Preliminary Survey of the German Collection (Finding Aids to the Microfilmed Manuscript Collection of the Genealogical Society of Utah, No. 2)

The largest collection of filmed manuscripts in the world, more than a million 100 foot rolls, is used only sparingly by the world's academic community and other genealogical researchers. This problem is a result of misinformation or lack of information about the Genealogical Society of Utah's collection. It is precisely this situation that the series Findings Aid to the Microfilmed Manuscript Collection of the Genealogical Society of Utah is designed to correct. The scope of the collection is truly international. The declared intention of the Society is "to gather records on everyone who has ever lived". As astonishing as this statement may appear, this is the Society's goal. The Preliminary Survey is planned to give the researcher rather precise information about the holdings of parish and civil registers in large national collections. The genesis of the German collection held by the Genealogical Society of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints lies largely in the activities of a very dedicated member of that church, who was also a civil servant in the Third Reich. The collapse of Hitler's Germany in 1945 gave this Mormon the opportunity to secure for his church many valuable records which otherwise would have been lost or, in later years, closed to access. After 1949, when the German Democratic Republic was established, the far less casual East German authorities made the record gathering project much more difficult. This survey provides information on parish and civil records by province and town; it indicates the nature of other materials available, including where that material was originally filmed, the time span it covers, and the number of rolls available. In addition, by explaining in some detail the methods and specific problems of information retrieval at the Society, we hope to save the researcher time consuming delays.