German Stammbücher

By Khargoth on Sat, 02/09/2019 - 02:38

Forums

Hello, sorry in case of bad grammar, english isn't my native language.
I'm struggling a bit with a good way to cite "Stammbücher" from Germany. These are bound books or folder-like books with preprinted certificate forms to get filled out from the officals when births, marriages, baptisms or deaths occur in the family, given to couples at their wedding from the bureau of vital records(or bought from the couple previously itself for the wedding).

In my cases they are privately held items, so I understand that I have to make clear in whose collection these items are. But I'm unsure what I should do with the two layers of book and certificate. The general way you recommend citing scrapbooks in 3.40 seems quite fitting to me. Another way I thought of was citing the certificates like you recommend for chapters in books with several authors. A problem I have is understanding who, if at all, should be cited as the author of the book. The company that published them and sold them to the bureau of vital records? The bureau of vital records that filled out the first blanks in the book?

Thanks for any tips in advance!

Sebastian

Submitted byEEon Sat, 02/09/2019 - 15:16

Sebastian, you raise several interesting issues.

Author:

On the premise that it’s better to teach a man to fish than to give him a fish, I’ll answer your question from a broader perspective. When EE users are unsure of what a term represents, there are a couple of good approaches. A quick approach would be to check the glossary. A more-detailed approach would be to look up the term in EE’s index. If you do the latter, you’ll find EE 12.5, which says:

“Author, Defined: In a literary sense, authors of nonfiction are those who accumulate a body of knowledge through research and/or practical experience, then

  • analyze that knowledge;
  • weigh the usefulness of each part;
  • determine how to link the most relevant information; and
  • Use their conclusions to create new and original narratives.”

That definition should answer your question about whether the publisher of a form-type book is the book’s author. For some elaboration on the basics, see our recent blog post "What, Exactly Is an Author?".

Certificate:

Your instincts are right here. A page in a register, even when each page is printed with a fancy border and carries the word “certificate,” is not the same as a loose certificate created by an official after the fact, whereon s/he inserts details extracted (with possible errors) from an original document or register. What you have is a family artifact.

Layers:

You say you aren’t sure what to do with the two layers representing “certificate” and “book.” You have only a book. Some books have plain pages. Some have fancy pages. Some have map pages. Some have pages with tables. Some have pages with charts. But they’re all in that one book that is, in your case, a family artifact rather than a published book. You will, of course, want to identify which item within the book has the information that you are citing.

EE 3.24 (Basic Format: Family Artifacts) or EE 3.40 (Scrapbooks) should serve you. You will also, I suspect, want to add a sentence or two to the end of the citation to explain what kind of source you have and how it’s created. Those who don’t live in your society—or those in future generations where this may not be the custom—will not then have to wonder.

Submitted byKhargothon Sun, 02/10/2019 - 02:54

Yeah, the publisher stays the publisher, even if he changes details of the published work ... ... trying already too long to find a way to cite these I feel good with. Including one of my suggestions in place of the author would only led to confusion for other people looking at my citations I suppose.
I tried finding out who created these for over 100 years quite similar Stammbücher in the first place, no luck.
So I just left the author out, an example citation looks now like this:

Source list:
Meier-Brandt family papers. Stammbuch der Familie Julian Meier [and] Dorothea Brandt. Privately held by Michael Meier, Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg.

Full reference note:
Bureau of vital records Stuttgart, Marriage certificate no. 162/1961, Julian Meier [and] Dorothea Brandt, in Stammbuch der Familie Julian Meier [and] Dorothea Brandt, Meier-Brandt family papers; privately held by Michael Meier, Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg. This Stammbuch contains several vital record forms, some of them filled out, it was inherited from Dorothea Brandt (1942-2007) to her son Michael Meier.

Thanks again for your work here and any feedback, its really helpful to have a place for questions!

 

Submitted byKhargothon Sun, 02/10/2019 - 08:55

Oh, another quick question.

You wrote

"A page in a register, even when each page is printed with a fancy border and carries the word “certificate,” is not the same as a loose certificate created by an official after the fact, whereon s/he inserts details extracted (with possible errors) from an original document or register. What you have is a family artifact.",

shouldn't these loose certificates also be cited as family artifacts? That's how I handled them until now, thinking that this way I could make clear with which exact copy of a certificate I worked (in case of possible errors on certificates).

Khargothon, how we cite a certificate should depend upon how we acquired it. If we personally obtain the certificate from a government agency, then we cite it to that agency. If we inherit a certificate--or another person shares one with us--then all we can attest is that we inherited the certificate or acquired it from XYZ. We can't attest that it came from any specific office and we can't attest that it was not altered.