MILITARY RECORDS FOR EASTERN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES
This is a letter Karen Hobbs submitted to the Poland Border Surnames mail list as the result of some queries and comments made by several list members about military records on December 10, 2004. This letter helps clear up some of the mysteries about military records for Eastern European countries.
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This is long but should answer lots of questions about military records. Leo Hobbs
In a message dated 12/11/2004 8:31:53 AM Mountain Standard Time, KarenHob
writes:
Sophie said:
I have been through the same Vienna-Warsaw military records hokey-pokey. Karen Hobbs has advised me that possibly my grandfather's records may be available closer to home, that is, in the city where his regiment was garrisoned (Krakow). The Polish archives, while telling me that they had nothing to tell me, told me that my gf's regiment was 88 percent ethnic Polish. It may be that records of majority-Polish regiments were more closely kept than records of more ethnically mixed regiments.
Next are Karen's additional comments.
In the past I have mentioned that the archive in Cracow denies having any military records from the A-H years but you never know when that might change so it could be worth asking anyway. Who knows if their denial means that they do not have anything "at this time" because what is there is uncatalogged or that they really don't have anything at all.
One problem is that many of the bureaucracies in Eastern Europe are peopled with personnel who understand "power" more than "service" from their years under the old regime. They also may simply ignore a query in English. That will slowly change as membership in the EU requires English as the official language but not at any time soon.
Archives may be understaffed and their replies may represent as effcient a search as they could make at the moment. There may still be material in storage that has never been looked at since the archive first received it. One day all those boxes and boxes of records that Vienna sent to Polish archives might suddenly show up as a cataloged archive asset.
Sophie suggests that they may not be important enough to find because they are merely imperalist records of a hated defunct regime. Mind sets will probably change when the archivists who now decide what is important and what is not are replaced by a new generation of archivists who understand how valuable those old records are in terms of how much money they can bring to the archive.
The 1918 Treaty of Versailles required Austria to send the records of all soldiers born after 1865 and in regiments recruited in a successor nation to the A-H dual monarchy to the archives of that successor nation. Vienna says they complied with this requirement and did indeed send the records of Galician soldiers to Polish archives after 1918. However, whether they kept all the records for men born up to 1865 or used a different cutoff year is unknown.
1) Induction age was 20.
2) Soldiers records are dated as of the year of induction.
3) Vienna should have individual soldiers records with induction dates up to 1885 if
they followed the treaty's provisions.
Although induction age of the typical soldier was 20, there were a lot of atypical inductions. Use age 20-give-or-take-a-year-or-two-on either-side as a general guideline. The articles in the old issues of the EEGS journal provide more information about the exceptions to this general rule. Some men were inducted at 17 and others at 25 and older.
The LDS has filmed or is filming all of the records available in Vienna. So far the individual soldier's records for regiments recruited outside the borders of today's Republic of Austria seem to end with induction dates between 1868 and 1870 with some exceptions in a film of Grundbuchblatter Diverse (Bohemia and Moravia only) and some regimental records. The Military Kirchenbuch (church records) include later dates with some including WW I deaths.
The LDS still has over 1000 films of military records not yet in the catalog. When all filming is done and all films are in the catalog the whole picture may change. The only thing one can do is to keep checking every so often to see if anything new has been added under the name/number of a certain regiment.
Right now Vienna denies having material that is different from what is available at the LDS and they often refer persons who ask for records with induction dates later than 1868-1870 to the archives of a successor nation. There is no reason for them to do that if they have those records on hand but it does not necessarily mean that they do not have SOME service records for soldiers born as late as 1865. It is always a good idea to write the war archive just to be sure they do not have something that is not in the FHC catalog. At best a record will turn up. At worst they will confirm there is nothing.
Sophie makes some good points about Poland being at war with Russia after WWI and what kind of impact that may have had on a transaction to receive old records from Vienna. However, it is hard to believe that Vienna was ready to ship any records to any successor nation very quickly. Sorting the stuff out had to take a while and arranging shipment and coordinating the material's reception at the other end -- space had to be made for the material -- also had to take a lot of time. I don't think shipments to successor nations all went out at once or that they went out very soon after the treaty was signed.
Officers records and WW I records are the EXCEPTION to the Treaty requirement to send soldier's records to the archives of successor nations per the information I have. Vienna has over 1,000,000 3 x 5 cards for soldiers who served in that war as well as the complete records of officers (that have survived) from as far back as the 17th century siege of Vienna.
WW I records were filmed by the LDS but are not in the catalog and will not be until some privacy issues are resolved or they are 100 years old. Films with officers' records or any other records dated later than 1905 are now restricted for viewing in SLC only. That means that if a military churchbook film includes 1840-1918 it is restricted -- SLC will not send it out to local FHCs.
In the meantime the Vienna archive seems willing to provide WW I records to some persons who state their relationship to a given soldier and that the material is for genealogical purposes. Most of my experience is with records for Czech and Slovak soldiers serving in WW I. I do not know if the Polish privacy laws would restrict records for polish soldiers more than the Czech and Slovak laws.
