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

This newsletter concerns:

1) THE PRESIDENT'S CORNER

2) THE RULES FOR KEEPING CATHOLIC CHURCH REGISTERS

3) HISTORICAL BB NEWSLETTER ARTICLES:
    - TRAVEL TIME, BURGENLAND TO NEW YORK

4) ETHNIC EVENTS

5) BURGENLAND EMIGRANT OBITUARIES (courtesy of Bob Strauch)

The German terms “Matriken” or “Pfarrmatriken” (in Germany “Matrikeln”, in Switzerland also “Rodel” or “Rödel”) refer to registers of baptisms, marriages and deaths.

In general, Matriken is from the Late Latin matricula, meaning "public roll or register," and is related to matriculate: "to enroll as a member," so it makes sense that the churches took up this term (and that the Eisenstadt Diocese uses the term for their website).

Rödel, like the English word “rolls”, is a Middle High German word that derives from the Latin word rotulus, which were lists typically written on oblong sheets of paper that were folded in the middle, thus forming a slim booklet. Again, given the nature of the early church books, this term also made sense.

Now on to Felix's work:



Felix states that the oldest Austrian church register is “Sterbebuch 1” (register of deaths) of the parish of St. Stephan in Vienna, which starts in the year 1523. he also notes that only 78 Austrian parishes have church records from before the year 1600 "...but many more may have existed but were lost in the course of the centuries through sloppiness, wars or fires, or during the time of Protestantism up until 1624/1631." He further notes that, for the eastern parts of Lower Austria, many church registers only start after the year 1683 (second Turkish siege of Vienna) or 1709 (Kuruc uprisings). This final point also applies directly to Burgenland and the nearby parts of Hungary.

As for why they exist, Friedrich von Zollern, Bishop of Constance [i.e., Konstanz, Germany], ordered the keeping of baptismal registers in his diocese in 1435. A few other Catholic dioceses followed suit in the ensuing years but, more importantly, so did the Lutheran churches. In 1548, the Synod of Augsburg decided that registers had to be maintained for baptisms, marriages, burials, confessions and communion in their diocese. This decision, as well as ongoing conflicts with the Protestant community, which was already keeping obligatory church registers, triggered the 1563 Council of Trent to introduce church-wide the obligatory keeping of marriage registers and, indirectly, also of baptismal registers. The main reasons for this decision were to ensure the accuracy of legitimate births and to avoid unauthorized marriages. From then on, three Banns of Marriage were required to be announced by the responsible priest during Mass prior to the marriage itself, and at least two marriage witnesses were necessary. The Council also encouraged registers of confirmations, however they were not mandatory.

Taking the 1563 decree (for obligatory marriage & baptismal registers) a step further, the Salzburg diocese Convocation of 1569 demanded a status animarum, i.e., a backward-looking register of all members of a parish (not just those being newly born). It also required the keeping of birth registers (not baptismal registers!) which also had to list those people who had moved into the parish, as well as death registers, even including those members of the parish who had moved away. In 1577, registers of baptisms, confirmations and marriages were made mandatory.

The Rituale Romanum of 1614 stipulated and confirmed the obligatory keeping of registers of baptisms and deaths as well as of confirmations. More importantly, it also gave the first instructions on the content of the individual records.

The following items of information were mandatory: the name of the priest; for baptisms, the day and time of birth, the occupation and status of the parents; for marriages, the spouses’ parents as well as the place of birth of bride and groom; for burials, the day of death, the age as well as the parents of the deceased.

Professor Gundacker couldn't resist a side comment here, saying "If everyone had adhered to these instructions, life would be much easier for today’s genealogists."

It would be the reforms of Maria Theresa and son Josef II that first introduced non-church-driven changes to the records (but changes that were almost universally followed by a "confirming" church decree).

In 1752, the civil authorities put an end to the often quite arbitrary corrections that were made in baptismal registers—mainly in the case of children born out of wedlock—and marriage registers.

From that point onwards, marriage also required prior consent of the landlord.

