Landeskirchliches Archiv Kassel
Lessingstraße 15 A
34119 Kassel / Germany
The archive is responsible for the supervision of all archive matters in the regional church. It gives advice to appr. 100 parishes and church offices in all archive matters, also during on-site visits.
In joint responsibility for the cultural heritage and awareness of the legal significance and scientific, historic, and artistic value of the archive material, it has the task to take care of the records, store them for good, preserve them, and make them accessible.
The area of the Protestant Regional Church of Kurhessen-Waldeck basically comprises the northern and eastern part of today’s federal state of Hesse and the Schmalkalden territory in today’s federal state of Thuringia. In a historical perspective, it comprises the Electorate of Hesse that existed until 1866 - including its exclave Schmalkalden - and the former Principality resp. the Free State of Waldeck that was integrated into the Prussian Province of Hesse-Nassau in 1929.
Church books in Kurhessen-Waldeck were introduced in the Reformation period as evidence that all children in the respective areas were baptized and confirmed as young adults. For this reason and according to the Church Constitution of 1566, at first only baptisms and confirmations were recorded. The “Marburger Agende” added the obligation to document marriages as well. From the Thirty Years War on, the priests usually recorded funerals. It was not until 1657, however, that the Church Constitution obliged them to do so.
The oldest church records preserved from parishes of the Protestant Church of Kurhessen-Waldeck date back to the time of the constitutions mentioned above. They include the data from all places a parish was in charge of. In 1772, the priests were instructed to keep a separate book for each parish. A regulation from 1829 decreed that separate baptism, confirmation, marriage, and funeral books had to be kept and complemented with registers.
Up to the year 2005, most church books from the parishes of the Protestant Church of Kurhessen-Waldeck were filmed, after 2010 progressively digitized and since 2015 made public via Archion. There are major gaps for the Church District Melsungen and the former Church District Frankenberg that today belongs to the Church District Eder.
The import of church records is largely completed; occasional subsequent deliveries will still expand the inventory.
If you need a church book for your family research that is not (yet) recorded online with Archion, it is possible to conduct research on site in the Regional Church Archive in Kassel. Furthermore, the reading room features a reference library with genealogical tools, dictionaries of place names, historical dictionaries, and literature on Hessian church history. Please find further information on the homepage of the Regional Church Archive: Landeskirchliches Archiv Kassel (archiv-ekkw.de)