It’s been a busy time recently for the Germany Project! Check out what we’ve done in the past several weeks:
-
The much-anticipated re-launch of our Prussia Team happened on May 15. Like each of our regional team pages, the Prussia Team page offers a list of resources for researching in that place and era. The page will be expanded with new info and resources as we find them. Do you have a resource to share? Post a comment on the team page and we’ll add it!
-
Our five Profile Improvement Teams are looking for project members (who have made at least 1,000 contributions) to join us and help improve German profiles. We have teams set up for Managed Profiles, Data Doctors, Sourcerers, Connectors and Arborists. Working on these teams benefits WikiTree as a whole by improving the accuracy of German profiles and connecting them to the main tree. It is a great way to volunteer for the project!
-
Have you ever wondered which German location name to add to WikiTree’s location data fields? It can be very difficult to determine. We recently posted Germany Project Location Field Guidelines on G2G (see this post for discussion). These guidelines are not “official policy” but we hope that our members will find them useful and informative. For even more information on the history of German locations, see Dieter Lewerenz’s: German Territorial Structure in the Course of History.
-
In June, we also proposed that the Germany Project Name Field Guidelines should be added to WikiTree's Name Field Guidelines under the Special Naming Conventions heading, along with the guidelines of other projects. The G2G proposal can be seen HERE and we’d appreciate your votes, input and/or opinions. The Name Field Guidelines has loads of info: everything from using multiple “proper first names” to using umlauts. For some historical background, see this page, also done by Dieter: German Names.
-
We updated our Project Box (to be used only on profiles managed by the project) to read: “____ is managed by the Germany Project” (it previously read: ___ has German Roots). The {{German Roots Sticker}} is unchanged and reads “____ has German Roots”.
-
We’ve added the Germany Project as the profile manager to 20+ Living Notables, two of which are Federal Chancellors (Bundeskanzler). The project is also currently at work on sourcing, connecting and improving the biographies of all 8 Bundeskanzler (1949-present). A list of ALL the project’s managed profiles can be seen HERE (sorted by birth year). NOTE: You need to have been a Germany project member for at least 3 months to work on living notables profiles.
-
For fun, we added a “Where in the World Are You?” map for our members to add their locations (see it HERE). The idea to do this was shamelessly copied from the England Project - kudos to Fran and the England Project! ;-)
-
Do you have a German Familienbuch (regional family book) that is not available online? Are you willing to do look-ups? Project member Carl Siebert started a list of books and members that are willing to share info from these books, that page is here: Familienbücher: German Family Books. Thanks for this great idea Carl!
-
We added a couple of new external resources to our project page: Gefallenendenkmäler (War Memorials): 1618-present, and an online project: Grabsteine (tombstones).
-
FINALLY, please consider joining the Germany Genies for WikiTree’s third Connect-a-Thon which will be held July 23-26. Answer the G2G join post HERE and ask to be added to the Germany Genies team. It will be a lot of fun and will benefit our shared tree tree-mendously!
If you’re not already a Germany Project member, please join us! To join the project, you need to: (1) have been a WikiTree member for 90 days, (2) have made 100+ contributions, and (3) have an interest and appreciation of all things German. The only participation requirement is responding to member check-ins twice a year. Answer our JOIN POST and we’ll get back to you.
Dankeschön für das Lesen! Traci & Kylie - Germany Project leaders
