<Would be very interested in someone elaborating on this:> Wan, Katharina & fellow list members, The German Center for Genealogy (Deutsche Zentralstell für Genealogie) was founded as an archive for genealogical materials. It has an extensive collection of German church records from Posen, Ostpreussen, Westpressen, Pommern, and Schlesien (now in Poland, Russia, and Lithuania) as well as many records of German settlements in eastern Europe. The FHC has microfilms of these records but if you need, you can write directly to them. For a fee, employees of the center will try to find genealogical sources but as a rule, must be done by researchers. Ahnenstammkartei (ASTAKA) - Genealogy Card file of the German People "Die Ahnenstammkartei des deutschen Volkes" is a collection of genealogies held at the Zentralstelle für Personen- und Familiengeschichte in Leipzig. It was started in 1921 as a central repository for German genealogical research, and it now contains nearly 5 million names. It's a complex search, but made easier by the website which allows you to begin and find the films you'll need to check: http://feefhs.org/fij/ahnstamm.html or http://feefhs.org/ click on Web Portal Index and enter: ASTAKA The cataloguer for the FHL, Thomas Edlund, has written a book, "Die Ahnenstammkarteis des Deutschen Volkes?An Introduction and Register" which should be at your FHC. Regards, Curt