^{The News}
Dedicated to Austrian-Hungarian Burgenland Family History

This newsletter concerns:

1) THE PRESIDENT'S CORNER

2) DON’T IGNORE THOSE DNA DISTANT MATCHES (by Richard Potetz)

3) TIPS FOR FAMILY RESEARCHERS IN AUSTRIA

4) ACCESSING ORIGINAL RECORDS REFERENCED IN MARGINAL ENTRIES

5) HISTORICAL BB NEWSLETTER ARTICLES:
    - NIKITSCHER NAME, VILLAGE OF NIKITSCH AND BURGENLAND ORIGIN

6) ETHNIC EVENTS

7) BURGENLAND EMIGRANT OBITUARIES (courtesy of Bob Strauch)

Lehigh Valley / East Coast Burgenland Bunch (report by Vanessa Sandhu):

The first meeting of the Lehigh Valley / East Coast Burgenland Bunch was held November 23rd at the Coplay Sängerbund. We had 24 members in attendance. While we are very fortunate to have phenomenal organizations like the Coplay Sängerbund in the Lehigh Valley, we have also lost our share of Burgenland ethnic organizations over the past few years. The Sängerbund is dedicated to keeping Burgenland culture alive through the many wonderful events it hosts throughout the year. Its heritage committee, headed by Frank Luizer, and its president, Kevin Fritz, were both instrumental in helping us realize our dream of starting a BB group here. We are extremely grateful for all of their help!

Bob Strauch and I led the meeting, starting with the reading of a welcome address sent in by BB President Tom Steichen and then moving on to introductions. Each member shared their surnames and villages, which led to some nice discussions. We also discussed topics that we’d like to explore at the spring meeting.

I made a poster presentation detailing and memorializing the lives of my ill-fated ancestors, the Pammer brothers from Inzenhof. Two of the three Pammer brothers were killed in accidents at the local cement mills.

We had some nice decorations and an antique Burgenland map and several Burgenland-themed books on display. Our members shared lots of photos and documents with the group. It was wonderful to hear Hianzisch being spoken again! Plus we had some great door prizes: Burgenland wine and kiffles! It could have gone on for several more hours, as there was a lot of great information being exchanged and many new friendships made. All in all, it was a wonderful afternoon.



We are looking forward to planning our spring meeting. We hope to see you there!



The Facebook Bunch (from Vanessa Sandhu):

Greetings Burgenland Bunch!

We had a busy month on the Facebook page! We welcomed 38 new members this month, bringing our membership total to 1,139! If you haven’t joined us yet, please consider doing so. We’d love to have you! We have lots of nice discussions and many helpful, supportive members. Here is our link: facebook.com//TheBurgenlandBunchOFFICIAL/

Our most exciting news pertains to the formation of our new Lehigh Valley / East Coast BB group, which was developed using the BB Facebook page as an organizing tool. On November 23rd, we gathered for the first time; the report on our first meeting is elsewhere in this newsletter [just above]. Please read it there and feel free to contact me at HooftyRN@msn.com if you would like to attend the next Lehigh Valley / East Coast meeting! I will add you to the email list!

Member Fred Knarr shared a great video of Martha Tukovits speaking in the Hianzen dialect. It spurred many great discussions amongst our members. You can view it here: m.youtube.com/watch?v=FnWdwJ_-M94 

Member Annette Diane Kapple shared the latest installment of her Burgenland genealogy blog, this one entitled “Filling out the Picture of Our Kurta Burgenland Immigrants.”
annettekapple.blogspot.com//filling-out-picture-of-our-kurta

I wish all of you a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Vanessa



Update for book "The Burgenländer Emigration to America": Here is this month's update on purchases of the English issue of the 3rd edition of Dr. Walter Dujmovits' book "Die Amerika-Wanderung Der Burgenländer."

Current total sales are 1456 copies, as interested people purchased 6 more books during this past month.

As always, the book remains available for online purchase at a list price of $7.41 (which is the production charge for the book, as we purposely choose not to make a profit so we can avoid dealing with the income tax consequences and so you can obtain the book at as low a cost as possible!), plus tax & shipping. See the BB homepage for a link to the information / ordering page and for information about current discounts (there is at least one discount on price or shipping available most of the time... if not, wait a few days and there will be one!).



Burgenland Recipes: Member Cris Roemer, whose family emigrated from the Weichselbaum area in the Jennersdorf district, provided this recipe. This one originates with a Czech friend, but reminds me of dumplings I had years ago when visiting family in Schandorf.

Apple Dumplings

Ingredients-dough:
1 cup shortening or lard
1 cup cottage or ricotta cheese
1/2 tsp. salt
2 cups flour

Ingredients-filling:
1 jar of chunky applesauce
cinnamon sugar

Preparation:
- Mix the dough ingredients well with a pastry blender, then chill for 1/2 hour.
- Roll out rather thinly on a floured board and use a glass or cookie cutter to cut out circles. Place 1/2 of the circles onto a cookie sheet and place a teaspoon of applesauce on each; sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.
- Each filled circle will need a plain circle for a lid. Seal with tines of a fork. [Alternatively, if your circles are large enough, you can fold and seal, as in the picture above.]

Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. When cool, frost with white icing (powdered sugar and water mixture).



Note: We have updated the recipes sortable list with links directly to the recipes or food-related articles published in our past newsletters. You can access the list by clicking our recipe box (to the right). Thanks to the contributions of our members over the years, we have quite a collection of Burgenland recipes, some with several variations.

