It was a common practice during the partition of Poland to rename cities, towns and villages from Polish to German. If you do not know the Polish name of the place your ancestors originated from, the research may be a challenge as the German names are not in use anylonger.
Kartenmeister
www.kartenmeister.com is the biggest database of its kind with over 103 thousand places names located East of the Oder and Neisse rivers – which are the Western borders of today’s Poland. The area covered by the database is coloured blue on the map.
If you know a German name of the place, this tool will give you information on:
- today’s name of the place
- alternate names in the past along with time boundaries
- its geographical location along with a link to google maps
- Lutheran and Catholic parishes the place belonged to
- location description
- population at a specific point in time in the past
The website is available in English and more details regarding research strategies can be found there.
Good luck !
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