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How to use the online Berlin directories

By Irene Newhouse

Go to the home page http://adressbuch.zlb.de/

To the right of the picture of the file cabinet with an open drawer, click on

Suche in den Berliner Adressbüchern

This brings up a page with a bunch of stuff on top you can ignore.  What really counts on this page are the ranges of years indicated in a column.  Pick the range you want.  Let’s, for instance, pick 1900-1924 & click on it.

This brings up a page with a similar list of the individual years in that range, in reverse chronological order.  Pick a year.  Let’s go with 1910.  For each year, there will usually be 2 entries. You want to pick the one that has nothing written next to it. That’s the actual directory.  The other option shows you the title page.

Now we’re at the actual sections of the directory.  They are:

Handhabung des Adressbuchs which is directions for use. 

Inhaltsverzeichnis which is table of contents & of little use in the online version.  If there’s another entry with something like “5 Einträge” written next to it, this is introductory material & not of particular value unless you can read German

Einwohnerverzeichnis means list of residents.  This is the section you usually want. It’s alphabetical by surname, but after that it gets complicated: First are members of the nobility with that name, alphabetical by given name.  Then come non-noble men.  They are not listed alphabetically by given name, but alphatically by occupation.  The last to be listed are women, invariably widows or single women.  Married women almost never had listings of their own.

Inserat means insertion & usually refers to ads.  They’re historically interesting & you may strike it lucky, but Berlin was huge & the odds are against it.

Sachregister means index

Geschäftsanzeigen means business announcements – ie ads

Theaterverzeichnis means list of theaters

Führer durch Berlins Vergnügungsetablissements  means guide to Berlin’s amusements.  There may not be such a section in older directories.

Behördenverzeichnis  This is the section that contains listings for all government departments.

Straßenverzeichnis This is the alphabetical list of city streets.  The residents of each address are listed by order of street number.  These bear checking out – people often married neighbors.

Handel- und Gewerbetreibende This is the list of businesses & craftsmen.  It’s not quite alphabetical!  That is, it’s alphabetical by category of business, with all of the businesses in that category listed alphabetically.

Vororte von Berlin  suburbs of Berlin.  May not be in older directories

Nachtrag Appendix.  This is for corrections & late entries

OK, let’s click on the 1910 Einwohnerverzeichnis, which will probably be the most common search you want to do.

This brings up a header, a search tree – which is useful. If you don’t get the group of pages you need, you can click anywhere on that tree to get back to a previous point in your search – and finally a list of the letters of the alphabet.  Let’s look for LUDWINOWSKY. We thus click on L. This brings up a page similar to the previous ones, with header, search tree & then listings of 2 or 3 letter combinations, depending on how common that initial letter is in German.  L’s real common & there’s lots.  We scroll down to Lud.  We’re going to have to trust an applet which the site requires, so click on “Yes” to continue. [You will have to signal your trust of this applet the first time you open a page image every session.  Now we get the header and then a gray window in which there’s a page image too small to read.  Scroll down your browser window until you can see the control buttons at the bottom of the gray window.  Ignore “Menű/Hilfe” because you can’t read it anyway. To the left, “Anfang” means “Beginning” & to the right “Ende” means End. “Vergrößern” means “Enlarge”.  “Drucken” means “print” & “Verkleinern” means “Reduce”.  Click on “Vergrößern” until you’re happy with the size & check out the page.  There may be a +1 to the right of “Menű/Hilfe”; this lets you move to the next page.  The pages are downloaded in chunks of no more than about 5 at a time. The last surname on this page is “Ludwig”, so we’ll have to go ahead 1 by clicking in “+1". 

I have not had any adverse effects on my computer from the page displayer applet. I have a popup killer, but it lets this message through. However, yours may be different or set more stringently. If  you run into problems viewing pages, your first step should be to reset your popup killer or turn it off.  I use these pages with Netscape. However, if you're using a different browser and still have problems, I recommend that your next step is to switch to Internet Explorer.

When you right click on the directory page image itself, you get a list of options. "Download" is the same in German. Be aware that the download gives you what you see - if you're looking at a much enlarged portion of a page, that is what you'll download. You might want to download both the full page and the enlarged portion of interest in order to be able to reference the page number of the directory when you write your family history. You should use a file name that makes sense to you, rather than the default name.

Can’t read the font?  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, aka Mormon, has “Research Guides” you can download on its site at http://www.familysearch.org. Download the one for Germany. It has in it examples of both the old German print & cursive scripts. 

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