However, we have or will soon use up the few remaining unpublished recipes we have... and when those are gone, this recipe section will become dormant. Nonetheless, we are always on the lookout for fresh ideas, so, if you have a favorite family recipe, please consider sharing it with us. We will be happy to publish it. Our older relatives, sadly, aren't with us forever, so don't allow your favorite ethnic dish to be lost to future generations.

You can send your recipe to BB Recipes Editor, Alan Varga. Thanks!



Cartoon of the Month:

[Ed: I too have had occasional success in identifying a predicted 5th to 8th cousin, even twice two that were actual "distant" cousins (in that 5th to 8th range), however, like Richard, most of these small-matching-DNA predicted cousins proved to be "removed" rather than "distant."]

I’ve had autosomal DNA testing done by both 23andMe and AncestryDNA, copying test results to FamilyTreeDNA and GEDMatch. Those four sites each provide a very long list of people with whom I share some matching DNA—1337 matches on 23andMe, and more than eleven thousand on AncestryDNA. Only with people near the top of those lists could we identify a shared ancestor.

I’ve written Burgenland Bunch Newsletter articles twice before about my experience with autosomal DNA testing, in 2014 and 2017. Both articles are laughably obsolete now because they reported such limited success. In the 2014 article, I complained about not finding anyone with whom we could identify a shared ancestor. The 2017 article celebrated identifying shared ancestors with all of four people. The number of people tested has now grown enough to make identifying shared ancestors with lots of people the new normal. By 2019, I had identified shared ancestors with dozens of cousins, every one of them near the top of a DNA matches list. But another approach was needed to find connections with some of those more distant matches.

Surname searching is the best strategy to deal with DNA distant matches. I’ve read articles that tell me to ignore matches below 10 cM. I’ve read many articles that tell me to ignore 7 cM matches—and I do—except I also do a search for surnames in my list of matches. Searching my AncestryDNA list of matches for my mom’s maiden name, “Sucher,” found Matt Bier, who matches me in just a single 7 cM segment. That find changed my understanding of small, single segment DNA matches.

Matt Bier had the Sucher surname in his Ancestry tree, coming from his great-grandmother, Josephine Sucher (1892-1968). Looking at Matt’s tree, I was surprised to see his great-grandmother had immigrated to America from Oberdrosen, Burgenland, the birthplace of my grandfather, Johann Sucher (1862-1938). Matt had not found records outside the US, but a little research on my part placed his great-grandmother’s birth in Oberdrosen house 43. My grandfather was born next door in Oberdrosen house 42. The Sankt Martin an der Raab parish records connected Matt’s immigrant great-grandmother to my great-great-grandparents, Johann Sucher (1775-1837) and his wife Julianna Zieger (1778-1848). Their son, Mathias (1819-1895), is the grandfather of Matt’s great-grandmother. Their son, Franz (1817-1896), is my grandfather’s father, making Matt and me third cousins twice removed. Identifying the ancestors I share with Matt Bier verified a branch of my tree that had not been verified before with DNA, very gratifying for my genealogy hobby.

The meaning of a single small DNA segment match had been hidden from me by those huge lists of matches with strangers, only a tiny fraction of which seemed connected to me. What should we know about 7 cM matches? Below in italics is what the Ancestry site told me about my match with Matt Bier, with our actual relationship in red:

Relationship to Matthew Bier

When two people have a DNA match, it means they inherited DNA from one or more recent common ancestors. The length of DNA they have in common is estimated in centimorgans (cM). The higher the number, the closer the relationship.

You and Matthew Bier share 7 cM. This table shows the percentage of the time people sharing 7 cM have the following relationships:

Percent	Relationships	Percent	Relationships
33%	5th cousin 4th cousin 2x removed Half 4th cousin 1x removed Half 3rd cousin 3x removed	12%	3rd cousin 1x removed Half 3rd cousin Half 2nd cousin 2x removed 2nd cousin 3x removed
27%	4th cousin 1x removed Half 4th cousin Half 3rd cousin 2x removed 3rd cousin 3x removed	5%	3rd cousin 2nd cousin 2x removed Half 2nd cousin 1x removed Half 1st cousin 3x removed
20%	4th cousin 3rd cousin 2x removed Half 3rd cousin 1x removed Half 2nd cousin 3x removed	<1%	2nd cousin 1x removed Half 2nd cousin 1st cousin 3x removed Half 1st cousin 2x removed

My match with Matt Bier was a learning experience for me. For a third cousin twice removed, a single 7 cM matching segment is not unusual. In the table above, the “3rd cousin 2x removed” relationship is included with relationships “4th cousin,” “Half 3rd cousin 1x removed,” and “Half 2nd cousin 3x removed,” together accounting for 20% of all 7 cM matches. Third cousins twice removed, in theory, share 13 cM of identical DNA on average. But that is just the average amount of sharing. Shared amounts vary because of the random nature of DNA inheritance. For third cousins twice removed, AncestryDNA shows the expected range of matching to be from zero cM to 135 cM. That zero cM matching result happens more often than you might expect: 30% of the time third cousins twice removed share no detectable DNA relationship.

GEDmatch does not even include Matt Bier in my list of matches, which bottoms out at 9.2 cM of matching DNA. That match list, called a “One-to-Many” list by GEDmatch, shows just your top 3000 matches. A GEDmatch “One-to-One” compare does show Matt and I share an identical DNA segment: 7.5 cM on chromosome 19.

[Ed: I'll comment here on a number of things from the above paragraphs...

