Monday, January 5, 2015

Raschwitz or Rašovice? Municipality lexicon of Litoměřice archives

There are many useful tools available online, some created by the volunteers and genealogy fans, other created by the archives themselves. One of those which I see as extremely useful and were created by the archives, is the Municipality lexicon of Litoměřice archives which is available on website http://www.soalitomerice.cz/slovnik/slovnik.php?lang=en.

It's available in Czech, English and German which makes the search there much easier for those who don't speak Czech. This lexicon contains all villages and towns in northern and north-western Bohemia - that area which is in scope of State Regional Archives in Litoměřice. 

It is very very helpful for the research in this area. Most of the places there had both Czech and German names - and parish books are mainly in German so you find only the German version of the village name there. This lexicon becomes handy in such cases - and as many people from these areas moved overseas, many readers of this blog have ancestors there.

Lexicon contains not only both version of the municipality name, but also additional information about districts (both political and court district in 1930), about domain to which the town or village belonged (just before the large administrative change in 1848), also about parish... There are notes added to some of the villages, such as "zlikvidována" (liquidation) or "další název" (another name) etc.

Screenshot of the lexicon

I mentioned Rašovice in the title of this blog post - and this village is quite a good example. It had two very similar names so it's not hard to find it on a historical map: 

Current and historical map of Rašovice, both from Mapy.cz

The village is written as Raschwitz or Raschowitz in old records (prior to 1918), because it was located in the Sudetenland, ie. area inhabitat mainly by Germans. This case is easy because the names are almost the same in Czech and German (sch in German is read the same way as š in Czech, tz is read as c). 

But there are many villages which have Czech and German names totally different. Here are some examples: Kuřivody - Hühnerwasser (but in fact, Hühn means kuře (chicken) and wasser voda (water)), Horní Sedlo - Pass, Ostré - Neuland, Pertoltice - Neu Berzdorf, Valy - Schanzendorf. It's easier to check the lexicon than to try to locate the village on the map.

Search in the lexicon is quite easy - and you can enter only a part of the village name (the one you are sure about). The lexicon will list all the villages with that string in their name. So if you are sure only about "aschowitz", it will list all the villages which contain "aschowitz". And there are not too many of them. :)

4 comments:

  1. Hi! Thank you for spotlighting this tool. I have been wondering about the village of Hrdlovka in this area. It has had several different names, but I have found it unmarked on the most modern maps. Do you think that it no longer exists as it may have when my grandmother was born there in 1904? At one point my grandmother thought that perhaps the village had been totally consumed by the mining that went on there.

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    1. Judi, Hrdlovka was destroyed because of the coal mining - it was demolished between 1963 and 1975. People living in Hrdlovka were moved mainly to Osek which is not far away.

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  2. Some of my Kukral ancestors lived in Brezi u Tyna nad Vltavou. Was there a German form name for this town? Was it consumed by Temelin?

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  3. This case is easy because the names are almost the same in Czech and German (sch in German is read the same way as š in Czech, tz is read as c). for beginners

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