How is a town or village located geographically in Germany? The answer is not easy. We have been talking about Nassau-Siegen, but, if you went down to the LDS center and asked to see their films for Nassau-Siegen, you would not get far. On the other hand, people on the list here have identified Siegen as being in Prussia. Isn’t that over to the east?
As the history in the Siegen area has been recapped for a period here, it seemed that the boundaries shifted, almost every time the rulers changed, and sometimes more often. As their fortunes waxed and waned, the political boundaries changed. How is the name of any given locality to be filed or located in an index?
The Latter Day Saints, with their active microfilming work, had to find an answer for this problem. They chose to use the political boundaries of 1872 (I believe it was that year), when Germany was united under one government. On this date, the land around Siegen, including the town itself, was in Prussia. So the churches in and around Siegen are filed under Prussia. Today, Siegen is in Westphalia.
As another example, my Blankenbaker ancestors were born in Neuenbürg, which Zacharias Blankenbaker described, in his naturalization in Virginia, as being in or on lands belonging to the Bishops of Speyer. The Bishops were the civil head of the government, as well as being the religious head. In the early 1800’s, the Bishops ceded this land to Baden. As a consequence, the village records are filed, by the LDS library, under Baden, because in 1872 the village was in Baden. And most of us identify the village as being in Baden. Today, the village is in Baden-Württemberg because those two states have since been merged into one government (or Stadt ).
In reading about the history of Baden, I find that it has varied in size, from a thousand square miles, to about ten thousand square miles. Again, it shows how flexible the boundaries were and how the political jurisdictions changed. Trying to follow all of these changes is discouraging to an America. It seems as if nothing is pinned down or exact. So we have to take a flexible attitude and flow with the current.
Maybe others can add to, or correct, what I have written in this note. I think that I have caught the flavor, but maybe some of the details need improving. Incidentally, as I have been writing the last dozen or so of the notes, I have been consulting The Christian Ohrndorf Family in Germany , by Julia Drake. I also consulted my Encyclopaedia Britannica (it’s older than I am).
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.