Austria, Vienna, Population Cards, 1850-1910

What is in This Collection?

This collection is an index of population cards for individual residents of the city of Vienna, Austria from 1850-1896. Many people from the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Eastern Europe passed through Vienna and may also be included on these cards. The cards include name, birth date and place, marital status, old and new places of residence, dates of arrival and departure. Occasionally the name of spouse and children are listed. Many people from the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Eastern Europe passed through Vienna and are included on the cards.

The broader collection was maintained from 1850-1928. The current publication, however, only includes information on individuals born before 1897 because of privacy restrictions for those born in the last 100 years.

All the forms are in German and the majority of the names are in German. However, because Vienna was the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire some names are written in the languages of the Empire. The records were in a generally good state of preservation at the time that they were microfilmed from 1981-1995. This collection contains 3.8 million hand written entries recorded on pre-printed cards.

The registration of Vienna residents began in the middle of the 15th century. The city was divided into 8 districts around 1850. Between 1850 and 1904 these eight districts were subdivided and supplemented bringing the number of districts to 21. The Zentralmeldeamt (central registration office) was created in 1889 and associated with the Vienna police department. The cards cover most of the population of Vienna. This type of registration informed the government of who was in the city of Vienna and where they resided within the city. These are generally very reliable records, being information directly reported by residents about themselves and their families.

Phonetic Filing Order of Names

An unusually complex system was used for filing surnames. This system files letters of the alphabet in a different sequence than usual. The following instructions are recommended to help locate the surname you are seeking in these files. Here are described the values of the letters of the alphabet, and their unusual filing orders.

THE ALPHABET: (A), (Au), (E, Ä, Ö), (Ei, Eu, Ej, Ey, Ai, Aj, Ay), (I, Ie, J, Ü, Y), (O, Ou), (U), (B, P), (C, G, K, Q, X, Ch, Ck, Cs, Cz, Ks), (D, T, Th), (F, V, W), (H), (L), (M), (N, Nck, Ng, Nk), (R), (S, Sch, Sz, Cz, Tsch, Tz, Z).

Note that all vowels are filed before the consonants, rather than in their normal alphabetic sequence. Letters or combinations of letters within the same parenthesis are used interchangeably and thus not regarded as different in filing. Each of the letters or combination of letters occupy one space in the filing sequence.

• Names beginning with vowels are filed by the first vowel sound, and then by the next vowel sound if present, and then by the first consonant sound. They are then filed by the second consonant sound grouped in order first by the vowels preceding the second consonant.
• Names with no vowels preceding the second consonant are filed following those that have vowels between the first and second consonants. This pattern continues until the end of the word, filing by each consonant, first running through all the vowels preceding that consonant.
• Names beginning with consonants are filed together with their sound-alike group. After the first consonant sound, names are filed by the second consonant sound grouped in order first by all of the vowels preceding the second consonant.

Instructions

These instructions for using this collection can also be found in the FamilySearch catalog record.

1. First convert the spelling of the surname you want to find by writing it according to the phonetic letters outlined.
2. Then substitute the first letter of the phonetic group for the other letters in the same group.
3. Then find the surname in the library catalog list according to the special filing rules outlined, and note the film number associated with it.
4. Check to make sure you have the right selection by converting the catalog listed surnames to their phonetic spellings also.

Additional records and/or images may be added to this collection in the future.

Reading These Records

These records are written in German. For help reading them see:

• German Genealogical Word List
• Germany Handwriting
• Brigham Young University Script Tutorial: German

What Can These Records Tell Me?

The following information may be found in these records:

Collection Content

Sample Image

Click on images for a larger view.

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  1911 Population Card

Digital Folder Number List

This collection was published as a DGS browse collection. The list does not contain any description of the DGS folder's content. A table listing each DGS number and its contents can be found at Austria, Vienna Population Cards Digital Folder Number List.