This is the foreword to the Deutsch Stamora Familienbuch. In it the author addresses the difficulties of interpretation, transcription, and spelling.
Familienbuch
der katholischen Gemeinde
Deutsch-Stamora im Banat
1806 – *1907/00/+ – 1894
mit den Filialen
Dezsanfalva (eigene Pfarrei seit 1848) und
Malenitzfalva / Gro~ Gaj (eigene Pfarrei seit 1832)
*00+
von
Helmut Kaiser, Otter berg, 2008
Herausgegeben von der Arbeitsgemeinschaft
fOr Veroffentlichung 8anater FamilienbGcher – AV8F
Villingen-Schwenningen, 2008
A Foreword by the Author
I was born in Zichydorf in the Serbian Banat in 1937.
In 2005 I brought out a CD of the Family Book of Zichydorf 1789-1945 (published in 2002). Mr. Lung and Mr. David Dreyer made me familiar with producing a CD and helped me a great deal.
As a result I decided that I was prepared to make another Family Book available as an expression of thanks to our Association: AVBF.
I immediately thought of a locale in the Yugoslavian portion of the Banat. Because I had copies of the church records of Deutsch-Stamora (1806-1837/1852) Mr. Lung suggested that I work on this community. Since my Great-Grandfather, Karl Kaiser was born in Deutsch-Stamora in 1844 and it was a neighbouring village of Zichydorf I committed myself to carrying out the assignment.
So I got to work on the project unaware of the problems I was going to run into. From my point of view and my knowledge of the Zichydorf church records, the church records of Deutsch-Stamora were sloppily kept and recorded and to a great extent almost illegible at times. It took a great deal of imagination to decipher some of the dates and data. What was even more difficult was my total lack of knowledge of the Latin and Hungarian languages and despite the use of dictionaries and the Internet I was often unable to resolve the meaning of many of the entries. But on the other hand, what help is a dictionary or the Internet if you are unable to decipher the word or term in the first place?
In the marriage records, in most cases, the ages of the bride and groom are missing as well as the name of their parents so that is very difficult if not impossible to connect them to their families.
Another issue was the spelling of family and first names on the part of the various priests who kept the records.
“This Family Book is not a certified copy of the church records,” Mrs. Roswitha Egert notes in her Kathreinfeld Family Book. I can similarly attest to the same in mine. Despite the great care taken with regard to dates and data, errors are inevitable in terms of transcription, interpretation, and spelling. That needs to be understood from the outset.
Deutsch-Stamora is a result of the internal migration of the Swabian population. The inhabitants came from neighbouring communities, Morawitz and Zichydorf as well as Sackelhausen, Hatzfeld, Grabatz, Bogarosch and other villages.
I was often unable to read the name of the locale of origin of those who were deceased when the priest took the pains to record it.
But Mr. Nikolaus Horn of Ingolstadt was of great help to me in this regard. Without his assistance and knowledge the places of origin would have remained completely unknown. I would like to especially thank him for his generous help.
I also want to thank my wife for her assistance and her support in this undertaking and the work that was involved.
I must also thank all of those who provided me with the results of their own personal family research that has greatly affected the final outcome of this Family Book.
Especially to be mentioned are my colleagues: Mrs. Roswitha Egert, Mr. Hans Wikete, Alfred Ivanov and Phillipp Lung.
I hope that my work in family history research will be of some small help for my reader’s own research to enable their descendants to have knowledge of their family and their old homeland. Then it will be worth the work I undertook.
Helmut Kaiser
Otterberg 2008