Teller Report

Genealogy: How to Find Your Ancestors

3/29/2021, 1:56:49 PM

Never before have the chances of researching your family history been better. In Germany, the sources are surprisingly good, say experts. A guide for historical researchers in their own right.


In the beginning there were only questions for May-Britt Thiessen.

From the generation of her grandparents, she had only met the maternal grandfather and the paternal step-grandmother.

“For a long time I asked myself: Where did the people come from?

What was it that made them?

What did you experience? "

She had evidence that parts of her family came from the formerly German areas in Poland, but not much more.

“We live in fast-moving, uprooting times, so the desire to know where I came from was important to me,” she says.

Thiessen wants to know where she comes from.

She has been researching the history of her family for years - with sometimes unexpected results.

People have been asking questions like May-Britt Thiessen's for centuries.

But never before have the chances of researching your own family history been better.