The extension for house owners, which has been on hold for a long time, is finally ready. Also new is an extension for the trade and cooperative registers of the Küstrin district or local court.

The search results have been split up better, the database now works faster for many results.  In addition, it is now possible to search for non-resident persons or companies in the database. Non-residents are persons who were named in the recorded Küstrin sources but did not live in Küstrin. Such persons can be found in the pupil data and the register data.



The fuzzy search (search for similar names) has so far been VERY fuzzy and hardly usable. Since the corresponding function of the database server only works with English phonetics (pronunciation), the result for German-language names was extremely poor. I have now replaced this with my own implementation, so that the fuzzy search now does exactly what it is supposed to. For example, when entering "Meißner" it also finds "Meisner" and "Meissner" - for "Müller" it also finds "Mühler", "Miller" etc.
 

In March I received a scan of a double page from the Lutheran church book of the parish (Marienkirche) from 1849 with 6 births/baptisms. This photocopy was made in 1916 by the Küstrin photographer Georg Schoppmeyer. An absolute rarity, as this church book is considered destroyed or lost! I have already entered the 6 records in the genealogical database: Births from the Lutheran parish register between 18 and 22 March 1849.

Thanks to a diligent supporter, Peter Woddow, Die Hausbesitzer der Altstadt 1562 - 1758 - a total of 2359 records - are now available in the genealogy database.

I have now entered all the pupil records that I have but have not yet recorded into the database. A total of 742 new pupil records are now online, for a total of more than 4000. Most of the data comes from lists of the Küstrin Gymnasium, but for the first time ever, pupils from the boys' and girls' secondary schools are also included.

Commercial and cooperative registers

Thanks to the new extension, the database now also contains data from the commercial and cooperative registers of the district or local court of Küstrin, currently 3562 records. The data comes from the historical Commercial Register A (register of companies), the Commercial Register B (register of companies), the Prokurenregister (register of procurations) as well as the Genossenschaftsregister (register of cooperatives). Not only companies and cooperatives from Küstrin are included, but also from all places that once belonged to the judicial district of Küstrin. For example, companies from Neudamm, Manschnow, Alt- und Neu-Tuchband, Bärwalde Nm., Darrmietzel, Kutzdorf, Güstebiese, Wilkersdorf, Golzow (Oderbruch) and many other places are also included.

The publication is preceded by many months of research, nevertheless this is only an interim status, many data are still missing or incomplete. I have summarised the details of this new database in an explanatory article: The Küstrin trade and cooperative register.

Telephone directories

The telephone subscriber directory for Küstrin, 1940/41 edition is now typed and available in the genealogy database. The entries from the surrounding villages such as Alt-Drewitz and Warnick are NOT included, nor are larger authorities without personal data (NS authorities, Wehrmacht, Reichsbahn). In addition, there are various telephone subscriber directories from the turn of the century:

The data from the Güter-Adressbücher contain, for example, the total size of the property in hectares, as well as the shares of arable land, meadows, pastures, etc., and partly also figures on livestock. More Kietz sources will be added next year.

There have been changes to 6 streets (Chausseestraße, Feldstraße, Kaiserstraße, Lindenstraße, Friedenstraße and Wilhelmstraße) that affect Küstrin-Kietz. These streets now exist several times in the database and are linked to the places "Kietz bei Küstrin" and "Küstrin-Kietz". Chausseestraße is even present 3 times in the database, as it also existed in Lange Vorstadt. This means that the corresponding inhabitants can now also be output - historically correctly - with the name of the place that matches the year.
 

Due to the Corona pandemic, the regional meetings for family historians in Potsdam were cancelled in recent years. This year, however, the meeting took place again on 24.09.2022, and I was represented there with a stand.



Since autumn last year, the meetings of the local historians have been taking place every six months in Seelow (Märkisch Oderland district), most recently on 19.11.2022. In addition to the opportunity to get in touch with other historians or to stay in touch, there are always several small lectures lasting 15 minutes. Last time, I also gave a lecture on the topic of "Genealogical research in the Oderland and trade registers as an additional source". The "Märkische Oderzeitung" (local newspaper) reported on the meeting, you can read the article online.

For the Working Report No. 4/2022 of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft ostdeutscher Familienforscher e.V. (AGoFF), I submitted an article on the dataset of cooperative and commercial registers in the genealogical database.