POST 93: GUIDE TO THE MORMON CHURCH’S FAMILIAL MICROFILMS: USING THEM TO UNRAVEL MY GREAT-GRANDFATHER’S LINEAGE

Note: This post tiers off the previous one where I discussed a Hermann Berliner with links to Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland], like my identically named great-grandfather; Ratibor is where my father was born and where many of my Jewish Silesian ancestors hail from. In trying to initially determine whether I was dealing with the same person, I accessed the Mormon Church’s online Jewish microfilm records found at familysearch.org to work out the solution. This post, thus, allows me to provide readers with a brief guide on how to access these records, as well as point out that even among primary source documents, which for me are the “gold standard,” errors can be found.

Related Posts:

Post 12: “State Archives in Katowice Branch in Racibórz (Ratibor)”

Post 92: Beware Identical Ancestral Names, The Case of My Maternal Great-Grandfather Hermann Berliner

 

Genealogists today have the advantage of being able to access online from the comfort of home many microfilm records from towns across the globe that once could only be ordered, paid for, and have mailed to a local Mormon Family History Library. These microfilms can be accessed for free by registering and creating a personal account at “familysearch.org.” (Figure 1)

 

 

I will walk readers through the simple steps for retrieving these digital records, using Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] as an example, the town in Upper Silesia where my father and many of his relatives were born and/or lived. After readers have created their free ancestry account, they should go to the portal page for “familysearch.org.” On the pulldown menu under “Search,” readers should select “Catalog” (Figure 2) which will take them to a page entitled “FamilySearch Catalog.” (Figure 3) Under “Place,” readers should type the name of the town they are seeking records from. In my case, I typed in Ratibor, although if I type in the current Polish name of the town, “Racibórz,” the results on the next screen will be slightly different. My suggestion, at least when researching towns formerly in Germany, is to type the former German town name as well as the current Polish town name; a simple Google search will give you the name of towns over time.

 

 

 

The “Catalog Print List” enumerates the records available for the town you have selected. For Ratibor, I was interested in “Jewish Records,” which yields “Matrikel, 1814-1940,” birth, marriage, and death registers for Ratibor from between 1814 and 1940. (Figure 4) A few things should be noted. First, the “Matrikel” are simply registers maintained by the Jewish synagogues. Second, they do not give you access to the underlying birth, marriage, and death certificates, assuming these still exist. Third, the “Matrikel” are not a complete register of all Jewish births, marriage, and deaths between 1814 and 1940. Because of the “Kulturkampf,” discussed in Post 12, after the early 1870’s, most birth, marriages, and deaths were no longer registered by religious denominations in Germany but were recorded as civil events. Oddly, the names of Jews who died following the “Kulturkampf” and were interred in the former Jewish cemetery in Ratibor or elsewhere in Germany are registered both in the Jewish microfilm records as well as in the civil ledgers.

 

 

Selecting “Matrikel, 1814-1940” yields a list of available digital films, in the case of Ratibor, LDS microfilms 1184447, 1184448, and 1184449. (Figure 5) On the far right, readers should see a camera icon on which they should click to be taken to the digital film. If a microfilm reel icon or key shows up above the camera icon, the microfilm is not generally available online and can only be viewed at the Mormon Family History Library in Salt Lake City.

 

 

I first accessed the microfilms for Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] almost 40 years ago on a visit to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. Years later, I would order and pay for these films to be sent to a local Mormon Family History Library, so I could leisurely examine and take notes on them. I created a table summarizing what I had found on births, deaths, and marriages for members of my extended family. However, given that the registers were handwritten in German and often indecipherable, my log was incomplete. Only more recently have I made the effort to have a German relative or friend translate previously unreadable words or phrases. This is considerably easier since individual microfilm pages can now easily be downloaded from the Mormon Church’s website for closer study. (Figure 6) Thus, I am constantly refining and learning new things from these microfilm, as I will illustrate below.

 

 

My maternal great-grandfather Hermann Berliner (1840-1910) is known to me through a single picture I have of him. (Figure 7) He was married to Olga Berliner née Braun (1852-1920), and the two were interred together in the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor. Together they had three children, my grandmother Else Bruck née Berliner (1873-1957), her older sister Margareth Braun née Berliner (1872-1942), who was murdered in the Holocaust, and a younger brother Alfred Max Berliner (1875-1921), who died young in Ratibor.

 

 

The Hermann Berliner who was the subject of Post 92 had a son, Ernst Berliner, born in 1878, which initially confused me into thinking my great-grandfather sired another child with a different woman, Sara Riesenfeld, although I eventually concluded they were two different Hermann Berliners. My great-grandfather was a “brauereimeister,” a master brewer (Figure 8), and likely inherited the brewery business from his father-in-law, Markus Braun, while the “other” Hermann Berliner was a Bank Director.

