Galicia and Bukovina were the empire’s far north-eastern crown lands, and families from there appear in Vienna, in the Kriegsarchiv and in emigration papers around the world. The records of their home villages, however, lie in Poland, Ukraine and, for Bukovina, Romania. This is a pointers guide: it explains what the lands were, where the main record types are held and how an Austrian document can lead you across the border.
Two lands, several countries
Galicia was the Austrian crown land that existed from 1772 to 1918, and today it is divided between south-eastern Poland and western Ukraine. Researchers distinguish Western Galicia, around Kraków and Przemyśl, from Eastern Galicia, around Lviv. Bukovina, a duchy with its capital at Czernowitz, is now divided between Ukraine and Romania. Place names have several forms, for example Lwów, Lviv and Lemberg for the same city, and each archive uses its own. Our crown lands guide places both lands in the wider empire.
Western and Eastern Galicia
Researchers divide Galicia into a western and an eastern half, with the boundary set between the San and Wisłok rivers. Kraków and its surroundings are in the west, while Przemyśl, Jarosław and Sanok, in present-day Poland, belong to the east, as do Lviv, Stanisławów and Tarnopol. The division matters for records, because the west is mostly Roman Catholic and mostly in Polish archives, while the east has a large Greek Catholic population whose books are mainly in Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk. Placing your village on this map tells you which archives to try first.
Church and Jewish records
Vital records in Galicia were kept by religious institutions, namely Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant, with separate books for each religion and often in different archives. Birth books are transferred to the state archives after 100 years and marriage and death books after about 80, in Poland. In Poland, a large share of Roman Catholic records remains in church archives, while the state archives hold copies. The Polish State Archives’ search portal, Szukaj w Archiwach, is the main finding tool for Polish holdings.
For Greek Catholic parishes, the main repositories are the Central State Historical Archive in Lviv and the State Archive in Ivano-Frankivsk. FamilySearch microfilmed the registers of nearly 3,000 Greek Catholic parishes from the Lviv archive, and the books are written in Latin, Polish and Ukrainian. Jewish records can be searched through JRI-Poland, Gesher Galicia and the Polish State Archives, as a Galician research summary explains, and the Gesher Galicia group concentrates on records from the Lviv archives.
Bukovina
Bukovina, with its capital at Czernowitz, is now divided between Ukraine and Romania. The imperial decrees on Jewish names of 1787 and 1799 applied to Bukovina as well as Galicia, and tax lists of Jewish taxpayers in Bukovina at the end of the eighteenth century have been transcribed by researchers. We have not researched the Ukrainian and Romanian archives for Bukovina in detail, so for church records treat this post as a pointer: identify the village, the religion and the present country, and then write to the relevant state archive and look for a regional guide. Military sheets for men born in Bukovina have turned up among the Galician records in Lviv, as one researcher found.
Military and land records
Military records from Galicia for 1865 to 1918 are, according to a Vita Brevis article, held in the Central State Historical Archives in Lviv. They are mostly written in German and Polish, with some Ukrainian, and they include men from Bukovina. Because the Austrian army did not segregate soldiers by religion, they cover Protestant, Catholic and Jewish men. Vienna’s Kriegsarchiv notes that it holds registration sheets for conscripts from present-day Austria, with exceptions, so a Galician man may be in Lviv and not in Vienna. See our military records post.
Land records are a distinctive Galician source. The Josephine survey of 1785 to 1789 and the Franciscan survey of 1819 and 1820 produced cadastral records and maps that are held in the archives in Lviv, Przemyśl and Kraków, among others. They list landholders and can place a family on a specific plot, which helps where church books are missing. They are scattered between many archives in Poland and Ukraine, so the first step is to find out where your district’s records ended up.
| Record type | Likely holder | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Roman Catholic parish books | Parish and diocesan archives, Polish state archives (copies) | Search the Polish archives portal |
| Greek Catholic parish books | Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk archives | Many on FamilySearch microfilm |
| Jewish records | Polish State Archives, Lviv, indexes by JRI-Poland and Gesher Galicia | Indexes help locate books |
| Military sheets 1865 to 1918 | Central State Historical Archives, Lviv | Written in German, Polish, Ukrainian |
| Land records and maps | Archives in Lviv, Przemyśl, Kraków and others | Josephine and Franciscan surveys |
What Vienna can add
Vienna has relevant material. The Austrian State Archives hold central government records of the empire, and the Vienna residence cards may show a Galician birthplace. A Galician research summary notes that the State Archives’ regiment lists can tell you which units recruited in Galicia. See our archives guide and the Vienna guide.
Invented example: Imagine an invented family called Hryniuk in a village near Kolomyia, in eastern Galicia. A Vienna document of 1910 names the father’s birthplace in its German form. The family was Greek Catholic, so the baptism is in a Greek Catholic register, held at the Lviv archives and partly filmed by FamilySearch. The father’s military sheet is in Lviv too, in a German-language form. The place has a German name, a Polish name and a Ukrainian name, and each source uses a different one. This is a made-up family used to show the pattern.
Practical steps
- Establish the religion. It decides the register and the archive.
- Write down every name of the place. German, Polish and Ukrainian forms.
- Search the Polish archives portal first. Then check FamilySearch and the Lviv archives.
- Use indexes for Jewish records. They point to the books.
- Ask for help in the language. Genealogy groups and professional researchers can read Polish and Ukrainian.
Where to go next
Read the Austrian genealogy guide for the Austrian side and our non-Catholic records guide for the community records. A reference on Galician genealogy resources lists many of the portals. Subscription platforms such as MyHeritage and Ancestry hold some Galician records and indexes, and the genealogy records hub compares them.
Archives in this region have changed hands and conditions change, so check access and holdings directly before you plan.