Regimental records were not the only records of men inducted into the Austrian army. After 1860 military records-keeping began with conscription rolls called Militär-Standestabellen. Each crownland of A-H had county conscription commissions responsible to record male births in the county, keep track of where males lived and their marital status and to summon them for a conscription physical after their 19th birthday.
Whether ethnicity was important as far as those records are concerned I cannot say but I have always had the impression that the Austrian military believed German-speaking soldiers followed orders better than Slavs -- which seems quite logical since the Germans could understand commands given in German while Slavs could not. During mobilization for a war a lot of soldiers went to the front after only a month or two of training, hardly time to learn all the commands and signals or to shoot straight. If a Slavic-speaking NCO who translated commands was out of action the soldiers did not know what to do.
Companies and battalions had specific recruiting areas within a regimental district (men who knew each other formed a more cohesive unit) so each represented the real ethnic mix from that part of the district rather than a forced diversity. NCOs had to be educated to the sixth class and education probably determined ethnic diversity in those ranks more than anything else. Some regiments had regimental prep schools aimed at producing future NCOs.
(Jaeger battalions who relied on men with shooting experience may have had a larger percentage of one ethnic group if that group had most of the men who did more hunting or belonged to shooting clubs in their neighborhoods.)
There may have been some necessity to sort the Polish from the German, or Ruthenian (and probably Jewish) names. I can imagine a separate lineup at the conscription exams for each ethnic group if for no other reason than that they had to be examined by a doctor who spoke their language if a multi-lingual doctor was not available. So even though the records themselves were in
German each language-group's results might be in a separate book.
After a physical exam each man got one of five classifications that meant he would be inducted at once into a combat unit, into a non-combat unit, into a reserve unit, found unfit to serve at all or he would wait a year and report again to see if his fitness for service changed. WW I required so many soldiers that those categories changed and old men, teenagers and men who might be unfit to serve in earlier times found themselves in the trenches.
Some of the old Militär-Stammtabellen (county conscription rolls) still exist in Vienna and in some county archives in the Czech Republic but you have to find the person who knows what they have and who is willing to find what you want. In one case I know of the vice mayor of a Czech county seat provided marriage records found in a conscription roll book.
I do not know if the county conscription rolls exist anywhere in Poland but if they do, it may be in the old county courthouses or city archives of hearquarters cities for regimental recruiting depots rather than in state or district archives.
The war archive may take a very long time to provide anything - I know of some cases where people are still waiting for a reply to a query after six months. It may be a good idea to keep several copies of a letter sent to the war archive and if no reply is forthcoming after a long time, send a copy attached to a memo stating no reply has been received and to please note that the record requested is a grandfather (etc.) and is for genealogical purposes only.
Keep letters to the war archive very simple and directly associated with the person being researched. Name, POB, DOB, and regiment if known. DOD if relevant. Photo in uniform if available (color copy) and request for identification of medal if shown on uniform.
The family tree should not be included in a query to a military/war archive.
I have had several reports about success getting old Austrian military records from Lviv in Ukraine.
Karen Hobbs
..... Oh! Oh!
POLISH MILITARY RECORDS
Polish military records can be found by ordering film through the Latter Day Saints Family History Centers. To locate a Family History center near you this site is available: Family History Center
Poles were drafted into the military right after the partitions. Researchers need to look for military records for Poland, Russia, Austria, Germany or Prussian in the Locality Index at the library.
In the Russian occupied territory in 1874, men were subject to the draft at age 21. Those records are written in Russian so you would need to know what the cyrillic characters would be for the Polish or Lithuanian names. Ask for the Russian Draft Commission records when ordering the microfilm.
In the Prussian occupied territory in 1816, mandatory military service came about. Up to and including WWI men served in German or Prussian military service. The Prussian government used the baptismal records of religious organizations to get the names of the men for military service. They kept these records, and made notations on them of their date of entry into the military.
In the Austrian occupied territory things were a little different. They did not draft people that were well educated. If you were a clergyman, a nobleman, a government official and of some other occupations, you were exempt from military service. The Austrian and Russian military drafted people of all religious faiths. If you know the definite location and date of birth of your ancestor you can check film #1186632, item 1, which is the distribution location index of the Austro-Hungarian Empire army and navy, regiments, etc., you can learn where the missions were in which they served.
The LDS is the only place I know of that has the records for these time frames.
..... Oh! Oh!
WORLD WAR I - U. S. DRAFT GUIDELINES
Military records are another source of information you can use. There are records for time frames before World War I, but this is where we will begin. It did not matter if the men were citizens of the US or not. Everyone within specified age groups were required to register for the draft. These are the guidelines for determining the draft age of men that required them to register for the draft:
•June 5, 1917. All men between the ages of 21 and 31 years of age were required to register.
•June 5, 1918. All men who had become 21 years of as of June 5, 1917 were required to register. A supplemental registration was held on August 24, 1918. At that time men who reached age 21 between June 5, 1918 and August 24, 1918 had to register.
•September 12, 1918. This draft notice meant registration of all men between the ages of 18 and 21, and 31 to 45 years of age was reqired. This was final World War I registration.
These records can be ordered from the US National Archives. The index for them can be viewed on microfilm held by the NARA and the Latter Day Saints Family History Center.
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