For those of you who have done serious "paper" genealogy research (research based on vital event records and shared family trees), you likely recognize that it is comparatively easy to document recent, but no longer living, ancestors via church and government records. Further, with some effort and luck, you can take those ancestral lines back a number of additional generations. However, when it comes to families of living cousins, those same paper resources are protected by privacy laws and are not accessible. Therefore you must depend on direct contact with cousins and their willingness to share family tree information about their descendants or relatives. My experience is that, the more "distant" the cousin, the less likelihood they will share, and "distance" also includes distance by being "removed." We who ask for information quickly become that creepy-weird old guy or lady, whose relationship to the person being questioned is not well understood by that person, and who seems to know too much already yet is asking for even more information! Even if you get a response, the quality and detail are generally poor. Thus our paper trees get artificially "trimmed" along the bottom because data cannot be obtained.

In contrast, the great majority of recent customers of DNA-testing companies are comparatively young (as most of us interested-in-genealogy old fogies tested years ago). These new customers tend to fall in the generations where our tree data is poor or nonexistent. However, if they have a recognizable surname (one in your family tree), you have a good chance of identifying them, especially if they provide a link to their family tree, because the tree will give you the chance to recognize some of their ancestors. This approach has proved especially effective for me on AncestryDNA, as it recently provided all customers the ability to access a 5-generation "teaser" tree for each predicted cousin (assuming the cousin has a tree and allowed such linking; my experience is that the majority with trees do allow linking). This "teaser" tree is available even when you, yourself, do not have a full Ancestry account or a tree on Ancestry. I, myself, do not have a full Ancestry account nor a tree on Ancestry, whereas Richard has both. As he notes, if you do have an account, you can have Ancestry do the search for matching surnames and you can examine their full tree. In my case, without an full account, I can only see the teaser trees... but even that has proved quite successful.

In an article some months ago (Newsletter297#04), I noted that AncestryDNA has a conservative tendency; that is, they under-predict the closeness of a relationship, especially when it comes to "removed" relatives. The numbers in Richard's table above show that many fairly-close-but-removed true relationships can yield just 7 cM of shared data, yet AncestryDNA will predict them all as being in that 5th to 8th cousinship level. If, in fact, the true relationship is a 1st-cousin thrice-removed or a 2nd-cousin twice-removed or even a 3rd-cousin once-removed, you likely have enough family data to recognize their ancestors. Richard argues below that you should look at a predicted cousin when there is a recognized surname in their tree, even if the shared DNA amount is small; I agree... but back to Richard's words...]

What should you do with distant DNA matches?

I suggest ignoring them unless the surname of one of your direct ancestors is in your match’s surname list. I’ve got thousands of 7 cM matches on AncestryDNA—too many to deal with except by surname searching. Try searching for the surnames of all 16 of your great-great-grandparents. That search is easy. The surname search feature is in your DNA Matches list (which is called DNA Relatives by 23andMe and Family Finder Matches by FamilyTreeDNA). The surname search feature is a bit different between the DNA testing services I’ve used. In AncestryDNA, the search feature checks for matching surnames inside the entire ancestry tree of your matches. In 23andMe and FamilyTreeDNA, only the list of surnames provided by your matches is searched. Even if you have your tree on the FamilyTreeDNA site, the surnames in that tree are not searched, just the surnames you provide in the Genealogy section of your Account Settings. If you have been tested through 23andMe or FamilyTreeDNA, please include in your list of surnames as many direct ancestors’ surnames as you know. All 16 surnames of your great-great-grandparents would be best, but if you don’t know all of them, just list those you know. Just half of my Family Finder matches list any surnames, making this excellent feature less helpful than it could be.

The top of my list of FamilyTreeDNA Family Finder matches is shown below. The far right column lists a few of the “Ancestral Surnames” provided by my matches, along with the surname’s location. For space reasons, not all of your matches’ Ancestral Surnames are shown in that Family Finder list. A surname that matches one of your listed Ancestral Surnames is shown in bold type—a helpful feature—but a surname search is still needed to find any matching surnames not shown. Flurina Zeier, the third person on my list, and I found we were third cousins once removed, connected though the Zotter branches of our trees. Note that the Zotter surname we share is in bold type, showing that we both list “Zotter” as an Ancestral Surname. Burgenland Bunch member Debbie Ann Hooper is the fourth match on my list. We both have ancestors who lived in Oberdrosen but we have yet to identify a shared ancestor.



Having written this article touting the value of distant matches, I have to confess my only complete success with them and the surname search technique is the one I wrote about. Surname searching finds many near-miss situations, such as the one I have with Burgenland Bunch member Arran Townson, with whom I match a single 11 cM segment. The surname search technique showed we share the Forjan surname in our trees, but we can’t identify our shared ancestor. Our Forjan ancestors lived in adjacent villages. His lived in Kristyán (Grieselstein), mine in Gyanafalva (Jennersdorf)—in the same parish but different villages. All we can say from our research is that we are more-distantly related than fourth cousins. We can’t complain about being misled; AncestryDNA estimates Arran and me to be 5th to 8th cousins. Arran and I will probably identify our shared ancestor when the pre-1828 Burgenland Catholic Church records go online.

[Ed: My results with this type of predicted-cousin estimation is a bit more successful than Richard experienced, mostly, I assume, because I have developed a huge "paper" tree over my 20+ years of family research. To give you some idea, I'll speak a little about my results obtained on AncestryDNA using only the teaser trees as a help. I have 13,386 matches, with all but 460 being in the predicted "Distant, 5th-8th" category. Since I originally failed to note that the tree-search tool was available to those without a full Ancestry account, I manually searched the teaser trees for matches. Given that, I put little effort into the "Distant" category, digging further only when I happened to note that a match's surname was one I immediately recognized, thus I had not systematically looked at that full category. One casual look in that category caused me to find a cousin... one that is actually a 3C1R (third cousin once removed), so is consistent with AncestryDNA's conservative predictions (predictions are more distant than reality).

