These are the primary free and subscription databases used for German genealogy research. Bookmark this page — it covers every major archive, church book portal, gazetteer, and emigration list you will need.
Church Record Portals
- Matricula — data.matricula-online.eu — free digitised Catholic church books for large parts of Germany and Austria, parish by parish. The Catholic researcher’s first stop. See our full portal guide.
- Archion — archion.de — the Protestant church book portal, subscription-based, with millions of digitised Kirchenbücher pages from the Landeskirchen archives. Essential for Protestant lines. Covered in the same portal guide.
- FamilySearch Germany collections — familysearch.org — free, with vast filmed German church and civil records; coverage varies by region and some films are viewable only at affiliate libraries.
Gazetteers & Maps (Finding the Village)
- Meyers Gazetteer — meyersgaz.org — the indispensable index of every place in the pre-WWI German Empire, with map links and parish pointers. The German equivalent of the townland hunt: see our village-finding guide.
- Kartenmeister — kartenmeister.com — place-name conversion for the lost eastern territories (East Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia), German to Polish/Russian names.
- GenWiki / CompGen — genealogy.net — the German genealogy society’s free ecosystem: gazetteers, local heritage books (Ortsfamilienbücher), and databases.
Civil Registration
- Standesamt records (from 1876) — births, marriages, deaths held by local registry offices and, past the privacy thresholds, by state and municipal archives — increasingly digitised on Ancestry, FamilySearch, and archive portals. See the civil records guide.
- Landesarchiv portals — the federal-state archive systems, many with free digitised civil registers; coverage is state-by-state.
Emigration Records
- Hamburg Passenger Lists (1850–1934) — the surviving great outbound archive, recording emigrants’ home towns — indexed on Ancestry. The crown jewel: our complete guide.
- Ellis Island & Castle Garden — free US arrival searches for the destination side.
- Bremen lists — largely destroyed; surviving fragments and reconstructions covered in the emigration records guide.
Subscription Databases
- Ancestry.com German collections — the Hamburg lists, extensive church book and civil record sets, and the US-side immigration records that anchor most chains.
- MyHeritage German records — strong European trees and record matching; the bridge to relatives still in Germany.
- Findmypast — useful for German emigrants who paused in Britain.
DNA Testing for German Ancestry
DNA testing can complement document research by confirming family connections and identifying living German relatives who may hold records. See our dedicated DNA guides: start at the DNA Testing for German Ancestry hub or jump to the 2026 comparison of all four services.