🏛️ Archive Portal

🔍 Searching

One search box, all databases of the portal (list on the home page): enter a family name, place name or topic and click "Search all databases". Results come grouped by source.

• Less is more: every word must match — with 0 hits, start with only the most important term.
• Typos and umlauts do not matter: similar spellings are checked and suggested automatically (Kirsche → Kirche, Müller/Mueller).
• More precise searching: in the Arcinsys searches choose the field "Person", "Place" or "Title", restrict to an archive, set a period, or tick "digitised only".
• Parish registers: Matricula searches parish places, not names. Click a parish → the registers open directly.
• Places sharing a name: there are several "Weidenhausen" in Hesse — narrow down by archive if needed.
• German Digital Library: 65 million objects (books, images, newspapers, music, archive records) — hits open directly in the DDB portal.
• German National Library: all German publications since 1913 — 886 local family books, ideal for genealogy.
• ZDB: journals and newspapers — including regional papers and club magazines.
• Internet Archive: scanned books with searchable full text (OCR) — old town chronicles and local family books readable directly.
• Bildindex (Foto Marburg): 1.9 million photographs of art and architecture — churches, castles, monuments, also from Marburg and Central Hesse.

🔤 Search fields in Arcinsys (dropdown)

• Everything (full text): searches all fields — good for starting out.
• Title / designation: the name of the archive item, e.g. "Gerichtsbuch Braunfels" (Braunfels court book).
• Person (name): people in the file, e.g. "Hübinger" — with "name variants" ticked, old spellings too (Huebinger, Hubing).
• Place: place names — helps with places sharing a name ("Neustadt" → "Neustadt Hessen").
• Content summary: free text about the file's content, e.g. "Erbstreit" (inheritance dispute).
• Contains (catalogue entry): keywords from the catalogue entry, e.g. "Erbschein, Vormundschaft" (certificate of inheritance, guardianship).
• Regest (summary): short summary of the content (mostly for older holdings).
• Descriptor (keyword): subject keywords from the finding aids, e.g. "Ziegelei" (brickworks), "Auswanderung" (emigration).

🔤 Combining several search terms

• Several words: all must match (AND) — "Neustadt Hessen" only finds hits containing both terms (2,173 instead of 21,820).
• Exact phrase: in quotation marks — "Neustadt Hessen" only finds hits where both words stand directly next to each other.
• Duplicated place names: for "Neustadt" and similar, the portal suggests place qualifiers (clicking starts the combined search).

🧮 Expert search (AND / OR / NOT)

Tick "🧮 Expert" — the search box then understands Boolean combinations. This allows questions that simple searches cannot answer:

• AND (also UND): all terms must match — Neustadt Kirchhain finds 339 instead of 21,820 hits.
• OR (also ODER): at least one term — Kirchhain OR Marburg finds both together.
• NOT (also NICHT): excludes — Hübinger NOT Marburg = all Hübinger without any Marburg relation.
• Parentheses: combine — Neustadt AND (Kirchhain OR Marburg) = Neustadt with one of the historic districts (1,692 instead of 21,820 hits).
• "Exact phrase": "Emser Depesche" — only hits where the words appear in exactly this order.
• Word stem with *: Ziegelei* finds Ziegelei, Ziegeleien, Ziegeleibesitzer (brickworks, brickwork owners) …

Write operators in capitals: lower-case they are treated as search words (verified: "Marburg or Kirche" = 10 hits, because the word "or" must occur). Correct: OR.

Why this mode exists: The archive engine itself silently returns wrong results for mixed combinations (e.g. A NOT B C or parentheses with OR) — terms disappear or roles are swapped without warning. The portal checks every input and automatically splits it into safe partial searches whose results are merged:

• Execution plan: after the search, a box shows which partial searches were actually executed — full transparency.
• ≈ hit count: with several partial searches the number is a merge (duplicates removed) — honestly marked as "≈". Simple combinations stay exact.
• Understandable errors: e.g. with NOT at the beginning you get a hint with a correction link instead of an empty search.
• Limits: max. 4 OR branches per query; NOT only before single terms/phrases.

Historical place search: For many places (e.g. Neustadt, Kirchhain, Homberg), a box appears automatically with the administrative chain (office → district → rural district) — old holdings are often filed under the historical district, not under the place name. Chain links are clickable: clicking narrows the search to that administrative unit; an extra link resets the search to the original query. The box appears in the Arcinsys search and in the all-database search — also for people (e.g. “Zwetsch”) and institutions (e.g. “Philipps-Universität”). The chain comes from curated data or — for places not yet curated — automatically from the Historical Place Lexicon (LAGIS). If a chain is wrong or incomplete, it can be reported directly via the “Chain wrong? Report a correction” link in the box — the report goes to the curation queue and feeds back into the curated data.

⭐️ Saved list

• In every hit list "⭐️ Save" — all sources (including letters and parish registers). The list is stored permanently; link + QR code are on the list page.
• Notes per item (they appear in CSV and print), save several hits at once via the checkboxes.
• Export: CSV (Excel) or print view — with reference codes, periods, all details and sources. Ready for the family chronicle.
• 🔔 Search alerts: create them below the all-database hits — new hits are checked and reported weekly.

👁️ Display options

• 📖 Summary (Regest): expand in Arcinsys hit lists — the content of the file without changing pages.
• 📅 Timeline: hits sorted by period — gaps in the records immediately visible.
• 🗺️ Map: automatic from 2 different places — the spatial distribution at a glance.
• 🕘 Recently searched: below the search box (only in your browser).

📋 What the details mean

• Reference code (Signatur): the archive "address" of the item (e.g. HStAM, 180 Biedenkopf, 2143) — important for ordering at the archive.
• Period (Laufzeit): the time span covered by the file.
• Digitised copy: scanned original in the official viewer of the archive portal.

⚠️ Messages

• "Did you mean …?": a correction suggestion with genuinely verified hits.
• "… not reachable right now": the source is not responding — try again later; the other sources keep working.
• "Short pause": too many searches in a row — wait a few seconds.

🌐 Language

• Bilingual interface (German/English): use the 🇩🇪/🇬🇧 switch at the top right — your choice is stored in the browser.
• Shareable by link: append ?lang=en to the URL to send someone an English view.
• What is translated: the interface (search fields, buttons, help, saved list, error messages). What is not translated: archive item summaries and catalogue data — they stay in the original (archive holdings).
• Automatic: without any setting, the portal follows your browser language (English browser → English interface).

🔒 Privacy

No registration, no storage of search queries. Only technical cookies (language choice, saved-list link) — no trackers, no profiling. Only your saved list is stored on the server (under your personal link). All data comes live from the official portals. This site is a private, simplified search aid.