I had, however, manually but systematically looked at the 460 matches in remaining categories. Of the 402 matches in the "4th-6th" predicted cousin category, I have identified 28, almost exclusively through identifying an ancestor in their teaser tree that is also in my tree. Of those, 18 are of the "removed" type, making them a little harder to identify... but I did anyway. Of the final 58 (in the 3rd cousin or closer categories), I've identified 38, with the remaining unidentified being 2 in the "2nd-3rd" category and 18 in the "3rd-4th" category; they remain unidentified because they provide no teaser tree and/or use an alias as their personal name. Overall, of the 67 matches that I have identified among these 460, 41 are of the "removed" type... but name matching in their trees still let me identify them.

A later email discussion with Richard caused me to question whether the automated tree search was truly unavailable to me. Checking again, I realized it was available. In a one-hour test session, I added 9 verified cousins found in the "Distant" category by auto-searching (separately) for each of three surnames found in my immediate family tree. The cousins found ranged from a 2C1R (who shared only 9 cM) to a 7C2R (10 cM shared). The lowest shared DNA with a predicted cousin for whom I could verify the relationship in this exercise was 6 cM, and she proved to be 3C1R. If you recall the AncestryDNA table that Richard presented above, it says that 12% of relationships sharing 7 cM are in a category that includes 3C1Rs... mine happened to share just 6 cM (the amount needed to actual predict someone as a 3C1R is 40-75 cM, so you can see why she ended up in the "Distant" category (~20cM or less). I will note that I picked three fairly rare surnames for this exercise; had I picked a common surname, the effort to find verified matches would have been much greater.]

If your reason for taking an autosomal DNA test is to verify your paper tree, distant matches should not be ignored. Identifying a shared ancestor with a distant DNA match will likely verify a big part of your tree.

TIPPS FÜR FAMILIEN-FORSCHER IN ÖSTERREICH
Publication Series of the Association of Austrian Diocesan Archives
Edited by Kerstin Hederer and Robert Kluger
Online Edition, 3rd revised. Edition 2012; 93 pages.
© 2012 Diocesan Archives of Austria
http://dioezesefiles.x4content.com/page-downloads/tipps_fuer_familienforscher_2012.pdf

As you can see, I have taken the English translation of the booklet title as my article title. Below, I will provide translations or summaries of selected sections, plus I will provide a translation of the Table of Contents, so you can see what the remainder of the booklet covers.

The booklet begins with a "preliminary note" wherein the editors give a short background on why the booklet was developed. The note acknowledges "...the large number of family researchers who visit the church archives of Austria every year to search for their ancestors in the baptismal, marriage and death books kept there." It goes on to (slightly) decry "...the conceptless collection of names and dates," implying that a much more worthwhile goal is to "...expand to more extensive insights into the social, economic, home and population history of entire places or regions." The further implied suggestion is that this booklet will help you do this, what I've labeled, "more worthwhile" goal. Given the nature and intent of the Burgenland Bunch (genealogy and history), I would never say trying to develop "more extensive insights" was wrong, but I'd also not decry the "collection of names and dates," as I believe doing so is essential to define the region(s) and era(s) about which you may wish to develop those "more extensive insights." The note concludes by correctly acknowledging the role of the church and its pastors in making these records available.

We then find the Table of Contents:

I.   Introduction to Genealogy		5
II.  The Matrices System in Austria		10
III. The Function of Archives		16
IV. How Do I Go About Family Research?		19
V.  Tips for Family Research in the Austrian Dioceses
	Diocese of Eisenstadt	27
	Diocese of Feldkirch	31
	Diocese of Graz-Seckau	35
	Diocese of Gurk	41
	Diocese of Innsbruck	47
	Diocese of Linz	52
	Archdiocese of Salzburg	57
	Diocese of St. Pölte	64
	Archdiocese of Vienna	69
VI. Working Aids and Reference Works
	1. Handbooks on Archive Organization	76
	2. Handbooks about Genealogy	76
	3. Tools and Dictionaries	77
	4. Genealogy Online	80
Attachments:
	Examples of Church Book Entries	82
	The Most Important Latin Terms and Abbreviations	84
	Example Letters for Writing Interpretation	87
	Form for Creating a Pedigree	92

Now I will give you a translation of the section dedicated to the Eisenstadt Diocese (pp 23-30:

DIOCESE EISENSTADT

Repository of the Matriken Books:

Most are deposited in the diocesan archives, the rest are in the parishes. No system for deposit in the central archive but, as a rule, the endangered stocks were collected.

A list of matrices, indicating the size and location, is in progress and will be published soon on the Internet. [Ed: I have not found this!]

In the monastery archives at Heiligenkreuz, the registers of the incorporated parishes are:
- Mönchhof (baptism, marriage and death records 1683-1711, registers from 1712 in the parish Mönchhof); and
- Kaisersteinbruch (baptism books 1690-1869, marriage books 1690-1753, death books 1805-1826).
- Podersdorf am See, the entire matriculation of the parish is located in the local parish.

Filming of the Matrices:

In individual parishes, the books were filmed for conservation reasons, the books in question are no longer submitted in the original.

Other Duplicates:

Register copies from 1922 are in the Diocesan Archives (since the establishment of the Apostolic Administration of Burgenland), older ones in the responsible Hungarian county archives.

