30 replies to this topic

[roel22]

Forum members researching German casualties have a great source coming up. Since last christmas volunteers are doing a marvellous job digitizing the Verlustliste, the lists mentioning German wounded, MIA's and KIA's. Before researchers could check those lists online, but had to do this page by page. This could take ages: when a soldier was KIA at a certain date it could be many months later before his name showed up somewhere in the 31.202 pages (which are written in old German handwriting, to make things even more complicated).
Thanks to the work of the volunteers already over 600.000 names (out of 6.318.129) can be checked digitally (in English as well) using a search tool, more names are added every minute.
Haven't found the name of my own great-grandfather yet, hope I will soon.

Roel

[ph0ebus]

Holy Cow!

I just checked 'Fulda' and got a whole list of people whom I might never have found.  I may have also even found a relation of mine (Musketier Hermann Sichel).  My family married into the Sichel family from Fulda, so I wonder if he is related to them?  Another project!

Roel, you just made my week.

-Daniel

[John Gilinsky]

Roel can you PM me especially if you can reasonably decipher practically the meaning of the content of the different issues of this massive published list(s)?  Tried just putting in Russland but get nothing.  Tried some common German names such as Hans Bartel and still got nothing.  Still it is clear that they have done a great and are doing a great job in making this available.  
Hans (aka John)

[ph0ebus]

I found it likes the use of German characters.  When I did a search with a double s I got boopkus but when I used the German character for double s I hit the jackpot.

Daniel

[bob lembke]

This is indeed a wonderful tool. However, spending a few minutes with it, I can see how you can find where someone is listed in the Verlistliste, but I do not see how you then can get to that issue and page. Am I missing something? Or is this only a form of interactive index?

Bob Lembke

[ph0ebus]

bob lembke, on 07 February 2012 - 01:48 AM, said:

This is indeed a wonderful tool. However, spending a few minutes with it, I can see how you can find where someone is listed in the Verlistliste, but I do not see how you then can get to that issue and page. Am I missing something? Or is this only a form of interactive index?

Bob Lembke

Click or double click on the last name you are interested in and that gives you the full scanned page and a zoom box to see the details.

-Daniel

[roel22]

For those finding it hard to read the old German handwriting here's an instruction how to decipher the individuel characters (scroll down to "Zeichentabelle").
Those volunteers truly are doing a magnificent job.

Roel

[roel22]

ph0ebus, on 07 February 2012 - 01:52 AM, said:

Click or double click on the last name you are interested in and that gives you the full scanned page and a zoom box to see the details.

When you click the blue zoombox and hold it you can scroll over the entire page and read the text on the right side.

Roel

[fritz]

Hi Roel,

a wonderful discovery you made. Thanks for this information. Very helpful for further researches.

Fritz

[roel22]

I'm glad this great project is helpful to you all.
I've suggested the Volksbund today to mention it on their website.

Roel

[themonsstar]

Thank you for posting this as I have lot of German Postcards from WW1, now I can try looking for some of them.

[roel22]

themonsstar, on 07 February 2012 - 07:35 PM, said:

Thank you for posting this as I have lot of German Postcards from WW1, now I can try looking for some of them.

Please let us know if you get any results!

Roel

[Tom W.]

roel22, on 06 February 2012 - 10:38 PM, said:

Forum members researching German casualties have a great source coming up. Volunteers are doing a marvellous job digitizing the Verlustliste, the lists mentioning German wounded, MIA's and KIA's. Before researchers could check those lists online, but had to do this page by page. This could take ages: when a soldier was KIA at a certain date it could be many months later before his name showed up somewhere in the 31.202 pages (which are written in old German handwriting, to make things even more complicated).

Does this mean that the entire Verlustliste is already online somewhere else but doesn't have a search function?

I'm looking for Garde Pionier Ernst Gorontzi, wounded in 1915. He didn't come up in the link you posted.

[roel22]

Tom, the Verlustliste are already online (found them in an online Polish library, no idea how I got there). No search tool there.
Don't worry if your man doensn't turn up using the search tool in the link I posted: so far only ten percent of all the names have been indexed.

Roel

[ph0ebus]

Roel, all:

Any idea how to move back and forth from one consecutive page to another?  I have some people whose names I have interest in researching but their unit information appears on the page previous to the one displayed.  I've played around with it a fair amount and have not figured out how to do that yet.

Thanks,

-Daniel

PS I will be adding a description and link to this great resource on my German Soldier Research page this week.

[westkent78]

Great work.  Now if they could just put in a unit search and date field too it would be brilliant.   Not asking for too much am I.


Matthew

[roel22]

ph0ebus, on 08 February 2012 - 01:18 PM, said:

Any idea how to move back and forth from one consecutive page to another?  I have some people whose names I have interest in researching but their unit information appears on the page previous to the one displayed.  I've played around with it a fair amount and have not figured out how to do that yet.

