Mastodawn

Manfred Münzl

@melanie Schwarzwald could be quite relative for entire Southern Germany. A last name could be more helpful to locate an area. Or a search on genealogy sites could help like ancestry.com

Hi everyone, I'm helping a friend who was born in Germany and lived their first 7 years there to get a copy of their birth certificate.

She knows the city, but I don't know how to spell it to do a search. She says it is near Schwarzwald.

Someone suggested I ask if anyone can help us. This is a recording of her saying the city.

#fedihelp #Germany

Hugs4friends ♾🇺🇦 🇵🇸😷Jul 5

@melanie I can't hear anything.

@Tooden

I am not sure what is happening. I had to turn mine up to hear it but I'm sure you've tried that. Thank you for boosting.

Noli timere Jul 5

@melanie In case you weren’t aware, the “Schwarzwald” is what we English-speakers term the Black Forest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Forest

Sounds as if she’s saying “Holdeheinstein”…

Black Forest - Wikipedia

Kevin Davy Jul 5

@melanie
I heard, boulderhinestine. Doubt it's spelt that way.

Retepkce 🐈Jul 5

@melanie "Heinsheim" would be at least near the Black Forrest, ♁49° 16′ N, 9° 9′ O, same goes for "Heimsheim", ♁48° 48′ N, 8° 52′ O; it also seems that the ending "-stein" not to common in the area of the Black Forrest. "holdaheinstein", as I understand, sounds closest to Heinstein. "Heinstein" was a Factory in Heidelberg, and that Name was also used for the surrounding area in Heidelberg as far as I could find out.

@Retepkce

This is so heloful! Thank you so much. I am sending this to my friend.

Sarah Sammis Jul 5

@melanie How old is your friend? It might help in tracking down the location.

@pussreboots

She's 58. She was born in 1966. She said her mom used a midwife and that it was pretty rural.

Sarah Sammis Jul 5

@melanie Thank you for the date.

@pussreboots

You're welcome, thank you for helping.

0x10f Jul 5

@melanie Here is the file amplified and cropped. It has only the "in (placename)" part.

Edit: I hear the placename as "Hulda Heinstein" but I don't speak German natively.

@0x10f

Ooh thanks. Yeah, that's what I hear too. It is frustrating. Her mother threw her birth certificate away. She's got a whole other family in Germany.

Piiieps & Brummm Jul 5

@0x10f @melanie
The end is definitly "Heinstein".

I doubt, if the rest is part of the name. It would not match the usual names of places here in Germany. BUT there are some strange names out there, so I can't rule it out.

@PiiiepsBrummm @0x10f

Thank you, i wondered about that.

Sarah Sammis Jul 5

@melanie The two ways I heard it:

höllenheinstein
höllduheinstein

I've been looking at the rural areas but I haven't found it. Unfortunately I don't have time to look more tonight as I'm leaving on a ten day trip tomorrow.

@pussreboots

Thank you for the leads and your work. I hope that you have a lovely time!

@melanie She does not have any documentation that lists her birthplace? There should be an immigration record that has it ... The way she says it it sounds like it is a hyphenated name, but I fear that if this is just based on her recollection of how her mother pronounced it it may be pretty far from the real name. First 7 years means she should have started school here - any chance there's an old report card floating around?

Oh, I didn't think about school. I will ask that.

The only paperwork she has is a naturalization document, she was naturalized here in the US about 12 years ago. It says she was born in Germany but that is all.

Do you know how the birth records work there? Here, each state keeps them. Would it be Baden-Württemberg where the birth records would be held, or is it by district?

Thank you for suggesting schooling.

@melanie The birth records would be at the communal level. What you could try: public immigration records - I've seen that a lot of stuff is accessible through genealogy services such as ancestry.com, but they also should be accessible in other ways. That's how I just discovered that my husband's grandfather came from Elizabethgrad (Jelisabetgrad), which in the family was always referred to as "a town that sounded like yellow sweater" - hence my fear that based on the >

@melanie > pronounciation alone it will be likely impossible to find. This being Germany there should also be another way to figure this out through records, but so far I haven't found anything that says what to do when you need a birth certificate but don't know the place of birth - probably a rare situation. I'll try looking again ...

@melanie Ok, update on that: no, there is no centralized way of figuring it out: https://www.bva.bund.de/DE/Services/Buerger/Ausweis-Dokumente-Recht/Staatsangehoerigkeit/Einbuergerung/EB15/Infobox_E15/Infobox_E15_4.html - this says explicitly that in Germany, in order to obtain a copy of a birth certificate you need to contact the Standesamt (records office) that issued the original, and they are organized at the municipal level.

BVA - Wiedergutmachungseinbürgerung nach Verfolgung - Wo erhalte ich die Geburtsurkunde/Heiratsurkunde meiner deutschen Vorfahren?

Can you tell me what municipal level means specifically? Like, what size is the municipality? Is it a city? Or larger region? I see Schwarzwald is in Freiburg. Is Freiburg a municipal level?

