2021

Körlin, Kolberg-Körlin – Land Records (Grundakten und Hypothekenakten)

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This expanding collection is comprised of mortgages, specific properties and their owners, and various other elements required for the transfer of land within the city to its various owners. In some cases, files on inheritance (Erben) can fill in gaps in family trees and suspected relatives because they tend to list all children with inheritance after the death of a parent–or in the case of a landowner, the death of a spouse. Documents about specific properties tend to include much more information than what might be expected.

(A list of our currently digitized documents can be found at the bottom of this page.)

While Grundbücher provide a great way to determine which properties were owned and by whom, knowing information about which volume or leaflet number corresponds with a family can help lead to other documents like those shown in the list below. These files are more specific and contain much more information than can be found in a Grundbuch and should be considered the next step after researching in Grundbücher. Documents specific to each property are a much more granular approach to research. The approach to using these tends to be “hit or miss” in terms of what information the documents will contain but can certainly be more rewarding.

According to Wikipedia, they contain all those important documents and deeds that have been created with regard to a land register for a particular piece of property. ) They are specially created files parallel to land registers, containing all deeds and documents that are related to a corresponding land register for a particular piece of property. The documents on the basis of which changes are made in the land register must be kept by the land registry. Grundakten and Hypothenakten are land and mortgage deeds that can contain:

  • Certificates of inheritance (Erbscheine)
  • Notary contracts (Notarverträge)
  • Registration and cancellation requests (Eintragungs- und Löschungsanträge)
  • Powers of attorney (Vollmachten)
  • Declarations of division (Teilungserklärungen)
  • Court ruling (Gerichtsurteil)

In terms of family history research, Grundakten are some of the most important documents to recover all of the history lost with the destruction of the church books and civil registers. However, these are also potentially the most expensive to find through a “needle in a haystack” approach. This is why digitization and indexing of the corresponding Grundbücher is so vital to this undertaking.

A page from signature 26/143/0/2.2/410 that helped me solve a mystery I had been working on for over six years, definitively resolving how all of the Seilermeister Sturm family in Körlin and Belgard were related.

This is an ongoing project, and newer additions will be added towards the bottom of the list. It is my hope that each of these would eventually have a brief description of their contents.

This collection was sponsored in part with funding by Michael Grudzielanek. We thank him for helping to make this effort possible.

 

This collection has not been transcribed yet.

Help us make these records more accessible for researchers worldwide. If you can read old script, we would love your help to make the entries in these books searchable. Please consider donating your time, even if it's just for a few pages. (We also use Google Sheets so you can see where the last person left off and where the work needs to be continued!)

If you're interested, please send an email to [email protected].

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