Scans of civil records from Danzig for the period 1874 to 1914 are now freely available online at both metryki.genbaza.pl (registration no longer required) and indeksy.net (new, registration not required). This page describes what scans are available, their indexing status, and tips for accessing them.

The start pages for the 1,065 Danzig civil volumes are genbaza and indeksy. The first page of each volume describes the contents. Some volumes have the original German description. Others have only a Polish description. Remember, geburts/urodzen=births, heiraths/malzenstwo=marriages, sterbe/zgonow=deaths.

The records are only partly indexed, so there can be a lot of trial and error to locate a particular record, even if you know the date that you are after.

There are four sets of indexes of these civil records:

I) Jewish marriages, 1875-1914, indexed by us and searchable via the JewishGen Unified Database Search (helpful to search with Town=Danzig). For details about the contents, read the "APG Civil Marriages" section of the introduction to the database. A summary of the Jewish marriages can be found on this page under Table 1 M below. We define a "Jewish" marriage to be one where either the bride or groom's religion is stated to be Jewish (i.e. "mosaischer," "jüdischer," or "israelitischer"). If you find a marriage of interest, click the link in either the "indeksy" or "genbaza" column to see the corresponding scan.

II) Births 1874-1895, marriages 1874-1900, deaths 1874-1900 on the website of the West Pomeranian Genealogical Society. After clicking the preceding link, you can search by a variety of parameters (surname-only recommended, unless it is a very common surname). Be sure to select Gdańsk/Danzig under USC/Parafie to limit the search. These search results do not link directly to the corresponding scans, but tell you the volume number (last column on the right, AP Gdańsk 1609/9 means volume 9) and registration number (second column on the left), which you can use to find the scan on genbaza or indeksy.net. In the images, these numbers will appear at the top of each record.

III) Miscellaneous partial indexes at FamilySearch.org. Enter a person's name in the search form and, under, "Search with a life event," select "Any" and type "Danzig, Prussia" in the "Any Place" field. If there are matching records, note the event dates and, if present, Reference IDs. Then, with any dates and Reference IDs found, see Table 2 below to determine which volumes to examine. Compare the FamilySearch Reference IDs to the From (No.) and To (No.) columns below for the appropriate dates.

IV) For some years of births and marriages, there are volumes of scanned handwritten indices that you can browse (but not search) on genbaza or indeksy.net. Births index volumes: 1900 (v. 715), 1903 (v. 716), 1904 (v. 780), 1905 (v. 796), 1906 (v. 876), 1907 (v. 877), 1908 (v. 893), 1909 (v. 939), 1910 (v. 969), 1911 (v. 996), 1912 (v. 1021), 1913 (v. 1041), 1914 (v. 1065). Marriage index volumes (grooms only?): 1900 (v. 717), 1901 (v. 718), 1902 (v. 719), 1903-1904 (v. 781), 1905-1906 (v. 875), 1907-1909 (v. 940), 1910-1911 (v. 997), 1912-1913 (v. 1042).

Separate from the partial indexes, if you know possible dates for an event, you can use Table 2 below to find the corresponding volumes on genbaza or indeksy.net. You can then browse those volumes looking for the record. If you know the exact date, this is a very reasonable approach, but if you only know the year, it would be very time-consuming. Keep in mind that the records have a date at the top that is the date of registration, which might be several days after the date of the event, which is also noted in the record.

For births 1905 and later, you might be able to find an exact date by searching the Jewish Community (not civil) birth records that we indexed, which you can do via the JewishGen Unified Database Search, specifying Town=Danzig. Jewish Community and civil records often (but not always) both exist for the same event, but can contain different information.

Note that some of these civil records are already available on LDS microfilms, but this new collection are high resolution colour images.

Thanks very much to the GenBaza / GenPol team and the Archives in Gdańsk for making these scans freely available online.

Contributions from Rodney Eisfelder (project coordinator), Joyaa Antares, Logan Kleinwaks, Andreas Parusel, Dan Ruby.