Finding German relatives in Germany or Hungary
 

My husband's German grandmother and his father entered the USA thru Ellis Island from Paks Hungary in 1913. We have their passenger record. What we would like to know is if we have relatives in Paks, Hungary which was their last place of Residence. I looked up names and numbers via the Internet and called some. But no one speaks English and we do not speak Hungarian or German.

Do you have any help to give us on how to find family relatives?

just topping for me :-)

You can do the genealogical thing through the Mormon church. Many of them in different areas have the microfiche from Europe of Birth and death records. My dad is going with me to do genealogical research in budapest for our family but he can go back with records to the mid 1800's. if I can be of any help you can email me at [email protected]. Good luck.

Have you tried ancestry.com? I have found some information there. They also have a message board that people use for finding relatives. You might also contact the Tourist Office in that town and ask if there is someone they could refer you to someone that speaks English. A couple of my cousins did that but they were taking it a step further and wanted someone who could take them on a tour of the town also. You might have some success with e-mail instead of phone. My success was mixed that way but I did get some information.
Good luck!

There have been quite a few posts from people looking for ancestors in Italy who have been successful in their attempts.

They have written letters - carefully translated into Italian (in your case, into Hungarian) - to the mayors of the towns where their ancestors came from, giving as much information as they could: first name, date of birth, etc.

They have received letters back, from the mayor or the registrar (I'm not sure that's the correct title, but anyway...) with information about their ancestors and invitations to visit the town. When they visited the town, someone squired them around to the people who were/might have been related to their ancestors.

Are you sure it's Paks and not Pecs, Hungary? And how sure are you about the German aspect?
My grandparents and their nine children insisted they were German (High German at that); until the day I showed them Gramps birth record from what was then Austria-Hungary, is now Slovakia

Tomboy,

I had the same question in my mind, but when I googled "Paks", it came up with a Hungarian-language Web site for the city of Paks in Hungary.

I'm of Hungarian origin and still speak it a little, and I have no idea how to pronounce Paks...

Hi cd, AT&T has a service where they will connect you to an operator that speaks the language you require. Well at least they did until SBC bought out AT&T.

The toll free # is (or was) 1-877-261-6608 When they answer you tell them you need an operator that can translate from English to Hungarian ( or German). They will require a credit card # for the charges. You do not have to be a customer of AT&T to use this service. You will wait a few minutes and that operator will come on the line. It is not inexpensive but in one or two minutes they will be able to tell you if the people at the phone numbers you have for Hungary and Germany know who your ancestors are etc. You can inquire about the cost per minute when you call the toll free number I posted here. You will be able to hear the conversation between the telephone operator and the person in Europe btw. Good luck to you regarding this search.

Thank you all so very much. What good information! I will try all your suggestions. I think I will start with AT&T and ask about Lutheran churches in Paks as my father-in-law was baptized in one there.
Also, I understand there was a family tailer business so if I have someone who can translate (AT&T) it might be a good start.
You are all so helpful! Thanks again.

Some good points there Tomboy. On my father's side of the family the legend was always that Great Grandpa was sent alone and penniless to the U.S. from Denmark by his parents in order to defy the German's attempt to draft him into their occupying army. I eventually learned that he actually came over here at the age of 16 with his Mother and three sisters after their father died under mysterious circumstances.

My mother's Hungarian family claimed that they were forced to leave a nice village in Hungary because of the changing political situation in Austro-Hungary. It took me hours and hours to find the village they left in Hungary. Only it wasn't in Hungary - it was in the Ukraine. Years later during WWII most of the village was exterminated because it was full of Jews. I'm not absolutely sure but I just might be Jewish! Oy vay!

Our ancestors left Europe for a variety of reasons. Oftentimes they didn't tell their descendents the truth about why and where they came from.

Just a reminder: What we in the US would call Lutheran, in Germany seems to be called Evangelische (sp?), and in Hungary would probably not be Lutheran. So before you call ATT to get the translator to ask about Lutheran churches, you might Google "Hungary church not catholic" or something similar to find out what it's called there. Of course, since your Google language preference would be English, once you find an appropriate website, you might look to see if it had a Hungarian page, so you could see the same word in Hungarian.

Point well taken Tomboy.

Tomboy,

I guess it all depends on what you call German. In earlier centuries, Germans were invited to settle in Eastern European countries to bring with them the knowledge of infrastructure from their home areas. A classic expample of these were the "Donau Schwaben", people from the Schwäbisch areas of Germany who floated down the Danube to eastern Europe. These people retained their German language and culture, enough so that after World War II they were forced to go back to Germany.

I am three generatations removed from Germany, but I still consider myself as German.

So, just because they were born in Hungary doesn't mean they weren't German.

On the other hand, "High German" is a German dialect, a form of the German language. They might have spoken "high German", which is just the form of German taught in the schools, but there is no such thing as a people being "high German".

My grandfather liked to say that he was German. Turns out he was Romanian, and studied to be a tailor in Germany. He was proud of his knowledge of German - I think it was the sophisticated thing back in Central Europe in the days of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Of course the borders have changed over the years, which also complicates things.

Bear in mind that borders (particularly those of Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Ukraine and Poland) have changed several times in the last hundred years. It has been entirely possible for people to have had several different legal nationalities without moving house, if they were lucky enough to be allowed to survive and stay where they started.