Many older documents of Czech immigrants are actually written in german – Czech Republic (the Kingdom of Bohemia at that time) belonged to Austro-Hungarian Empire until the year 1918 and was under German occupation during WW2, when it was known as Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. This page will help you with deciphering handwritten german documents and finding proper Czech names for cities/villages. If you need more info on how to use the features on this page, click here to watch our video tutorial.
Start entering a city name in German or Czech you want to find the translation for and select one from the autocomplete list. The list’s format is Czech name (German name) – District . After selecting, the Czech translation and the district (in which the city is located) will display bellow.
The data used is from Wikipedia’s List of historical German and Czech names for places in the Czech Republic – you can find the whole list on Czech Wikipedia here or a less detailed English version here
The German name for a Czech hometown was mostly used on immigration papers. Some of the older villages even might have disappeared or became a part of a neighboring city. The Czech Republic was The Kingdom of Bohemia at that time under the Austro-Hungarian Empire until 1918. Before 1918 immigrants mostly had a German name on thier documents for the Czech city where they were from. Also Bohemia/Moravia/Austria was used as the country name before 1918. In 1918 Czechoslovakia was founded and the name Czech Republic is from 1993 after the split with Slovakia.
Using the form bellow you can easily find the Czech translation for most German city/village names.
Enter any text into the input field. It will display in the font and letter case selected bellow. If you need to add German-specific characters, you can click on a button with the appropriate letter. Holding SHIFT on computers allows you to enter uppercase versions of those letters.
You can click on “Copy” next to any field to copy it into your clipboard, click on “Map” next to the parent/city region to display it on map and show more details about it or click on “Print” next to any field to print the results.
Most of these fonts are usually handwritten and may look a little different depending on the person writing the text.
German documents might be even more difficult to read since most of them are handwritten and Germany used multiple non-standard handwritings during their history, with the most common being Kurrent and Schwabacher. Although some of the letters are similar to regular English cursive, others may look completely different and be hard to decypher.
This tool can help with reading older handwritten documents by inputting the text you believe is written on them in English and comparing the original with the text generated in German handwriting.
Not sure which font to use?
Click this button to show the entire
alphabet in selected font and letter case.