How Far do the Matrices Go?

The oldest matriculation book of the Diocese of Eisenstadt comes from the cathedral and city parish Eisenstadt and contains entries from 1614.

User Regulations:

A permit by the Episcopal Ordinariate is required for the inspection of parish records in the parishes, which must be applied for in writing (via the Diocesan Archives). The use of the books in the diocesan archives is possible within the open hours of the diocesan archives; Here, the approval takes place with the completion of a user sheet.

Special Matrices:

Christening matrices (from 1947) of the Hospital of the Brothers of Charity Eisenstadt.

Matrices of Other Denominations:

Evangelische Matrikenführung: The registers of the A. B. and H. B. protestant parishes are located in the respective parishes.

Israelitische Matrikenführung: The surviving matrices of the Jewish communities are located in the "Jewish Central Archive of the Former Jewish Communities of Burgenland" in the Burgenland State Archives, Europaplatz 1, 7000 Eisenstadt.

Directory at Hugo GOLD: Memorial Book of the Lost Jewish Communities of Burgenland (Tel Aviv 1970, pp. 137-144).

Diocesan Boundaries and Scope:

The diocesan borders coincide with the state borders of the province of Burgenland. The diocese has 12 deaneries and 172 parishes.

Particularities:

Pastoral care of the places:
- Bruckneudorf (parish Parndorf) by the parish Bruck a. d. L. (Archdiocese of Vienna);
- Sinnersdorf (diocese Graz-Seckau) by the city parish Pinkafeld;
- Burgauberg (parish Stegersbach) through the parish of Burgau (Diocese of Graz-Seckau);
- Hackerberg (parish Stinatz) through the parish Neudau (diocese Graz-Seckau,
with the exception of Croatian-speaking believers);
- Neudauberg (parish Stinatz) through the parish Neudau (diocese Graz-Seckau).

The matriculation takes place in the supervising parishes (except Sinnersdorf: own matrices, but the matriarchal guidance takes place in Pinkafeld).

In the area of the parish Kaisersteinbruch, a training area was established in 1941 and, in the course of which, the local inhabitants were relocated (reestablished as an independent local chaplaincy in 1951). The matrices are located in Stift Heiligenkreuz.

When the Apostolic Administration of Burgenland was established, parishes were divided by demarcating Hungary. Several Austrian towns today have their matriculation before 1922 in Hungarian parishes.

The diocesan archives provide information about their predecessors.

Genealogical Associations:

There are currently no genealogical associations in Burgenland.

Other Institutions:

Burgenländisches Landesarchiv and Landesbibliothek
Europaplatz 1
7000 Eisenstadt
Tel .: 0043 (0) 57-600 / 2358
E-mail: post.archiv@bgld.gv.at
Homepage: www.burgenland.at/kultur/landesarchiv
(Hours: Monday-Thursday 8.00-16.00, Friday 8.00-13.00)

Esterházy Archive
Forchtenstein Castle
Tel .: 0043 (0) 2682 / 63004-24
Fax: 0043 (0) 2682 / 63004-66
E-Mail: kultur@esterhazy.at
Homepage: http://esterhazy.at/de/sammlungen
(Open from May to December, only Thursday, 8:00 to 12:00 am, written request for research permission and telephone advance notification required!)

Important Archives in Neighboring Countries:

In Hungary, all the matrices are in the parish offices. Duplicates and films are available in the county archives.

Literature:

RITTSTEUER, Josef: Church in the border area (Eisenstadt 1968).

HOMMA, Josef Karl (arr.): The pastoral ministries of the Apostolic Administrative Burgenland (= Austria Sacra 1. II. 5) (Vienna 1960).

List of Burgenland place names in German, Hungarian, Croatian and Roman languages, compiled and translated by Johann SEEDOCH (= Burgenländische Heimatblätter, Supplement, 2001/4) (Eisenstadt 2001).

Citation of the Parish Matrices:

DAE (= Archdiocese Eisenstadt), Pfarrarchiv Oggau, Matrikenbuch Tom. I (if all three matrices fall into one volume) or Baptismal Book I, Fol. (or Pag., P.) 18. The storage location (DAE) is omitted in the case of matrices still in the parishes.



The section titled "I. Introduction to Genealogy" (pp 5-9) in the table of contents is a rather standard introduction with little information specific to Austria or Burgenland... I'll skip it. If you want to read it, please see the pdf link (GoogleTranslate will do a mostly adequate job of converting the German text to English; just copy and paste).



However, the section titled "II. The Matriken System in Austria" (pp 10-15) provides a fair amount of historical context about the keeping of vital event registers by the church and state. For this reason, I'll give you a translation:

What are matrices?

The parish registers, in which the pastor registers the baptisms, marriages and deaths that occur in his parish, are called "(parish) Matriken" in Austria. In Germany these books are called "Matrikel", in Switzerland "Rodeln". The word derives from the Latin term matricula (= public directory) and is related to matrix (= ancestry, mother).

Almost all religious communities in the world keep records of their members and the performance of religious acts. In 1563, the Council of Trent ("Tametsi" decree) made the compulsory registration of marriages mandatory in the Catholic Church. The main purpose of this was to prevent the conclusion of secret marriages. By entering the names of the bridal couple, the witnesses, the wedding place and date, this marriage could no longer be denied and a later, second marriage prevented. Also, guidance requiring baptismal and confirmation books was confirmed.

