[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] several miscelaneous questions - a clarification

Tue May 6 06:47:22 PDT 2008

Dear Helen,
  Where did your parents live before the war? How do they have a book with Hitler's name if they got married in 1947? Could Germany have used books from before the war for this purpose while recovering from the war?

  I know of several couples who got married in this same time but I never heard of such a Stammbuch. I'll ask one them specifically if she had one prepared.

  My grandmother and cousin ended up very close to your parents after the war.
  Karl

Helen Gillespie <hgillespie at rogers.com> wrote:
  Hi All,

My parents were married in Burgstemmen, Kr. Alfeld, in
northern Germany after the war (1947). They have a
Stammbuch in which their marriage particulars and the
births of their first two children are registered and
baptized. Adolf Hitler's name is blacked out in one
part - under a quotation about clean bloodlines - so I
know this book is not post war!

The booklet (hardcover with 76 pages) is titled
Familien Stammbuch u. Ahnenpass and the title page
identifies it as the "Stammbuch u. Ahnenpass der
Familie Kukasch-Betke" (my parents surnames). There
are pages for 8 births and baptisms. It also includes
a page for two photos of the passport holders (the
couple), a page for citing citizenship and pages for
the deaths of the couple and any others in the family.
I assume that this document would have been a
permanent record because the marriage is certified and
stamped by the minister, as is the births and deaths
of my brother and sister.

The second section actually has a pedigree chart and
the next 30+ pages has small forms for completing
one's Stammbaum. They require the name of the
minister or notary so it would be a legal document.
There are even two pages of suggested boys and girls
names plus a page to cite "memorable events". None of
this was completed in my parents book, although many
years ago, I entered some data. I am kind of sorry
that there wasn't more information. I wish I knew
what happened to my grandparents' books.

I expect that the Standesamt and/or the church had
these booklets and used them after the War as there
wasn't much else available, I'm sure.

Helen

Searching: Kukasch, Bethke, Baier, Kelm, Koenig,
Belter, Pufahl
Locale: Berestovets, Boruwka, Solomka
(Friedrichsdorf), Pempkov, Turek, Konin, Tomaschev,
Benton Harbor and Watervliet, MI

--- F&RM Haddad wrote:

> Thank-you to those who responded to my questions,
> both privately and here.
> 
> I do hope I haven't stirred up any kind of hornet's
> nest with my question
> about the Stammbuch.
> 
> I wonder if in addition to Gunther's classifications
> of those who needed
> a Stammbuch there might be another. Is it possible
> that those
> Germans from Poland and Volynia who were trying to
> return to Germany during
> this time also needed such a record. This would be
> the class that my
> ancestors would have fallen into. They were good and
> God-fearing people,
> none of them Nazis, much less SS or high-ranking
> state officials. Common
> people, all of them. I wonder if they were required
> to write to the relevant
> churches to obtain the information, for I note that
> beside many of the
> entries there are numbers like #23/1877, #55/1823
> after the place-name. I
> would assume that these refer to record #23, 55, or
> whatever, of that year
> of records.
> 
> When I began independent research (i.e. microfilms
> of church records)
> I naively assumed that the Stammbuch entries were
> totally correct -
> it is only lately that I've begun to realize that
> the Stammbuch
> information was only as accurate as the care taken
> and expertise of what
> must have been harried church secretaries, or
> who-ever did the research for
> the books in question. So, to answer my own
> question, so far, the
> information from the S-book I have is remarkably
> accurate.
> 
> The clarification I need to make is that in the same
> email I made
> reference to Pommeranian nobility, and may have
> given the impression that
> this was from the Stammbuch. In my case it is from a
> Swedish g-grandmother
> (paternal) who happened to have nobility in her
> ancestry. For a
> while Pommerania was part of Sweden, and hence the
> Pommeranian nobility. The
> S-book people were maternal side. I can see now that
> this may have
> been anything but clear.
> 
> An aside: my study of my genealogy has made me aware
> of what a "long shot"
> I am. Because a move was made from Germany to
> Poland, from Poland to
> Volynia, from Volynia to Canada, and from Germany to
> Canada, because a
> wife died, and the husband remarried, or because a
> husband died and the wife
> remarried, because person "a" fell in love with and
> married person "b"
> and not person "c", and even because an angry
> passion caused someone to rape
> an ancestress, I am who I am - in fact, I am at all.
> If even one of these
> events had turned out differently, I would not be. I
> am truly an accident
> of birth. I find my study of genealogy fascinating,
> and likely spend far too
> many hours on it - but I also hold the results with
> a light hand. So I may
> have descended from King so-and-so. If it is far
> enough back, you likely did
> too – or one of his contemporaries. I'm told that
> every peasant has kings in
> his ancestry, and every king has peasants in his. I
> just happened to find
> some of mine, peasants and kings! The search goes
> on.
> 
> Rose-Marie Haddad from Canada
> 
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