This book is designed for the family researcher who has little or no knowledge of German but who nevertheless needs to make a translation of German-language documents. The dictionary covers thousands of German terms and defines them in single words or brief phrases.

Discover your roots!This guide provides proven strategies for tracing your family history, whether it originates in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Alsace Lorraine, or other Germanic regions. From maps and translations to pedigree charts, inside you'll find the information you need, featuring basic instruction for gathering, verifying, recording and organizing your findings.Inside you'll find:• a brief history of Germany and Germanic emigration• metho...

The riveting story of the Germania and its incarnations and exploitations through the ages.The pope wanted it, Montesquieu used it, and the Nazis pilfered an Italian noble's villa to get it: the Germania, by the Roman historian Tacitus, took on a life of its own as both an object and an ideology. When Tacitus wrote a not-very-flattering little book about the ancient Germans in 98 CE, at the height of the Roman Empire, he could not have foreseen that the Nazis would extol it as "a b...

The extraordinary story of a renaissance-era executioner and his world, based on a rare and overlooked journal.In a dusty German bookshop, the noted historian Joel F. Harrington stumbled upon a remarkable document: the journal of a sixteenth-century executioner. The journal gave an account of the 394 people Meister Frantz Schmidt executed, and the hundreds more he tortured, flogged, or disfigured for more than forty-five years in the city of Nuremberg. But the portr...

One of the most dramatic explorations of a German town in the grip of anti-Semitic passion ever written.In 1900, in a small Prussian town, a young boy was found murdered, his body dismembered, the blood drained from his limbs. The Christians of the town quickly rose up in violent riots to accuse the Jews of ritual murder—the infamous blood-libel charge that has haunted Jews for centuries. In an absorbing narrative, Helmut Walser Smith reconstructs the murder and th...

Break through your brick walls!Your family history research is humming along just fineyou've discovered a trove of old letters here, a census and a birth certificate there. Then something genealogists call a brick wall stops you cold: You can't find the record you need. Your great-grandmother's maiden name eludes you. You don't know where your immigrant ancestor was born.Now you can meet those obstacles with the advice in 101 Brick Wall Busters: Soluti...

Explore Your German Ancestry!Follow your family tree back to its roots in Bavaria, Baden, Prussia, Hesse, Saxony, Wurttemburg and beyond. This in-depth genealogy guide will walk you step by step through the exciting journey of researching your German heritage, whether your ancestors came from lands now in modern-day Germany or other German-speaking areas of Europe, including Austria, Switzerland, and enclaves across Eastern Europe.In this book, you'll learn...

Author William Diepenbrock, an American journalist, documents the fascinating personal history of the Diepenbrock clan and its related forebears.The tale stretches from the 1300s, when the family became land barons in what is today the Westphalia region of Germany, to modern day America.The project chronicles specific individuals who played significant roles in European history, the Catholic Church and the development of the United States.The project includes dozens...

The first complete biography of an influential historian whose dramatic life intersected with many great events and thinkers of the twentieth centuryThis is the first complete biography of Ernst Kantorowicz (1895–1963), an influential and controversial German-American intellectual whose colorful and dramatic life intersected with many of the great events and thinkers of his time. A medieval historian whose ideas exerted an influence far beyond his field, he is most ...

A comparative analysis of early witch trials in Lucerne, Nuremberg and Basel, within the context of criminal justice and social control. The case of Lucerne presents a fascinating interplay between witch trials and a transformation in the city's criminal procedure on one hand, and between witchcraft fears and social control on the other.

Otfried Hans Freiherr von Meusebach chose a life of hardship and freedom in Texas rather than a life of comfort and influence in his native Germany, where he had lived his formative years within a framework of unconstitutional government. In 1845 the young liberal relinquished his hereditary German title, left behind his close family ties and his various intellectual and political associations, and arrived in Texas as John O. Meusebach, commissioner-general for the Society for the Protection ...