Hereditas Baltica 1 – Four Collections from the Estonian National Archives

Applicant

Herder-Institut für historische Ostmitteleuropaforschung – Institut der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft

https://www.herder-institut.de/

https://www.facebook.com/HerderInstitut

https://www.instagram.com/herder_institut/

Co-operation partner

Estnisches Nationalarchiv

Funding body

Estländische Ritterschaft

Funding body

Deutsch-Baltische Genealogische Gesellschaft e.V.

Funding body

Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien

https://kulturstaatsminister.de/

Funding body

Dr.-Werner-Emil-Maaß-Stiftung zur Förderung der ostdeutschen Genealogie

Project manager

Dr. Peter Wörster GND

Project manager

Dorothee M. Goeze GND

Laufzeit

2011 - 2014

In 2013, the first phase of the Hereditas Baltica digitization project was completed. As part of this effort, selected holdings from the Estonian Historical Archives were digitized, and links to these scans were integrated into the online finding aid for the document collection on the Estonian Saaga portal. The overall project comprises approximately 100,000 scans.

The following collections can now be searched in the online finding aid for the document collection and viewed as digitized documents via a link to the Saaga portal:

The Registration Commission of the Estonian Knighthood (up to 1920)
The Registration Commission of the Estonian Charitable Association (1920–1939)
The archive of the German-Baltic genealogist Carl Georg von Törne (1854–1918)
Records of the Ösel Knighthood: I. Records; II. Extracts from church records, documents, and correspondence; III. Genealogical materials concerning the nobility (sorted by surname)

To mark the conclusion of the project, an archival symposium titled “Cataloging, Digitizing, Utilizing: Baltic Archival Materials on the Internet – Status and Prospects of Joint Projects,” organized by the Estonian National Archives and the Herder Institute, took place in Estonia in February 2013. Participants from Estonia, Latvia, Sweden, Russia, and Germany gathered at the Alatskivi Castle Conference Center. The conference brought together experts from archives, libraries, and the field of history with genealogists and users.

The results can be observed in the online finding aid for the document collection; the cataloging data is linked from there to the Estonian archive portal “Saaga” (http://www.ra.ee/dgs/explorer.php). After registering in the Estonian system, the digitized materials can be viewed there.