Archive of the Lutheran-Protestant Church in Bavaria

From 2019, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria will provide funds for digitizing all of its historical church records. The Regional Archive of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Bavaria in Nuremberg, which up to then already presents more than 8,000 historical church records in Archion online, thus has the opportunity to comprehensively record, edit, digitize and, for the most part, provide all church records via Archion. The whole project is scheduled to last for more than ten years, until 2030. At the time of the project launch, about half of all Protestant-Bavarian parish registers are still stored locally in the respective parish offices. Each parish decides for itself whether their parish registers are kept centrally in the Nuremberg Archive after the registration or whether the originals should be brought back to the respective parish.

The main registers, i.e. baptismal, wedding and funeral books are provided through Archion. The newly digitized church records are presented online in several tranches annually and, as always, in alternation with church records from other regions.

We cannot say when exactly the church record you need will go online. With such a mammoth project spanning more than ten years and containing thousands of church records in over 60 deaneries, there are too many uncertainties to predict accurately. In order to be able to provide you with a clue for your genealogical research, we would like to give you the order of the church districts, within which the deaneries will have their turn one after another.

First of all, the church books that are already stored in the magazine of the Regional Archive will be digitized. After that, it is the turn of the church records that are in the parishes. The order of the church districts is:

1 Kirchenkreis Ansbach-Würzburg / Church District of Ansbach-Würzburg
with church records from communities in the deaneries (Dekanaten) Ansbach, Aschaffenburg, Bad Neustadt an der Saale, Bad Windsheim, Castell, Dinkelsbühl, Feuchtwangen, Gunzenhausen, Heidenheim, Kitzingen, Leutershausen, Lohr am Main, Markt Einersheim, Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Schweinfurt, Uffenheim, Wassertrüdingen, Windsbach, Würzburg

2 Kirchenkreis Nürnberg / Church District of Nuremberg
with church records from communities in the deaneries (Dekanaten) Altdorf bei Nürnberg, Erlangen, Fürth, Gräfenberg, Hersbruck, Neustadt an der Aisch, Nürnberg Pappenheim, Schwabach, Weißenburg in Bayern

3 Kirchenkreis Bayreuth / Church District of Bayreuth
with church records from communities in the deaneries (Dekanaten) Bayreuth-Bad Berneck, Bamberg, Coburg, Forchheim (in Wiesenttal-Muggendorf), Hof, Kronach-Ludwigsstadt, Kulmbach, Michelau in Oberfranken, Münchberg, Naila, Pegnitz, Rügheim, Selb, Thurnau, Wunsiedel

4 Kirchenkreis Regensburg / Church District of Regensburg
with church records from communities in the deaneries (Dekanaten) Cham, Ingolstadt, Landshut, Neumarkt in der Oberpfalz, Passau, Regensburg, Sulzbach-Rosenberg, Weiden in der Oberpfalz

5 Kirchenkreis Augsburg / Church District of Augsburg
with church records from communities in the deaneries (Dekanaten) Augsburg, Donauwörth, Kempten (Allgäu), Memmingen, Neu-Ulm, Nördlingen, Oettingen

6 Kirchenkreis München / Church District of Munich
with church records from communities in the deaneries (Dekanaten) Bad Tölz, Freising, Fürstenfeldbruck, München, Rosenheim, Traunstein, Weilheim in Oberbayern

More about the structure of the Bavarian state church, the church districts and the deaneries can be found here:

https://www.bayern-evangelisch.de/wir-ueber-uns/dekanatsbezirke.php