Jahrbuch für Geschichte des ländlichen Raumes

Genealogieinformatik und Mikrogeschichte

Jesper Zedlitz, Georg Fertig — Tue, 16 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

DNA-Analyse und Vereinsgenealogie

Georg Fertig — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Vom gedruckten Gazetteer zum digitalen Ortsverzeichnis

Anne Purschwitz, Jesper Zedlitz — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Time Machine Leipzig

Moritz Müller — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Juden in Westfalen und Lippe

Volker Hirsch, Roland Linde — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Vom internen Arbeitsinstrument zur online zugänglichen Forschungsinfrastruktur

Peter Moser — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Die genealogische Datenbank des CREPA

Jean-Charles Fellay — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Digitales historisches Archiv des Bleniotals (Schweiz)

Adriano Rodesino — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Genealogien

Georg Fertig, Sandro Guzzi-Heeb — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Between Honour and Excellence

José Antonio Guillén Berrendero — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This article inquires after the causes of the unprecedented growth and scope of genealogical expertise in the many realms that comprised the Spanish Monarchy in the seventeenth century. Lengthy proofs of nobility were a prerequisite for admission to orders of chivalry, courtly institutions, colleges, and universities. The nature and means of transmission of genealogical knowledge are analysed in order to grasp its socio-political significance. Indeed, besides their critical importance for the nobility, genealogies were relevant for society at large and were tied to the recurring debates on the essence of nobility that were taking place in Europe from the thirteenth century.

How DNA Can Get in the Way of History, Sometimes

Fenella Cannell — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This paper considers two sets of amateur genealogists as specialized kinship artisans. My two sets of informants describe their projects in contrastive terms. Family historians in East Anglia (United Kingdom) explain that they are doing history (not ‘religion’), while for American Latter-day Saints genealogy is an explicit religious duty that cannot be separated from their Church’s salvific mission. Despite this difference of outlook, there are important overlaps in the way each group practices and experiences connections with related others across mortality. I argue that the rapid expansion of commercial DNA-tracing companies within genealogy appears to be affecting each group in different ways. English amateurs are currently capable of relativizing DNA-based information where it does not mesh with the narratives of family, local, and class history in which they are interested. Latter-day Saints’ distinctive genealogical cultures may be less easy to defend against the priorities of DNA-genealogy companies, both because of internet linkages sanctioned by the Church leadership, and because the attempt to trace all souls who have ever lived is vulnerable to the unlimited ambitions of profit-driven logics.

Toxic Memories and Amateur Genealogy in Contemporary Russia

Inna Leykin — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This article investigates post-Soviet practices of amateur genealogy in relation to the politics of memory in Russia. Based on long-term ethnographic research into a popular genealogy club in a large provincial city, it explores genealogists’ interpretive practices through which flat and unified historical narratives about the Soviet past, and especially about political violence, gain temporal, and spatial depth. The article argues that these practices have been informed by a growing presence of the therapeutic discourse in post-Soviet Russia, which resulted in genealogy becoming a means to reshape individuals’ relations with the Soviet past. Positioning oneself on the genealogical grid and historicizing family narratives contextualizes the self and ensures a sense of inclusion in a broader community. It is by virtue of its transformative potential that amateur genealogy becomes a balm for post-Soviet memory.

Von der „Genealogie“ und „Sippenkunde“ zur „Bevölkerungswissenschaft“?

Alexander Pinwinkler — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This article is based on the observation that a boom in genealogical research began in the field of historical research and in archives around 1900. Genealogy is seen here as a changing scientific practice. It was on the rise as an academic discipline at that time. This perspective is a heuristic starting point to locating genealogy between the poles of genealogy research (Abstammungsforschung), heredity science (Vererbungswissenschaft) and historical-sociological genealogy. Exemplary studies on the two historians Johannes Hohlfeld (1888–1950) and Friedrich von Klocke (1891–1960) explore their respective understanding of genealogy. The investigations also analyse their scientific and political positions in the transition from the Weimar Republic to the Third Reich and the early Federal Republic of Germany. In conclusion, the article outlines the question of whether and how German historians tried to transcend the genealogical view after 1945 in favour of a more historical-sociological oriented analytical approach.

