Berlin Evangelical Parish Jurisdictions

by Sonja Höke-Nishimoto, 1991

Research in Berlin is complicated by the great size of the city and the large number of parishes. This register is intended to help you identify the parish in whose church books your ancestor may have been recorded.

Links to the street index to Evangelical (Lutheran) Parish Jurisdictions:

A-B, C-F, G-I, J-K, L-M, N-R, S, T-Z

The central part of Berlin (the historical center) was altered a
lot during and after WWII. Hauke Fehlberg has done a marvelous job putting maps of the central part of Berlin showing the streets as of 1812 and 1908 on his website:
        http://mitglied.lycos.de/Pomerania2/
(On the left menu click on 'historical maps' and then 'Berlin'.) A modern street map which can be used in connection with this gazetteer and the historical maps can be found on the web at:    
        http://www.stadtplandienst.de/query?ORT=b
(It also includes some other interesting links for the city of Berlin.)

How to Use the Street Guide

In this register you will find a listing of all the streets in Berlin and the parish jurisdictions for six different years between 1874-1917 as recorded in the street indexes [Straßen Verzeichnisse] of the Berlin city directories.

The years included in this register are 1874, 1881, 1888, 1900, 1910, and 1917. In some cases there are no changes in parish jurisdictions noted over the course of the 43-year time span. In other cases, the parish jurisdiction was different each year. In such cases, you can refer either to the street indexes in the microfilmed directory for the year you are searching, or you can search the parish records listed both before and after the year your ancestor was living on that street.

All listings are street [Straße] names unless otherwise noted as an alley or lane [Allee] or [Gasse] or place or square [Platz], or such.

This register can be of assistance only when you know the street address of your Berlin ancestor. You can often determine this by using the Berlin city directories for the appropriate time period. Berlin city directories are available on 315 rolls of microfilm at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, and through its Family History Centers.

You can find a more detailed description of the microfilmed city directories of Berlin in the Family History Library Catalog under: Berlin, Brandenburg, Preußen, Germany - Directories.

The directories are divided into sections. Of greatest genealogical value are the alphabetized listings of city inhabitants with addresses. Search for your ancestor under the alphabetical listing of names in the time period your ancestor lived in Berlin. When you find your ancestor listed, write down the street and house number where he resided. Then turn to the listing of that street in this publication to determine which parish he attended in the year closest to the time period when your ancestor lived there.

Other sections of the directories are businesses, public officers, societies, inhabitants' addresses listed by the street they resided on, rather than by their name. The suburbs of Berlin were in many, but not all of the directories. The suburbs of Berlin include: Baumschulenweg (Treptow), Boxhagen-Rummelsburg, Britz, Charlottenburg, Dahlem, Friedenau, Friedrichsberg, Friedrichsfelde, Grunewald, Halensee, Heinersdorf, Hohen Schönhausen and Schönholz, Nikolassee, Ober-Schönweide, Pankow, Plötyensee, Reinickendorf, Rixdorf, Schlachtensee, Schmargendorf, Schöneberg, Schönholy, Steglitz, Stralau, Südende, Tegel, Tempelhof, Weißensee, Neu-Weißensee, Westend, Wilhelmsberg, Wilmersdorf, and Zehlendorf.  

These directories on microfilm begin in the year 1799 and continue through the year 1963. Some of these directory films include a street index [Straßen Verzeichnis] for each street. These street indexes note the jurisdictions for the civil registration offices, the city district numbers, poverty assistance offices, orphanages, school districts, court districts, parishes, police districts, and postal districts. The directories for some years also include the voting districts. Terms used for these jurisdictions in the headings vary from directory to directory. These street indexes are the source of information for this publication.

Street indexes were included in the city directories from 1874-1925. After 1925 parish jurisdictions are listed in parish indexes. In this system each parish is listed alphabetically with the streets and house numbers which are assigned to it.

Occasionally street indexes note more than one parish for an entire street or certain house numbers within the street. In such cases, the inhabitants apparently had a choice of attending any of the three parishes listed. All additional assigned parishes for a given street are listed with "(also)" notation as in the example below:

The format of the street indexes varies from year to year. For example, some directories list parish jurisdictions by house numbers; others list the jurisdictions by a street to street description such as "From Krupp street to Perleberger". In such instances, there is no way to cross reference the descriptive and house number entries, therefore, the descriptions are listed in this register as they were listed in the original street indexes.

When house numbers are not noted, you may need to search the records of each parish listed for the street your ancestor lived on. For other years, house numbers may be given for the same street. House numbers are listed separately from the "descriptions" and are given in the column for the appropriate year. These other entries may help you more easily determine the parish for those years where the description was not by house number.

Some streets were named only with a number, such as Street 19 [Straße 19]. There appears to have been some inconsistency in the way these streets were listed from year to year. In some cases there seems to be duplicated usage of certain numbers and the actual parish jurisdictions are not always clear. In some cases more than one parish is listed for what seems to be the same street. It may be necessary to check each of the parishes associated with the street number. These streets were not listed with any parish jurisdictions in the 1917 directory.

Some streets did not exist in earlier years, but apparently came into existence as new housing was developed. Other streets are listed in the earlier directories but not in the later ones. It is not certain if these omissions were accidental or if the street names were changed or discontinued. It is also possible that there were no residences on those streets in all years covered by directories. For this reason, parish jurisdictions may not be listed for all streets in Berlin for all years in this register.

For residents on streets near the train stations [Eisenbahn], look under the heading of Eisenbahn for the specific train station needed.

The Cathedral [Dom] did not have any specific streets assigned to it. So you should check the cathedral records for births, marriages, and deaths if your ancestors are not found in the records of their assigned parish. The Charite parish also has no streets assigned to it, but was part of the Sankt Petri Parish. The Family History Library has records for both the Petri and Charite Parishes and for the Cathedral Church.

Spelling & Alphabetization

The inconsistent spelling of street names from one directory to the next is a problem. In some cases where alternate spellings were used, such as the street name of "Colonie" which was also listed as "Kolonie", they are listed twice in this register for easier reference. Other variations in street names are handled the same way as in the case of "Ostbahnhof" which is also listed as "Am Ostbahnhof".

In the original street indexes, the street called "Unter den Linden" is listed as, "Linden, Unter den". This register lists this street alphabetically as "Unter den Linden". This method has been applied consistently also for "Am, An der, Alte, Neue, Hinter dem, Klein, Groß," and similar prefixes on street names. Words with an Umlaut (") are alphabetized as though there were no Umlaut. The German letter "ß" is alphabetized as "ss".

Berlin Parish Listing

The following is a list of the Berlin parishes included in this register. A single asterisk * indicates that some records of the parish ahve been microfilmed and are available for research at the Family History Library and family history centers (1991). A double asterisk ** indicates that some or all of the available records have been extracted through the LDS church extraction program.

Although there are many other parishes in Berlin, they were not included in this book because the information was not available: they were not listed in the street indexes of Berlin; and no other sources available have provided the information necessary to identify the parish boundaries. Perhaps some of these were smaller denominations and may only have had one parish which served the entire city of Berlin. Other parishes which were not included may have served specific groups of people such as the military parish, the orphan's parish, and prison parishes.

The abbreviations for the parishes as used in this register are also listed alphabetically in a separate file.