A 1760 decree stipulated that only the priest was allowed to enter records into the registers. Previously, school teachers or sextons sometimes made these entries, even if they did not know about a family’s background. The fact that many later entries were still made by someone else shows that this decree was not always observed.

Further, many priests continued to make arbitrary changes to the church registers; they were admonished in a 1768 decree and reinstructed that every modification required the permission of the Consistory.

A Sovereign’s Decree issued by Maria Theresia in 1770 prohibited recording the name of the father of a child born out of wedlock. Exceptions were only allowed if the father explicitly demanded to be named or if the child was legitimized by a subsequent marriage. In addition, children born out of wedlock had to be entered in a separate section [Ed: I can't say I've ever seen this!]).

In January 1771 a new law went into force: The registers of baptisms, marriages and deaths now had to be kept in tabular form, and the religious denomination had to be indicated. From August 1771 onwards, the conscription numbers were also required (however, the Hungarian dioceses apparently ignored this requirement!).

About this same time, churches were now required to set up a mortuary and the burial had to be at least 48 hours after the death. Gundacker notes that, "Unless the church register explicitly indicates the date of death, the date that is mentioned is the date of the burial. The person usually died two days earlier."

A July 1771 decree required that all church registers kept within the territory of the Monarchy had to be written in either Latin or German. Regardless, it is apparent that subsequent registers in Hungary also used the Hungarian language.

A 1774 decree by Maria Theresia ordered that church registers had to be stored properly and safely [Ed: however, it is unclear to me whether specific storage instructions were provided].

A 1781, a decree required the inclusion of birth names in church registers and certificates. This included the birth names of brides and parents in marriage records and mothers in baptism records.

A February 1784 court decree issued by Joseph II turned the church registers (that had previously been of a purely denominational character) into civil registers. Upon a penalty of six Reichsthaler for non-compliance, the parish tables had to be sent to the respective district offices. Thus the priests assumed the tasks of a civil servant (and maintained that role until 1895 in Burgenland and 1939 in Austria). Even today, if someone born in Austria before the year 1939 requires a birth certificate, it is the priest who issues it, not the Austrian state authorities. [Ed: This also affects our genealogical research!]

The next decree followed in August 1784 and specified that a separate section had to be kept for each locality of a parish. [Ed: This requirement was sometimes fulfilled by a completely separate book and other times by separate sections within a book, often consisting of only a few years before switching to another locality.] From about 1830-1848 onwards, this decree was rarely observed.

Various court decrees issued between 1797 and 1845 required the individual dioceses to create duplicates of church registers that were legally equivalent to the originals. At the end of the year, the priest had to copy all entries of baptisms, marriages and deaths and send them to the Ordinariate no later than February of the following year.

In 1892, new forms were introduced for church registers. It was now mandatory to keep the individual records in chronological order and to indicate the so-called “Reihezahl”, i.e., the consecutive numbering of the respective entries. [Ed: this may explain why we find so many non-chronological records in the beta version of Matriken.at.]

In addition, the following events had to be entered: baptisms of persons born in a different parish or already registered by another political authority (e.g. non-denominational persons); marriages delegated to a different parish; mixed marriages conducted by a non-Roman Catholic priest; deceased persons transferred from another parish; non-Roman Catholics buried on a Roman Catholic cemetery for lack of a cemetery of their own denomination.

On the basis of the Ne Temere decree issued in 1907, marriages and deaths that occurred at another parish had to be communicated back to the parish of birth/baptism.



Felix ends his manuscript by noting that 2010 was the beginning of digitization of church records in Austria. As we are all aware of, Burgenland's records are among the last to be digitized and are the only to be placed behind a pay wall. They also differ the most from the core of the Austrian records, being influenced greatly by Hungarian approaches. Nonetheless, they were affected by the same decrees and largely changed in concert.

If you would like to review Professor Gundacker's full article, it can be found here:
felixgundacker.at/.../AustrianChurchRegisters.pdf

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