By a further regulation in the "Rituale Romanum" from the year 1614, an obligation for the implementation of death, confirmation and family books took place, and precise regulations about the form of the church book entries were issued. At the regional level, a series of provincial synods soon regulated the implementation of these orders.

In addition to the baptismal, marriage and death books, the confirmation books, sponsalien- (i.e., betrothal-), communicant and family books as well as the "soul status" register or "status animarum" (= directories of confession and communion, often applied to households for clarity) became included in the parish registers, which can also provide the family researchers with a wealth of information.

As in other regions of the German-speaking world, the beginnings of the matriculation can already be detected in Austria in the second half of the 16th century. The oldest matrices in the Austrian dioceses are those of St. Stephen in Vienna (1523), Matrei in East Tyrol (1558), Grieskirchen in Upper Austria (1568), Klagenfurt-St. Egid in Carinthia (1571), the Salzburg Dompfarre (1575), Wilhelmsburg in Lower Austria (1579), the parish house in Styria (1586), Lingenau in Vorarlberg (1594) and the cathedral and city parish Eisenstadt (1614). Nationwide, however, the matriarchal guidance in the Austrian lands does not begin until the beginning of the 17th century. For the family researcher, this means that his ancestors can be traced back to the church books, in the best case, only until this time. For the time before, other older sources (e.g., documents, manorial directories) may be used.

What are "Alte Matriken", "Altmatriken", "Kirchliche Matriken"?

The oldest matriarchal books, also known as "Alte Matriken" = "Ancient Matrices" in legal terminology, were kept by the Catholic Church as purely confessional books; i.e., they were created to record the sacraments for baptisms, marriages and deaths in a parish.

They were followed by the so-called "Altmatriken" = "Old Matrices". Altmatriken refers to those church books that were created in Austria in the period from 20 February 1784 to 31 December 1938 (marriage books until 31 July 1938). These books, too, primarily document the administration of the sacraments. In addition, however, by an imperial patent in 1784, the Catholic clergymen were officially obliged by the state to hold baptism, marriage and death records, whereby the state provided the formal guidelines and had supervision over them. From now on entries had to be made basically in German (before mostly Latin) and from now on there were for the first time church books with preprinted rubrics.

Exceptions are Salzburg and Burgenland. In Salzburg, which finally became Austrian after the decision of the Vienna Congress, the Altematriken did not begin until May 1, 1819; in Burgenland, which belonged to Hungary until 1918, the Altematriken ends as early as September 30, 1895, when the registry offices were in Hungary were introduced.

State registry offices were introduced in Austria after the "Anschluss" to the German Reich in 1938 (such as began in Germany in 1875). As a result, the church matrices lost their state character as official civil status records and, since then, are again purely church directories (they have since been referred to as Kirchliche Matriken = "church / ecclesiastical records").

From the end of the 18th century on, all other legally recognized religious communities (Protestants, Orthodox, Jews, Old Catholics, Muslims, etc.) gradually became empowered to administer their own Matrices.

Protestant Matriken Beginnings

The "Tolerance Patent" of October 13, 1781, issued by Emperor Joseph II, allowed the Austrian Protestants of the Augsburg and Helvetic confessions to exercise their religious freedom. The court decree of February 22, 1782, allowed pastors to keep baptismal, marriage, and death books. However, these were considered private notes and did not have the probative value of public documents. All matriculation data still had to be reported to the competent Catholic pastor, who noted them in the Catholic church records.

By resolution of November 20, 1829, the Protestant pastors were given the authority or requirement to run their own records whose probative value was equivalent to that of the Catholic. However, duplicates had to be created for the baptisms, marriages and funerals that had occurred and these were to be forwarded to the competent Catholic pastor, who continued to register the evangelical cases in his books. In addition, the Protestant pastor was allowed to issue baptismal, marriage and death certificates, which, however, only became legally valid after confirmation by the Catholic pastor.

Only on 30 January 1849 (RGBl 107/1849) was there complete legal equality between the matriculation of Catholics and Protestants. From then on, Protestants are no longer registered in the Catholic books. Only where the distance to the responsible Protestant parish communities was too large, can their matriculation cases be found in the Catholic parish registers until 1938.

The 1829 obligatory regulation, to keep evangelical records in two identical originals, remained mandatory. The duplicates were sent to the leadership of the Evangelical Church, namely the k. k. Consistory A. B. and H. B.; since 1861, to the Protestant Oberkirchenrat.

Jewish Matriken

Within the Jewish population of Europe, the requirement for established family names began late and then often under state pressure. In Austria, for example, naming laws were enacted in 1787 and 1789. The Basic Law of 1867 abolished the last legal restrictions on matriarchy applicable to Jews. For information about the Israelite matrices today, the five existing religious communities in Austria (in Vienna, Graz, Linz, Salzburg and Innsbruck) are responsible.

What happened to non-religious people?

For non-religious people, the law of May 25, 1868 was the first to have the registers kept by state organs. The district administrative authorities had to maintain marriage banns book and a marriage registry for the marriages they performed (emergency civil rights). In 1869, this form of marriage was also made possible for marriages between members of various Christian denominations. The Matriculation Act of 8 April 1870 also obliged the political authorities of the first instance (district headquarters or municipal council) to record the birth and deaths of the non-religious or of the religious communities not recognized by the state.

Special register books

In addition to the regular matrices, special ministries were run in different places and for specific situations. These include, for example, the matrimonial books at individual hospitals. When the first large hospitals were erected around 1900, they were taken out of the parish in which they lay and, because of the large number of births and deaths, they had their own matrices.

