Many Vienna families, and many Austrian families elsewhere, have Bohemian and Moravian ancestors. The record trail then leaves Austria, and the next stop is a Czech regional archive. The records are in good condition, a large share are online and the system is well organised, but the language, the portals and the place names are unfamiliar. This guide explains where Bohemian and Moravian ancestors left their records and how to find them, using Austrian sources as the starting point.
Why the trail leads to the Czech lands
Vienna was the empire’s capital and a magnet for workers from the Bohemian lands, meaning Bohemia, Moravia and Austrian Silesia. A linguist’s study of Czech surnames in Vienna describes this migration as central to the city’s history, and many Viennese family names still reflect it. Our post on Slavic and Hungarian surnames explains the names, and this post explains the records.
Typically the Austrian side gives you a place and a date, for instance a Vienna residence card or marriage entry that names a village in Moravia. See our Vienna guide. From there, the home records are in a Czech archive.
Czech archives
In the Czech Republic, parish registers, called matriky, are held in regional archives. A guide for researchers describes five State Regional Archives in the historic territory of Bohemia, together with the Moravian Land Archives in Brno and the Land Archives in Opava, and says that the registers are almost all available in digital format online. Each regional archive publishes its own portal, and the portals differ. Among those the sources name are ActaPublica, used for the archive in Brno and others, DigiCesky for the archive in Třeboň, and a portal for the archive in Plzeň. Which portal to use depends on the region of your village, so first find the district and then the archive that serves it.
The portals have quirks. One researcher notes that in some cases each register book must be downloaded as a complete file, which you then browse locally, and that the archive’s inventory lists which villages appear in each book where they differ from the parish. Another notes that some portals have lost or moved collections, so a link from an older guide may no longer work. Use a current guide, and check the regional archive’s own website.
| Region | Archive type | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Bohemia | State Regional Archives (Prague, Plzeň, Litoměřice, Třeboň, Zámrsk) | Each has its own portal |
| Moravia | Moravian Land Archives, Brno | Parish registers available here |
| Silesia | Land Archives, Opava | Austrian Silesia |
| Prague | Prague City Archives | Holds Prague parish registers |
Reading Czech registers
Registers are organised by baptism, marriage and death, though the earliest books may combine them. In one Central Bohemian town, the registers from about 1848 are in Czech, with earlier books in Latin or German, so expect a change of language around the mid-century. Houses carry numbers that were assigned in the order of building, not by street, which makes the house number a good identifier for a family across years. Cadastral maps, which can be used to find a family’s house, are available from Czech archives.
Czech terms worth knowing
A few Czech terms save time. Parish registers are matriky, and the three register types are birth, marriage and death, abbreviated NOZ after the Czech words narození, oddaní and zemřelí. Archive portals list registers by a signature number, so write down the signature for every book you use. Where one book covers many small villages, each village may have its own section, and you may need to page through to find yours. Keeping a note of the signature, the volume dates and the image number lets you return to the same page later.
Silesia, Prague and the cities
Austrian Silesia, with Troppau (Opava) as its capital, took in towns such as Bielsko and Cieszyn, and its records are divided between the Czech Republic and Poland, so look at both countries’ archives if your family came from the border area. Prague’s parish registers are held by the Prague City Archives, which a researcher guide compares to a regional archive. Some large cities have also put other records online, notably the population censuses of Brno and Ostrava, which can show a household in the years between the parish entries.
Jewish records
Jewish vital registers for Bohemia and Moravia from 1784 to 1949 are held at the National Archives in Prague and can be consulted online, according to a researcher’s guide. There are nearly three thousand volumes, some with indexes, and Prague and its surroundings form a separate group. Bohemian Jewish control registers cover 1784 to 1874. Some Jewish records are mixed with Christian parish registers, especially before 1835. See our non-Catholic records guide for the Austrian side.
Military records
The Kriegsarchiv in Vienna holds registration sheets for conscripts born in present-day Austria, with exceptions, and does not hold the sheets for the Bohemian lands. A man from Bohemia or Moravia who served in the imperial army may therefore be in the Czech military archive. The Kriegsarchiv notes that qualification lists of officers who became citizens of successor states were likely handed over to those states. See our military records post.
Invented example: Imagine an invented family called Dvorak in Vienna. A residence card from the 1890s names the father’s birthplace as a village in southern Moravia. The village’s parish is served by the Moravian Land Archives in Brno, whose portal holds the baptism register. The 1860s baptism entry is in German and names the father as Dworschak, while the house number, 27, appears again in the 1885 marriage entry. A search for the Vienna spelling alone would have found nothing. This is a made-up family, but the pattern is a very common one.
Practical steps
- Get the village and district from an Austrian source.
- Find the regional archive for that district.
- Search under both name forms. Try the German and Czech spellings.
- Note the house number. It will help you separate families.
- Check Jewish and military records separately. They are held elsewhere.
Where to go next
Read the crown lands guide to place Bohemia and Moravia in the wider empire, and the Austrian genealogy guide for the Austrian side. A good English-language guide to the archives is on the My Czech Roots site.
Portals and holdings change, so confirm the current position with the regional archive.
