“So, he was a bastard.” This is a reaction I heard when revealing that a person’s ancestor was born out of wedlock. The word stings, and there is a stigma attached to it. Nonetheless, you don’t get to pick your ancestors, and when you go looking for your stories you might be surprised.

For the beginner genealogist, assuming that an ancestor was not born out of wedlock can limit one’s ability to find that ancestor. I spent quite some time baffled about why I could not find Victor Eifert’s birth in Germany. The answer was that he was born Victor Brell.

In this article, I’ll provide some helpful pointers on finding illegitimate ancestors in Germany, specifically using Matricula’s digitized Catholic church books. I’ll also provide some background on illegitimacy in Germany, because there is more complexity to the subject than the average person might perceive.

How to Find Illegitimate Ancestors

You’re going to need some information to get started.

  • Town of birth: German church books were published at the parish church level. Knowing the town of your ancestor’s birth will enable you to narrow down to the parishes nearby. Knowing the region (e.g. Fulda) is helpful, but there could be forty parishes in that region, and you may end up wasting a lot of time.
  • Birth date: This will make your search far easier. This may not always be exact. I would leave wiggle room for plus or minus one year. In addition, baptisms sometimes happened on the day of birth, but also may have happened several days following your ancestors’ birth.
  • Mother’s maiden name: As you’ll see in the example below, in the baptism of illegitimate children, the mother’s maiden name was used.

Armed with this information, you can begin your search.

Using Baptismal Records to Find Illegitimate Ancestors

Matricula has digitized thousands of German Catholic church books, with information dating back to the 17th century. For Protestant churches, Archion is a database of digitized church books. The church book format is very similar between Catholic and Protestant, but since I am more familiar with the former, this is what I’ll use in my example.

Reading Baptismal Records

If you’re lucky, the church book you’re looking at will have a registry of baptisms, an alphabetical list of people that provides a page number where the entry is. Look for “RegTaufe” in the menu. If you’re unlucky, you’ll have to sort through the images to find the date you’re looking for.

Depending on the time period you’re dealing with, you’ll need to be able to understand either Latin or German. You don’t need to know the language, but you need to be able to read enough to use a translation program. Another method is to find and join a transcription group on Facebook. There are many people willing to help.

For illegitimate ancestors, there are a few words to look for. “Fillius illegitimus,” or “fillia illegitima” are typically used to describe a birth out of wedlock, the former to describe a boy and the latter a girl. Here’s an example found in a baptism record from 1708 near Fulda.

There are some other contextual clues you can find in the Latin baptism records:

  • Patre incerto: This means that the father of the child is uncertain.
  • Extra matrimonio: Born out of wedlock.
  • Fugitivus: The father was not present.
  • Fornicatio: The meaning here should be obvious.

Finding the Father

If you are lucky, the father has later been identified, and the priest went back to the baptismal entry to note the father’s name. That’s the case with this baptism from 1792.

If that isn’t the case, there may be another route to finding out who your illegitimate ancestor’s father was. Churches also typically kept “house books.” These are a kind of census for the people of that parish. If you can find the house book record for your ancestor, particularly the mother’s family, it might yield some information.

In this case, we see that Maria Elisabeth Brell had two children, and that the father was Michael Eifert:

Other Resources

If the baptismal records or house books are not digitized, you may get some help by contacting the “Bistumsarchiv,” or the diocesan archive, of the diocese in question. For example, searching for “Bistumsarchiv Trier” will get you where you need to go.

DNA could also be helpful in confirming a relationship, but for the purposes of this article I am focusing on what can be found through other research.

Now that we have some direction on finding an illegitimate ancestor in Germany, let’s talk about the issue of illegitimacy in general.

Historical Causes of Illegitimacy in Germany

A study referenced in The History of the Family notes that across Europe “in the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, bastardry increased, while punishment for fornication and bastardry decline.” (Source)

There is one obvious cause of illegitimacy that needs no further explanation. However, there are nuances in why there were illegitimate births in Germany during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Change in Moral Norms

In his book Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany, author Jonathan Sperber notes that the clergy and Prussian officials blamed the “French spirit of freedom” for an erosion of moral norms.

The French had abolished all ordinances of the old regime closing the taverns during the hours of worship as a way of showing their “contempt for divine service.” It was the revolutionary heritage, the “French spirit of freedom,” which was responsible for the “traces of disobedience to be felt here and there for the lack of “respect and religious devotion.” Everywhere the Catholic clergy drew the consequences and called for a battle against these baneful influences. The priests demanded that inns and taverns be closed during morning and afternoon services and that dancing as well as fairs and other worldly festivities be limited, restricted, or abolished.

Popular catholicism in Nineteenth Century Germany, Sperber

The spirit of the French Revolution in in 1789, along with the Napoleonic wars which carried it into Germany, may have led to higher illegitimacy. But what statistics are available shows that the rise in illegitimacy began in Europe in 1750. This may have been in part due to marriage laws.

Marriage Law

While it might sound totally foreign to the modern reader, as late as the 1830s a couple required legal permission to marry. In Bavaria, for example, permission from the local government was required for marriage from 1578 through the 1860s. Priests caught marrying couples without permission were fined 100 guilders (Source).

In 625 Jahre Buchenrod by Raimund Henkel that in Fulda a couple was required to get permission to marry from the Princely Military Command, as well as a guarantee that there was no objection from the community. A contract was drawn up with dowry and other promises of support from the parents of the bride.

In the same locality in 1715, proving assets of 300 guilders was required by the Bishopric before one could marry, with some exceptions for people with a skilled trade. Moreover, one could not apprentice for a skilled trade unless they were married.

Generally speaking, these laws were intended to prevent poor families from becoming a burden on the town and state. Across Europe fornication was also a violation of the law applied in various ways in 18th and 19th-century Europe. Nonetheless, in the early decades of the 19th century, illegitimate births in many places outnumbered legitimate births. (Source)

Every ancestor’s story is a little different. In the case of my own family tree, there were four illegitimate children for one mother, but we know for certain that at least three of these were from the same father.

Marriage was not easy for couples, particularly lower classes and people who were impoverished. We find many cases of an illegitimate birth later legitimized by marriage.

Questions?

If you have any questions about finding ancestors in German church books, or would like help learning more about your family history, please feel free to contact me.