Also for military persons, there were separate matrices since 1786, because these were not affiliated with a parish. They were led by the competent military chaplain; only in small garrisons was this task performed by a local pastor. Most of the matrices are now in the Austrian State Archives (Kriegsarchiv department, Nottendorfergasse 2, 1030 Vienna). Since 1 January 1960, the Military Ordinarium in Vienna (Mariahilferstraße 24, 1070 Vienna) has been running a central military matrices for the whole of Austria, and some Wehrmacht matrices are also kept there.

For civilian cases (vital events) that occurred on Austrian commercial or warships, also exist their own directories.

Who kept the matrices?

In principle, the matriculation before 1939 was always the responsibility of the clergy. However, in parts of Austria at the time of the Napoleonic Wars, there was a phase in which the state took on this task. From 1809 to 1813, the Villach district (Upper Carinthia and East Tyrol) was, as part of the Kingdom of Illyria, French territory. Since the French Revolution, marriage was a purely private contract in France (1791 was the introduction of the so-called civil marriage) and the recording of the civil status fell within the remit of the community; in those years, the pastors were forced to hand over the parish registers to the mayors ("Maire"). Often, however, the matriculation task was still left to the pastor, although some church books were also lost.

What information do the matrices contain?

Baptismal and wedding books contain records of the religious activities performed on members of a religious community. They do not record the birth, rather the baptism. Death records and burial places are recorded in the death-books (with death the deceased emerges from the sacramental order of grace, so he can no longer receive any sacraments). The change of place of residence or other events, which have nothing to do with the church and in which the pastor is not involved, are not noted at all. It was not until the 20th century that the stipulation of the Decree "Ne temere" (1907/08) made it customary to inform the respective pastoral office of the marriage or the death of a person elsewhere. Within the birth registrations, there are no indications of later life; in the registration of marriages, only limited information about the place of origin of the bridal couple or the number of later common children and, in the death records, usually no indication of the place of birth.



The final two initial sections, "III. The Function of Archives" (pp 16-18) and "IV. How do I go about family research?" (pp 19-26), are rather bland and elementary; again I'll skip these sections, as well as all the sub-sections concerning diocese other than Eisenstadt (presented above) that appear in "V.  Tips for Family Research in the Austrian Dioceses."

Section "VI. Working Aids and Reference Works" is just what it claims, a list of genealogical research tools and references; being they are mostly German-language, I'll refrain from saying more about them.

The "Attachments" are either visual tools or translations of  church-Latin terms to German (similar resources for Latin to English are available elsewhere), thus I see little reason to reprint those here. I recommend consulting the pdf file if you have interest in these items.

However, one small section in the attachments covers a topic I've never presented in the BB newsletter: the symbols European genealogists often use as a shortcut when writing down vital events. Here are the symbols with the associated text translated to English.

Genealogical Signs:

*   = born
(*) = born out of wedlock
˜    = baptized
†   = died
†*  = stillbirth
††  = extinct
oo  = married
o-o = illegitimate connection
o   = engaged
o|o = divorced
X   = fallen
[]  = buried
 

Having peeked ahead, I can tell you that there are 395 double-page images in that marriage book (2 images of covers and 393 for records), so looking at it all can be a long process. For our example, though, we know that the marriage occurred on January 7th of 1901, so it should not be terrible deep in the book and, per the index above, is actually on the 7th "folio" page (where a folio is a left and right, open-book double-page). However, I will note that the writing in this marriage book is quite difficult and I paged right past the correct record when I initially manually searched for this record... only after I determined the correct page from the index did I realize I had looked at it yet not seen it!

So, let us turn to index book and do this right. There are two icons on the left of the book entries (see above), the first, a "camera" icon, will take you to the images; the second, a "book" icon, gives you some (mostly redundant or obvious) information about this book:



Given that, click the camera icon... and you'll get a page like this:

The main part of this page is an image of a book page, though initially it is usually an image of the book cover. Along the bottom is a toolbar, with the first two tools on the left allowing you to zoom in or out. Beyond those, the next most useful ones are the < and > icons, allowing you to page backward or forward. Along the right of the screen is a description of the book you are in and then a scrollable list of the available images. The images in the list are simply numbered so you will need to guess where in the list you want to go. Often, I scroll to the bottom to see how many images there are (52 in this case), so I can better guess where in the list to look.

Depending on the parish, there may be a separate listing by bride's surname, but the most common format is by groom's surname only. Each letter of the alphabet is presented sequentially, with years within each letter also presented sequentially. Usually the order of entry within a letter-year section is the order of recording the events (marriages) in that year. You will need to examine each index closely to discern the system if it fails to follow this typical format.

So, for our example marriage, we had the following information about the groom and bride from the marginal entry, as well as knowing the year (1901) of marriage:

- Groom: Károly Pelczmann, born in Német Szent Grót, Roman Catholic religion, 34-year-old, single, unskilled worker.
- Bride: Mária Gammer born Billovits - born in Bánya - Roman Catholic religion, 32-year-old, single, unskilled worker-woman.

Thus we will be looking in the P's, specifically for year 1901. It is also reasonable to presume that the German form of the groom's given name will be used, so Karl, not Károly. It is even possible that the P could be phonetically written as a B... keep that in mind. With 52 pages in the index, I'll guess the P's are halfway through, so I'll roll down the list of page images and click # 26. That proved to be the letter M (and a quick perusal confirmed that this index uses the expected, common format. A few more clicks found the right page (32), and here is a clip from that page:

 

As you can see, Károly Pelczmann is the third entry in the 1901 P's, though his name is spelled Carl Pelzmann (the German writer dropped the "Hungarian" c in the surname and my guess about Karl with a K was wrong [phonetics got me there!], but at least it wasn't Károly!). The important part is the XIX at the top of the next column and the 7 in the last column. The XIX says marriage register 19 is where we should look and that 7 is the folio page we need in that book.

