WANDERING
IMMIGRANTS
German Ancestry Genealogy Research Museum Pfalz
The
European War of Succession (Thirty Years War 1618 to 1648) devastated
the valleys of the Rhine River from the
struggles between the French Catholics and the Hapsburgs for control
of the fertile region. For the next 100 years waves of immigrants,
many
of
them farmers,
Amish, Mennonites, who had in turn settled in this area from
farther south and Switzerland in a never quite settled search for land to
farm and freedom to practice their religion, some acclimated in the
Palatine, converting to Lutherans, many left for Amerca in
the
Auswanderung
(emigration)
accepting
passage in
ships sailing from
Rotterdam and
Amsterdam to England and then to America in an attempt by the English
reformists to settle the new colonies with Protestants.
For those of German ancestry in search of genealogy research of this period, a unique little place to visit on a family roots reverse pilgrimage is the Insititute of Palatine Folk History (Institut für Pfaelzische Geschichte) in Kaiserslautern, Germany where Ramstein Air Force Base and Landstuhl Army base is located, and host to one of Germany's powerhouse football (soccer) teams. The Institute is a small library on the second floor of a house-office a few blocks from the Kaiserslautern municipal center, which keeps track of early records of the Palatine Immigration in the early 1700's when many German "Auswanderers" settled in the American Colonies before the revolution (see Heritage Tours to Germany), especially in Pennsylvania, arriving in Phildadelpia, forming Germantown and then spreading west into what is now known as Amish country, and westward. The website is in German, but personnel speak English. For family roots of German, Polish, Russian, Baltic and Scandinavian emigration 1834-1934 (see Ballinstadt Emigration Museum Hamburg). © Bargain Travel Europe
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Pfalzische Geschitche Institut
Geschichte und Volkskunde
Benzinoring 6
67657 Kaiserslautern
Phone +49 0631 3647-303
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Rail Pass
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See Also:
BAD
DURKHEIM & THE GERMAN WINE ROAD
FRANKENSTEIEN
CASTLE RUIN - RHINELAND
MY GREAT-GRAND UNCLE - THE EARL OF SOMETHING
FOOTSTEPS
OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM
RHINE
CASTLES EHRENFELS AND SOONECK