Familienrekonstitution avant la lettre

Jürgen Schlumbohm — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

International literature on the history of historical demography leaves no doubt that Louis Henry and his associates ‘invented’ the method of family reconstitution in the 1950s and revolutionized the study of demographic behaviour in the past by using individual level data from parish registers. This article adds a largely ignored prehistory to this narrative through three points. First, from the 1920s, family reconstitutions were carried out on a large scale in German-speaking countries. They served a wide variety of scholarly, popular and political purposes. Second, many family reconstitutions were used for analysing demographic behaviour, often in ways similar to Henry’s historical demography. Third, most family reconstitutions and a large part of demographic research based on them were closely linked to racial science. Many of these scholarly activities helped propagate and implement the racial policy of the Nazi regime, and many of the institutions and persons promoting them were strongly involved in enforcing it.

“Speaking of Families…”

Katharina Hering — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This essay discusses the role of genealogy in the popular folklore periodical The Pennsylvania Dutchman, which was succeeded by the journal Pennsylvania Folklife, as an example of a community of practice formed by historians, genealogists, archivists, and folklorists. The magazine can be read as a microcosm that reflected the development of scholarly trends and genealogical practices alike. The example highlights the historical significance of genealogy as a vehicle for connecting to broad, international publics, and the trend of creating and sharing resources that facilitated doing family history as a form of people’s history combined with popular folklore. While practitioners cooperated in the creation of resources that were mutually beneficial, their motives were shaped by different and at times conflicting ideological traditions and goals. The development and publication of genealogical resources, including emigrant lists and genealogical indices, served as a common bond that ensured the continuity of the community of practice over several decades, despite these differences and conflicts.

Deutsche Kolonisten im Königreich Ungarn (18. und frühes 19. Jahrhundert)

Karl-Peter Krauss — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

A historical-anthropological approach to the everyday lives of “ordinary men” and “ordinary women” among people who emigrated to Hungary in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries faces the problem that files on emigration usually end with the very act of emigration. Moreover, in this context files shaped by quantitative numerical series are predominant, and these records hardly go beyond stereotypical statements. Files associated with non-contentious jurisdiction, on the other hand, may serve to form a bridge between the area of emigration and the area of settlement. They arose when emigrants requested their inheritance or assets in their old homeland. A plethora of ego-documents can be found in the estate files created in this way. However, they usually shed light only on short periods of the protagonists’ lives. Genealogical files provide a further resource towards a historical-anthropological approach to actors. The files as well as genealogical data, analysed in a complementary manner, wrest the homo migrans – migrating man – from anonymity and give the individual a face as a “hero of everyday life” (Michel de Certeau). In this way, essential stages of life can be traced. This contribution presents case studies embedded in the socio-economic and historical-demographic context.

Genealogy and Family Culture

Cécile Alexandre — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This article aims to explain how reconstructing genealogies and analysing generations are necessary to understand family cultures. For this purpose, it examines the inability to sign in some families over several generations from 1740 to 1859 in Charleville (today Charleville-Mézières in north-east France), an industrial town specialized in metallurgy, where the great majority of the population was able to sign during this period. The genealogical reconstruction of two families from a similar social background over three generations allows us to consider the social, economic, and familial factors that may have been at work in the reproduction of the inability to sign. Both male and female branches are taken into account to understand family dynamics. Beside this qualitative analysis, the observation and measurement of transmissions from genealogies require a reflection on the methodology for a quantitative analysis, in particular on the search for a threshold that permits to comprehend family transmissions as a real family culture.

Genealogie(n), Sozialwissenschaften und Digital Humanities

Michaël Gasperoni — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This article presents a research approach that combines genealogy, social sciences and digital humanities. Initiated in the early 2000s, the project concerns itself with the systematic collection and analysis of two central Italian population groups: Jews and Christians, based on a methodological and epistemological reflection on sources and quantitative methods in historiography and ethnology. Starting from the experiences of this project, the article discusses fundamental questions: why and how can we reconstruct an entire population? Which problems occur in the process, both in terms of the sources and the tools developed by researchers and genealogists? Finally, what is the future of databases that we develop?

Vorwort

Georg Fertig, Sandro Guzzi-Heeb — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000