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Rettenbach
Village of 350 residents in the Oberwart district.

Hungarian: Mencsér. Bernstein (Borostyanko) is the parish church (both RC & Lutheran) for Rettenbach; it is also the place of the civil record office. Rettenbach had other spellings such as Röthentbach. In the census of 1910, the population was 440, of which all listed themselves as ethnic Germans. By religion, the vast majority were Lutherans (380), with the remainder being Roman Catholic.

FamilySearch filmed the duplicate parish and civil records of Bernstein. For the film numbers, enter Bernstein or Borostyanko as the place name on page http://www.familysearch.org/eng/Library/FHLC/frameset_fhlc.asp and follow the leads. The original parish records of Bernstein go back to 1733 (R-C) and 1784 (Lutheran) and are either at the parishes or archives. Duplicate church records start in 1828 and civil records in 1895. Before the tolerance edict of the 1780s (when the creation of Lutheran parishes became permissible), Lutherans were recorded in the Catholic parish records. Often these records will state the religion as acath. (meaning non-Catholic) or something like A.H. (or Agost...) meaning the Ausgsburg confession (which describes the Lutherans). Sometimes Lutherans continued recording their vital events in the Catholic parish for many years after 1780, till as late as the early 1800s, despite the new presence of a Lutheran parish.

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