I'm not 100% sure Daniel, but you might want to try to adjust the url. It ends with a number (let's say "18643") change it into "18642" and you'll go one page back (I think). Worth a try.

Roel

[Ken S.]

I agree.  Just finished a page and I would have preferred to have been able to add all of the information.  At the rate the project is progressing, it certainly wouldn't slow things up all that much.  

westkent78, on 08 February 2012 - 04:45 PM, said:

Great work.  Now if they could just put in a unit search and date field too it would be brilliant.   Not asking for too much am I.


Matthew

[roel22]

Adding a date field would be of no use. The dates in the Verlustliste are NOT the dates when soldiers were KIA, MIA or wounded, but the dates when their fates were reported: often months later. This is why doing research before this search tool was developed could take ages.

Roel

[ph0ebus]

Roel,

Your suggestion did not quite work.  The first fellow I checked gave me pages that were six pages apart.  

Ah, well...I will identify the units I can for now and hope to fill in the others later.

A related point:  I am finding people with two towns listed, one being the one I am interested in (Fulda) but they are not indexed that way.  If you were compiling a Roll for Fulda, you would include these men as well, yes?

-Daniel

[Ken S.]

If you register as a volunteer, the page that you're assigned will have a menu at the top right corner.  It includes a field where you can enter any page number you want to have a look at.

[Ralph J. Whitehead]

ph0ebus, on 08 February 2012 - 11:08 PM, said:

Roel,

Your suggestion did not quite work.  The first fellow I checked gave me pages that were six pages apart.  

Ah, well...I will identify the units I can for now and hope to fill in the others later.

A related point:  I am finding people with two towns listed, one being the one I am interested in (Fulda) but they are not indexed that way.  If you were compiling a Roll for Fulda, you would include these men as well, yes?

-Daniel

Daniel, The earlier lists do have the dates when the men became casualties for the most part. This was phased out and then only the unit identity was used. Then even this was omitted and names will appear in alphabetical order at the end of 1916 to the end of the lists in 1919.

In regard to the birthplaces, if there are two listed it indicates the twon of birth as the first one and the regional district town or city as the second one. This is handy as there are other parts of Germany with towns of the same name and showing both names is a help. A good way to look at this would be to take Stuttgart and man born in a smaller satellite town or village. If he was born in Stuttgart then just this name should appear. My relatives were from Marbach am Neckar, a regional area center so smaller satellite villages would contain their names and then Marbach. If you are looking for Fulda alone then look for listings with just this name or ones where Fulda is the birthplace and the next largest regional center is the next name. I hope this rather poor explanation helps.

Ralph

[roel22]

I believe this project is getting more and more succesful: I just tried to login, but got an error-message instead: "too many connections"...

Roel

[ph0ebus]

Ralph J. Whitehead, on 09 February 2012 - 01:38 AM, said:

Daniel, The earlier lists do have the dates when the men became casualties for the most part. This was phased out and then only the unit identity was used. Then even this was omitted and names will appear in alphabetical order at the end of 1916 to the end of the lists in 1919.

In regard to the birthplaces, if there are two listed it indicates the twon of birth as the first one and the regional district town or city as the second one. This is handy as there are other parts of Germany with towns of the same name and showing both names is a help. A good way to look at this would be to take Stuttgart and man born in a smaller satellite town or village. If he was born in Stuttgart then just this name should appear. My relatives were from Marbach am Neckar, a regional area center so smaller satellite villages would contain their names and then Marbach. If you are looking for Fulda alone then look for listings with just this name or ones where Fulda is the birthplace and the next largest regional center is the next name. I hope this rather poor explanation helps.

Ralph

Hi Ralph,

Ah, what you are saying is now making sense.  I found a map of Kries Fulda and looked at some of the men who had a town then Kries Fulda added and sure enough, those towns showed up on the Kreis Fulda map.

A good example of someone I would say should be included based on the Verlustliste data is someone like this fellow:

Balzer Josef Blankenau/Fulda 1966 153 - Wehrmann - vermisst

Since he did not show up when I did the search just by place name I am suspecting these folks are being indexed only by the first rather than by both place names, which for my purposes is problematic, but at this point I will take whatever I can get.

Ken, your suggestion to register is outstanding...thanks for that!

Thanks,

-Daniel

[roel22]

roel22, on 06 February 2012 - 10:38 PM, said:

Thanks to the work of the volunteers already over 600.000 names (out of 6.318.129) can be checked digitally (in English as well) using a search tool, more names are added every minute.

At 12 feb 716.716 and counting... When they keep adding names at this pace all Verlustliste should be digitized by the end of this year!

Roel