If you recall a clip from above (repeated below), the code 02-19 says this is a marriage book (02) and it is number 19, so that is consistent with what we had found in the index.



With this information in hand, we can confidently go to the right marriage book and directly to the 7th folio page:



I'll talk a moment about the parts of this page...

First, only two marriages appear on the page; data for each goes from the left to the right margin (with the marriage we want being the lower one).

Second, in the top left is "Fol. 7" so that matches with the data in the index.

Third, the columns, left to right are:
- Reihezahl = sequential number
- Copulans = the name of the officiant
- Zeit der Eheschließung = date of the wedding
- Bräutigam = groom
   (with a whole group of sub-columns)
- Braut = bride
   (also with a whole group of sub-columns)
- Beistände = witnesses
- Anmerkungen = notes

Since my purpose in this article is to talk about accessing these records (not how to read them), I'll stop without discussing the details on the page. However, I will make a few comments and give you one zoomed-in clip from the page:



Here you can see that this record does refer to Carl Pelzmann (other parts of the record confirm the correct bride too). What you may not notice immediately in this clip is that the date of the wedding is 20 January 1901, not the 7 January 1901 that the marginal entry stated (which may be why I missed it when paging through these records!). Further, from the page image above you can see that there is a surprising amount of information about the bride and groom in the record (for example, apparently Carl was born under the mother's name and later legitimized by the marriage of his parents), and even additional information in the notes column. If you can get past the challenging writing, there is a treasure trove of data here!



I'll now leave the above search effort and talk about the one example marginal record that did not provide the parish where the event occurred. That was a Catholic birth for child János Schappelvein that took place in "Zilingdorf" on 1 June 1896.

The immediate problem is that there is no place in Austria called Zilingdorf! However, there is one (and just one) called Zillingdorf (two l's)... is this what they meant?

One clue may be in the location to where the marginal record was sent, that being Pecsenyéd = Pöttsching, Burgenland. Mapping these two locations shows that they are but a few miles apart, though on opposite sides of the then national border between Austria and Hungary (even today they are in different Austrian provinces so would not share a recording district):



If we presume this is the correct village, we still need to know which parish recorded vital events for Zillingdorf. I'll suggest two ways to do that...

First, we can see from the map above that Zillingdorf is in Lower Austria (Niederösterreich in German). If you recall from the above search, the eastern part of Niederösterreich is in the Wien Erzdiözese. Even if you do not recall that, you can go to web page http://data.matricula-online.eu/en/oesterreich/, look at the blue list of Dioceses/Provinces and discover that fact again. Having done so, click into that diocese and then search for Zillingdorf... you'll find it exists as a parish, so problem solved.

A second approach requires you to be a (free) member of GenTeam. It has an online, searchable gazetteer of Austria which, when searched for Zillingdorf, reports:



So we see that it is its own parish (and is in the Wien diocese).

With this information we can go to the parish and search out the birth record. If you do, you will see that there are no dedicated index books available. However, if you open the correct Taufbuch and scroll to the bottom of the image list, you will see that the last 21 images are an index to that specific register book. As we are looking for János Schappelvein, index image 17 yields:



Thus we know that folio 27 is the correct image (though this was made more difficult because the original record split the father's surname onto two lines and the writer of the index only noticed that problem after he had written down the given name, forcing him to tack the rest of the surname above the given name). Jumping back to image/folio page 27 indeed provides the original birth record.



As a final example, I'll spend a moment with the birth that occurred "Simmeringben Felső-utcza 6 szám, alatt 1896 évi oktober hó 15 napján, Rudolf nevű törvényes fiú gyermek született" = "at Simmering, Oberstrasse 6, on October 15th, 1896."

You may recall that I pointed out that Felső-utcza 6 seemed to be a translation into Hungarian of Oberstrasse 6, but that address no longer exists (or did not ever exist) in Simmering. An obvious solution to resolving this confusion is to consult the original record and see what address it gives (I'll leave searching out that record as an "exercise" for you). If you do so, you will see that the child, Rudolf Schwarz, was born here:



So, the original street was not Felső (which I already suspected) but it also was not Ober! Rather, we see Rudolf was born at Felsgasse 6  = Rock Alley 6 (in English) or = Szikla köz 6 (in Hungarian). In this case, the local recorder attempted to translate the street name (which he should not have done, nor should you) and royally blew his attempt!

I hope this example makes the point that there is value in looking up the original record. However, I must admit that I had not done so for this one until after BB member Christian Fuchs sent me a note after reading my marginal birth entries article. I don't know if my random example was actually a family member for Christian or if, instead, he was just curious given the issue I had pointed out about the street name. Regardless, he looked it up and now we have the answer to this issue. Many thanks to Christian!



Some ending comments... as you can see, the actual process is not difficult but the typical "surrounding" issues: spelling variations, multiple same-name places, difficult writing, etc. can complicate easy movement through those steps. And once you reach the image you want, it can prove to be difficult to read. Further, there is no tool provided by Matricula Online to capture the image; if you do wish to do so, you must use some form of screen capture and reassemble the parts of the image in an image-editing program. However, there is a "direct link" icon, , on the bottom toolbar that will let you copy the page address so you can return directly to the image.

Despite all this, there is often much to be gained by attempting the process, so I suggest you do so for your family entries.
 

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