 

 

The birth register for Ratibor records the occupation or profession of the father. Even though I consider these registers primary source documents, my “gold standard” so to speak, they are not error-free. Consider the birth register listing for my grandmother Else Berliner. Her father is misidentified as a “maurermeister,” a master mason (Figure 9), when I know him to have been a master brewer. My German friend offered a possible explanation for this error. Upon my grandmother’s birth, her father’s profession may have been conveyed verbally, and the recorder may have misunderstood or incorrectly recorded what was said.

 

 

I discussed in Post 92 the process I followed in determining I was dealing with two different Hermann Berliners. Throughout the remainder of this post, I will focus on my great-grandfather, and how I figured out who his parents were. While this information was always in hand, it was only recently that a German friend translated a few key words that enabled me to understand what I had in hand.

Ratibor LDS microfilm roll 1184448 contains the death register for my great-grandfather Hermann Berliner, his wife and son, and his parents. The column headers and titles from the death register are italicized in German and translated in the table below; included is the information for Hermann (Figure 10) and his wife, Olga Berliner (Figure 11); Hermann’s father, Abraham Berliner (Figure 12); Hermann’s mother, Philippine Berliner (Figure 13); and Hermann’s son, Alfred Berliner (Figure 14):

 

Sterbmonat ev. Jahr	Sterbetag.	Namen	Beerdigungsort	Angehörige	Bemer- kungen
Month of death Protestant Year	Day of death	Name	Place of burial	Relative	Remarks (relationship of deceased)
1868		Abr. Berliner	Neisse	Stadtrath Berliner	Vater
1868		Abr. (Abraham) Berliner	Neisse [today: Nysa, Poland]	City councilor Berliner	Father
1907 März	31	Philippine Berliner	Leobschütz	Stadtr. Berliner	Mutter
1907 March	31	Philippine Berliner (née Glogauer)	Leobschütz [today: Głubczyce, Poland]	City councilor Berliner	Mother
3 September	1910	Hermann Berliner (Name in Hebrew)	Ratibor	Alfred Berliner Frau Bruck Frau Berliner	Vater                           “ Gatte
1910 September	3	Hermann Berliner	Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Alfred Berliner Else Bruck née Berliner Olga Berliner (née Braun)	Father                           “   Husband
1920/5680 August	23	Frau Olga Berliner	Ratibor	Frau Herm. Zweig Fr. Else Bruck Alfred Berliner	Schwester                 Mutter “
1920 August [5680 Hebrew year]	23	Mrs. Olga Berliner (née Braun)	Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Mrs. Hermine Zweig née Braun Mrs. Else Bruck (née Berliner) Alfred Berliner	Sister                Mother   “
1921/5680 Februar	19	Alfred Berliner (Name in Hebrew)	Ratibor	Frau Lotte Berliner	Gatte
1921 February [5680 Hebrew year]	19	Alfred Berliner	Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Mrs. Lotte Berliner (née Rothe)	Husband

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few comments on the table above. Part of my difficulty in recognizing Hermann Berliner’s parents is that his forename was not recorded in the death register. Instead, he was identified as “Stadtrath Berliner,” City Councilor Berliner, clearly a prominent citizen of Ratibor. “Frau Bruck,” that is to say “Else Bruck,” was my grandmother. Finally, because the relationship of the witnesses to the deceased was identified in the last column, I was eventually able to work out all their names and, in the case of wives, figure out their maiden names.

 

From the death register, I know that Hermann and Olga Berliner, and their son Alfred Berliner all died and were interred in Ratibor. In the case of Hermann’s parents, however, I learned his father Abraham Berliner was buried in Neisse (Figure 12), Germany [today: Nysa, Poland] and his mother Philippine Berliner was interred in Leobschütz, Germany [today: Głubczyce, Poland]. (Figure 13) Consequently, I next turned my attention to the LDS microfilm rolls, respectively, for Neisse and Leobschütz to see if I could learn anything more about Hermann’s parents.

LDS microfilm 1184444 includes the Jewish deaths in Neisse, Germany for the period when Abraham Berliner died. Given that Abraham died in Ratibor, supposedly in 1868, I had no reason to think his death was also registered in Neisse, yet it was. The only Abraham Berliner listed in the Neisse index of deaths died on the 21^st of June 1858 (Figure 15), NOT in 1868 as LDS Microfilm Roll 1184448 indicates. Given the precise death date in the Neisse register, I am inclined to believe 1858 is the correct year of Abraham’s death and this is in fact Hermann Berliner’s father. Readers may wonder why the Neisse death register is typed rather than handwritten. Occasionally, original registers are degraded so that for the data to be preserved, the original information must be transcribed.

