it as a paper document, can you post a sharper image? Also, I am wondering whether this is only the left-hand side of a two-page form. Do you have and/or need the other page of it?

What you have here is a form for "Provinz Ostpreussen, Regierungsbezirk Gumbinnen" which is "Province of East Prussia, Administrative District of Gumbinnen." Let’s look, for the moment, at columns 12, 13 and 14.
...
Column 13 are people of the evangelical faith whose native tongue is German, Column 14 are people of evangelical faith whose native Makes me wonder if there is not a second page, asking the same language questions for catholics.

Hope this helps!
Sophia


You were right on all counts Sophia. I found the actual Ebook online. It was indeed the left hand side of a 2 page form! Thanks much as I would have missed out on all of the info from the right side of the page.

Gemeindelexikon für das Königreich Preussen

https://play.google.com/books/reader?printsec=frontcover&output=reader&id=EcEzAQAAMAAJ&pg=GBS.PA172

https://play.google.com/books/reader?printsec=frontcover&output=reader&id=EcEzAQAAMAAJ&pg=GBS.PA173


Anything else you can tell me would be wonderful as I am still having google translation dificulties even with the wonderful key Dave provided.

Much appreciated,

Nancy
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