By James M. Beidler
There are many great German genealogy resources: some more recently created online and some that are almost close to 400 years old. A classic set of books fitting into the latter category are the Topographia Germaniae volumes, the mid-1600s compilation of illustrations and descriptions of German towns.
The Topographia series was begun by engraver Matthäus Merian—his sons Caspar and Matthäus Jr. (who carried forward the business after their father’s death in 1650) as well as Wenceslaus Hollar—and writer Martin Zeiler and published in Frankfurt in 38 parts. It has been reprinted several times over the years, and I recently purchased one of these reprints.
What fascinated me was its potential to give researchers the look and feel of their ancestors’ towns after the Thirty Years War (ended in 1648) and before the first wave of German emigration to both North America and to Eastern Europe (began in the late 1600s).
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