Sammelwerk Donauschwäbischer Kolonisten

By Stefan Stader

A Brief Description
In the 1700's, the Austro-Hungarian Empire recruited and sponsored colonists to emigrate to Hungary to settle land that had recently been liberated from Turkish occupation. Many of the colonists came from Lorraine, Alsace & Schwaben and other areas in what is now the western part of Germany.

During these sponsored migrations, the colonists arrived in Vienna to register with the government. Happily, the Austrian bureaucrats kept detailed records of these early settlers. The records include lists of the settlers, including when they arrived in Vienna to register (the Vienna Lists), and records of reimbursements to local residents who housed some settlers until their new homes were ready (Schlafkreuzerrechnungen). These records or lists included the settler's name, and often, also the number of family members traveling with him, age, occupation, and the area or town they were from.

The Vienna Lists and other settler registration lists were organized into the "Quellen zur Deutschen Siedlungsgeschichte in Südosteuropa" [Sources of German Settlement History in Southeast Europe] by Wilhelm, Franz und Josef Kallbrunner, published in 1935.

More recently, Stefan Stader combined this information with 208 other sources of information on the colonists, such as Heimatbücher and Familienbücher for the villages, and local histories; this is called the "Sammelwerk Donauschwäbischer Kolonisten". Regretably, Stefan Stader died in 2003 before he could complete the task of organizing all of the colonist information. Currently, there are 6 volumes, ending at Sch- surnames. Volume 7 is being completed by the AKdFF and is expected to be available by the end of 2011.

It is an excellent source for locating where in Europe one's ancestors emigrated from and when they arrived in Hungary.

The Stader information and the Vienna Lists are most helpful if you can trace your family line back to an ancestor in the mid-1700's, since that is the period when there was the greatest influx of colonists, and the period when colonists registered with the authorities in Vienna.

The books are available as a series of 8 Volumes, divided by surname:
Volume I : (A – D)
Volume II : (E – G)
Volume III: (H – Kap)
Volume IV : (Kar – L)
Volume V : (M – O)
Volume VI: (P – Scha)
Volume VII: (Sche – Sz)
Volume VIII: (T-Wa)
Volume IX: (We-Z)

You can view an example of the content here.

The Price is 43 € each, plus shipping costs.

Book orders can be emailed to the AKdFF in Germany. Once your order is received, they will email back with an invoice number and the additional shipping costs. All Book orders must be pre-paid. Please reference the invoice number with your payment.

Order requests should be emailed to the AKdFF:  info@akdff.de