Austria, Carinthia, Gurk Diocese, Catholic Church Records, 1527-1986

What is in This Collection?

This collection includes records from 1527 to 1986. It is a collection of church books containing baptisms, christenings and burials. There may also be birth, marriage, and death records. All of these records are held at the Diocese of Gurk in Klagenfurt, Austria.

Event types were often compiled in separate volumes. In some parishes, however, the baptisms, marriages, and burials for one year (e.g. 1785) were all grouped together. Entries are usually recorded in chronological order, though some entries may be out of order. Entries before the mid-1700s were often in free text paragraphs; sometimes the priest created columns to record the information.

After the mid-1700s, a pre-printed form with column headings became common (though not always used). On these forms, the entries were handwritten in Gothic script; as time progressed, handwriting in these entries began to resemble more the Romanized handwriting that we use today. In Austria, a parish was an ecclesiastical jurisdiction consisting of many villages and hamlets, with one of the villages designated as the main parish town. Austrian church records are typically written in German or Latin. Regional dialect affects the spelling of some German words, for example: “Maÿ” is recorded instead of the German “Mai” for the month of May, and “Aeltern” instead of “Eltern” for the word parents.

Catholic Church records began as early as the 1500s; most church records, however, began in the late 1600s. In 1784, the Austrian Empire required that all births, marriages, and deaths be recorded in civil records. Catholic Church records in this collection start with the year 1581 through the present day, but because of privacy laws, these records are available online only through 1905.

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 Language and Languages
• German Genealogical Word List
• Germany Handwriting
• FamilySearch Learning Center videos:
  • German Paleography Seminar

What Can These Records Tell Me?

The following information may be found in these records:

Collection Content

Sample Images

Click on images for a larger view.

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  1807 Birth Record

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  1757 Baptism Record

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  1773 Marriage Record

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  1777 Death Record