 

 

In 2018, when I visited the archives in Ratibor for the third time, where the civil birth, marriage, and death records are stored from the time of the “Kulturkampf,” I found Hermann Berliner’s death certificate. (Figure 16) This not only confirmed his death date, but also showed where he was born in 1840, the town of Zülz, Germany [today: Biała Prudnicka, Poland]. So, along with Neisse and Leobschütz, this provided yet a third venue to search for microfilms. (Figure 17)

 

 

 

Hermann’s death certificate also gives his mother’s maiden name, Philippine Glogauer. As previously noted, she was buried in Leobschütz, Germany [today: Głubczyce, Poland]. Like her husband, Abraham Berliner, whose death was recorded in both Ratibor and Neisse, Philippine Berliner’s death was registered in both Ratibor and Leobschütz. Unlike vital records from Ratibor, some from Leobschütz have been digitized and are available on ancestry.com; I was able to find Philippine Berliner’s death certificate here. (Figure 17) Suffice it to say, her death certificate “pushes” Hermann Berliner’s lineage back yet another generation, naming his father-in-law as Isaac Glogauer. Philippine’s death certificate shows that like her husband and son she too was born in Zülz, Germany [today: Biała Prudnicka, Poland]. Family History Library Zülz Microfilm 1271493 registers births for all three of them, as well as the birth of one of Hermann Berliner’s younger siblings Julchen Berliner in 1842; Hermann Berliner had additional younger siblings, but they were born elsewhere in Silesia.

 

 

In closing, I would urge readers to focus not on the names of my family members whom I discuss but rather on the process of how I recovered data on their vital events, Readers may be able to follow a similar path to extract comparable information for their ancestors. As you do so, you too may discover that primary source documents are not without errors but that they may still be an improvement over vital data found in family trees developed by genealogists who copy and perpetuate inaccurate information.

 

 

 

VITAL STATISTICS FOR HERMANN BERLINER & HIS IMMEDIATE RELATIVES

 

NAME (relationship)	VITAL EVENT	DATE	PLACE	SOURCE OF DATA
Hermann Berliner (self)	Birth	28 May 1840	Zülz, Germany [today: Biała Prudnicka, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Zülz Microfilm 1271493 (births) (FIGURE 19)
	Death	3 September 1910	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	State Archives in Katowice Branch in Raciborz death certificate (FIGURE 16); FHL Ratibor Microfilms 1184447 (burials) (FIGURE 20) & 1184448 (deaths) (FIGURE 10); tombstone from former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor
Olga Braun (wife)	Birth	23 July 1852	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	FHL Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
	Death	23 August 1920	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	FHL Ratibor Microfilms 1184447 (burials) (FIGURE 20) & 1184448 (deaths) (FIGURE 11); tombstone from former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor
Margareth Berliner (daughter)	Birth	19 March 1872	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	FHL Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
	Marriage (to Siegfried Brauer)	14 July 1891	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	State Archives in Katowice Branch in Raciborz marriage certificate
	Death	24 November 1942	Theresienstadt Ghetto, Czechoslovakia	Yad Vashem Victims’ Database
Else Berliner (daughter)	Birth	3 March 1873	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	FHL Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births) (FIGURE 9)
	Marriage (to Felix Bruck)	11 February 1894	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	State Archives in Katowice Branch in Raciborz marriage certificate
	Death	18 February 1957	Manhattan, New York	New York, Hebrew Burial Records (HFBA), Silver Lake and Mount Richmond Cemeteries, 1899-1991
Alfred Max Berliner (son)	Birth	6 November 1875	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	State Archives in Katowice Branch in Raciborz marriage certificate; tombstone from former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor
	Marriage (to Charlotte Rothe)	17 January 1909	Meseritz, Germany [today: Międzyrzecz, Poland]	Meseritz, Germany marriage certificate from ancestry.com
	Death	19 February 1921	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	FHL Ratibor Microfilm 1184448 (deaths); Ratibor death notice (FIGURE 21); tombstone from former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor
Abraham Berliner (father)	Birth	8 June 1818	Zülz, Germany [today: Biała Prudnicka, Poland]	FHL Zülz Microfilm 1271493 (births) (FIGURE 22)
	Death	21 June 1858	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland	FHL Ratibor Microfilm 1184448 (deaths) (FIGURE 12); FHL Neisse Microfilm 1184444 (deaths) (FIGURE 15)
	Burial	1858	Neisse, Germany [today: Nysa, Poland]	FHL Neisse Microfilm 1184444 (deaths)
Philippine “Zipperle” Glogauer (mother)	Birth	25 March 1814	Zülz, Germany [today: Biała Prudnicka, Poland]	FHL Zülz Microfilm 1271493 (births) (FIGURE 23); FHL Leobschütz Microfilm 1184434 (deaths) (FIGURE 24); Leobschütz death certificate from ancestry.com (FIGURE 17)
	Death	31 March 1907	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland	FHL Ratibor Microfilm 1184448 (deaths) (FIGURE 13); FHL Leobschütz Microfilm 1184434 (deaths) (FIGURE 23); Leobschütz death certificate from ancestry.com (FIGURE 18)
	Burial	1907	Leobschütz, Germany [today: Głubczyce, Poland]	FHL Ratibor Microfilm 1184448 (deaths) (FIGURE 13); Leobschütz death certificate from ancestry.com (FIGURE 18)