At the beginning of the 18th century, the population growth gave rise to an increased demand for food. Agriculture therefore became more interesting to the landlords. They exerted a higher amount of obligatory labour days and serf payments from their subjects. Some landlords raised obligatory labour to a level that…
What’s new? It has been less than two months since the Austrian Society for Research on Genealogy and Regional Heritage (ÖFR) went online. The feedback that we have received has exceeded everything we might have expected. In the meantime, the board and many of our members have not been idle.…
Register of Swiss Surnames According to Art. 37 Par. 1 of the Swiss Federal Constitution, Swiss citizenship requires the citizenship of a community and the respective canton. The “Familiennamenbuch der Schweiz”, i.e. the Register of Swiss Surnames, is an invaluable tool for genealogists and historians. It offers a comprehensive…
The Austrian Media Library – Historical films online! The Austrian Media Library (Österreichische Mediathek) is preserving about 550,000 recordings and videos of different formats, mainly shellac records, vinyl records, audio cassettes, CDs, video cassettes and DVDs. In total, more than two million individual recordings are available. The entire (digitised) collection…
Surnames and their spelling variations Time and again, beginners and those already advanced in their family research stumble across the many spelling variations they encounter when researching their ancestors. Univ.-Doz. Dr. Anna L. Staudacher, MAS, has written a highly interesting article on this topic for the online portal “Austria Forum”…