@melanie It depends on where you are. Schwarzwald is a region, Freiburg is a city in Schwarzwald. It is at the city or town or village level, mostly, but sometimes some really small places will share a Standesamt. So you really will need the exact place of birth to figure out which Standesamt is/was in charge (to make it a little more challenging, in some places that may have changed since 1966 because of administrative reforms).

O no, that is sad news. But I am grateful for understanding it better than I did.

Someone else mentioned police keep records of people. Maybe that will be a possibility.

@melanie No, they don't. Police can access certain records in conjunction with criminal activities but won't be able to help with this. Your best bet - if there is nothing in her and her parents' posession or she can't access the latter - to find the records of her immigration into the US (am assuming that is where she is). There should be her birth place, at least her last place of residence in there. That would be a good lead - a real place from where you can trace back

Thank you. I think she's afraid of doing this because she is part of an oppressed group and here we are not respecting naturalized status now.

@melanie Yeah, I feared it might be something like that. Plus, who knows how operational those places are these days. Have you tried searching for the mother via ancestry or something like that? It might lead to a scan of the mother's immigration records that might have info on the kid ...

@melanie Another thought: SSA. If she has a social security number there should have some info about her birth been submitted when it was first applied for - that might be a safer place to ask for info, even though their stuff probably is a mess right now ...

@melanie Added a direct message (in case you don't see those automatically).

She's still alive so I'm not sure the information will be available but I will look to see. I hadn't thought of that either.

I am going to see if we can write out an appeal to her mom and sister to try and help them see that she's even more precarious than she had been. Fingers crossed it might shake something loose. And I asked her to see if any odd memories of buildings or primary school or idk just maybe even words might bubble up. Her first language was German.

Manfred Münzl Jul 5

@melanie Schwarzwald could be quite relative for entire Southern Germany. A last name could be more helpful to locate an area. Or a search on genealogy sites could help like ancestry.com

lizzzzard Jul 5

@melanie Holderheinstein is how I would spell that, but it's not an existing city

Linda🌱Jul 5

@melanie I am from the district Heidenheim, and a village named Steinheim is part of that district.
But we are quite far from the Schwarzwald: still in Baden -Württemberg, but snuggled to the border to Bavaria. It’s at least a 2.5 hour drive to reach the Schwarzwald.
Does she remember where her parents worked? Were they in the army? - Maybe there are documents from their work live around, which could help to get clues about the area we have to look at.

@Linda

I will ask her. Her memory is patchy because of having a stroke early on. But details like this help me think of things to ask to jog her memory. Thank you for helping.

Lenni Jul 5

@melanie @Spark Did my best to figure it out but I’m out of ideas. Could you ask your friend to write it down as best as they can? (Probably easier to work with than the audio.)

@lenni @Spark

Thank you so much. It really means the world that people are helping us. I will see if she can but I'm not sure that will work.

Huey Jul 5

@melanie No luck yet? I've had a look on the map and can't find anything that looks right. Sounds like "Holderheimstein"? There are a lot of towns ending in "heim" around there, and one just called "Stein".

トビアスバルト Jul 5

@melanie FWIW there is a mountain called "Heidstein" (https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidstein). Although there is no city or village mentioned in the Wikipedia that bears its name (like Hohenheidstein which would be a typical naming) maybe they can further search around that area.

Heidstein – Wikipedia

@4nduril

Oh!!!

This is really hopeful because I think she's remembering a place name but maybe she was too young to differentiate a place name from a city name.

Thank you so much.

jomo ☎5666 @ WHY2025 Jul 6

@melanie I made a map of all places in the state of Baden-Württemberg that very loosely match what I heard (contains "h", and "st" followed by "n" within the next 3 characters).

(Click on "Run" and wait for it to load)
https://overpass-ultra.us/#m=6.3/48.359/9.739&q=IYJwpsDaB2wLZgLwCIBCwAmZoFoDqAPyAC7FhwBGYIA5sgLoAEOAfIwHQUDuA3AFAAKPo0bQuISAAcANsADGSOQEtiAT3oDQETlwCU-EWIkz5SCgHsQ5gK40AFhq3Ad+4aPFTZCxHfjSwxI7gztyuhh4m3gDO1hTWIBRB2qEG7sZeSNBgSvYW8Xbm5hhJIXqpRp6miACO1qBkICUu5REZiMpqAPoU0uZyANZNKW4VkUjE5lzQQ2UjrVUAbkrSsjRgM666zGzsY1H8RrsZUTDwYAB+yHbsAFRRxJCQAFzA0pK+T-T0AN4AjAA0AGYAL7QR4vN4fL7fAAMQOByH+Sno-BsxEYCmgDR4QA

Edit: Improved version: https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/27kE

#overpass #osm

Ultra

A web based tool for making MapLibre GL maps with data from sources such as Overpass, GeoJSON, GPX, KML, TCX, etc

jomo ☎5666 @ WHY2025 Jul 6

@melanie could it be Haueneberstein?

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haueneberstein

Haueneberstein – Wikipedia