Extent of the files in the Archive in Katowice
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Dear fellow researchers
I have hit a dead end in my research. Any help would be highly appreciated.
I am currently looking for information concerning my great great grandfather and his son, my great-grandfather.
Jerzy (Georg) Rhenisch
He was born on the 31.12.1972 in Katowice area castle (Schloss)
married 15.04.1901 in Katowice (Nr 59/190)
His son was
Johannes Georg Reinhold Rhenisch
Born 11.07.1903 in Huta Laura
Married on the 24.09.1929 in BytomJerzy Rhenisch was administrative director of the Górnośląskie Zjednoczone Huty Królewska i Laura S.A. and a resident of Simianowice until 1936. I found various references in the newspaper archives, like stolen wallet and shareholder meetings. He was also getting a pension and had shares in companies.
But when I wrote to the archive in Katowice they don’t seam to be able to find anything, besides his marriage and birth certificates. No residential records, no tax declarations, military lists, voters lists etc.
Is it possible that there are a lot of files missing ? Is the index just bad ? Does anybody knows if it would make a difference if I would go there in person and start looking for myself ?
Thank you so much for your help
The census records were not retained, the point was statistical analysis, not the individuals behind the numbers.
If they retained German citizenship, then the military records are likely gone. If they became Polish citizens, then I guess your best bet would not be Katowice, but some other archive (if those records even survived).
There is no reason for a state to retain pension records for this long. I doubt they were kept.
Passports – depends on which citizenship they had. At least in Germany, passports were issued locally by the Landratsamt (county administration) in cooperation with the local police; abroad, they would have been issued by consulates (and those latter records are online). I would guess interwar Poland had a similar model.
Voter lists – again, why keep them? I have only ever seen those records survive in larger numbers in Brieg/Brzeg.
Going to the archive will only help if you can identify particular files to look through at the archive beforehand, especially since Katowice has a limit on how many files you can look at each day.
I should note here that some of the larger companies’ records have survived at the archive. For German citizenship matters, I believe Opole state archive would be a better bet; I was told they elhave a database of people they have citizenship files for which can only be accessed at Opole state archive.
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