Ortssippenbuch of Friesenheim – What is it?

Orts = place ie; village, town, city
Sippen = kinship
Buch = book

Ortssippenbuch Friesenheim (Genealogical Register for the Village of Friesenheim), by Adolf Gänshirt with contributions from Klaus Siefer and Erich Reinbhold, published Lahr Dinglingen, 1986.

An Ortssippenbuch is, so to speak, a township’s genealogical reference book, recording the genealogical information of all of the inhabitants. The information is extracted from church and civil records and, to some extent, personal interviews, manuscripts and other sources.

For genealogists researching in Germany an Ortssippenbuch is an outstanding resource. They have been published for only a few of the many German locations. We are fortunate that one has been published for Friesenheim and also for Oberweier.

The Ortssippenbuch Friesenheim includes the resident population of Friesenheim for over three hundred years. In the church books from Freisenheim numerous entries are contained from the villages of Oberweier and Heiligenzell and show the inter-relationships between the families of these neighboring communities. These entries were partially accepted in this kinship book, as well as some entries from the church books of the surrounding villages.

Adolf Gänshirt (12 Oct 1891 – 20 Jan 1964) was a highly respected researcher and head teacher. His extensive work is the basis of the Friesenheim Ortssippenbuch. His work included transcriptions of the Protestant church-books of 1640 up to the year 1957, transcriptions of the Catholic church-books of 1676 until the year 1902, an alphabetical listing of all families with the personal data of births, names of children, marriages and deaths. There were also family chronicles, family trees and genealogical trees of many Friesenheim families, and various essays and reports.

After his death in 1964 his files were gathered from the archives of the community of Friesenheim. There was a new overwork of the entire material, corrections made, supplements added, codification with all published Ortssippenbucherns, all being incorporated into the resulting Friesenheim Ortssippenbuch.

The following posting is the first page of Seger information in the Freisenheim Ortssippenbuch.