Finding your Austrian ancestors

First, find the place, its parish and its Bundesland

Austrian records are filed by place: first the parish (Pfarre) that kept the registers, then the diocese or the province (Bundesland) whose archive has put them online. Before you search, you need the place's present name, the municipality (Gemeinde) it belongs to, its parish and its Bundesland, and you need to be sure it is in today's Austria at all.

“Austria” before 1918 meant much more. From 1867 the Habsburg monarchy was the dual state of Austria-Hungary: two halves that shared some powers but ran most of their administration separately. The Austrian half sent members to the Reichsrat in Vienna, and the 1867 law on the Reichsrat names its lands: the kingdoms of Bohemia, Dalmatia, and Galicia and Lodomeria with Cracow; Lower and Upper Austria; Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola and Bukovina; Moravia; Silesia; Tyrol and Vorarlberg; Istria, Gorizia and Gradisca; and Trieste. A family paper that says “Austria” may therefore point to a village that is now in another country. FamilySearch notes that an ancestor listed as Austrian may have come from any of the countries that once belonged to the Habsburg monarchy, and that Austrian emigration included ethnic Germans, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, Slovenes, Romanians, Italians, Croats and Serbs.

• Bohemia, Moravia and Austrian Silesia: read our Czech Republic guide.
• Galicia (now in Poland and Ukraine): read our Poland guide or our Ukraine guide.
• Bukovina (now in Romania and Ukraine), Carniola (now Slovenia), and the coastal lands and southern Tyrol (now partly in Italy) are covered by the archives of those countries.
• The Hungarian half of the monarchy, including what is now Slovakia: read our Hungary guide.

Burgenland was Hungarian. Austria's easternmost province was the German-speaking part of western Hungary (Deutsch-Westungarn) and passed to Austria only in November 1921. For an ancestor from Burgenland who left before then, papers will often say Hungary, and FamilySearch notes that state civil registration began there, as in the rest of Hungary, in 1895.

Finding the parish. The Gemeindelexikon of the lands represented in the Reichsrat, based on the census of 31 December 1900, has one volume for each crown land (14 in all, from Lower Austria to Dalmatia). Its appendix, arranged by political and court district, gives the Catholic parish of every place; the volumes are free on FamilySearch Books, listed on the FamilySearch Wiki's Austria Gazetteers page. For today's municipalities, Statistik Austria's Ortsverzeichnis 2001 lists every municipality and the localities within it, in one free PDF volume per Bundesland (for example Tyrol and Carinthia).

Which portal. Most Austrian Catholic registers are on Matricula, organised by Bundesland and diocese:

Matricula also has Protestant registers for each province, a Greek Orthodox section, and the Lower Austrian Provincial Archives.

Parish registers (Matriken): the civil record until 1938

In Austria the parish register (Matrik, plural Matriken) was the official record of births, marriages and deaths until 1938. Joseph II's patent of 20 February 1784 made the registers a matter of the state, but the churches went on keeping them: Vienna's official history wiki says that until 1938 civil status was in the hands of the religious authorities.

1938 and 1939. Civil marriage became compulsory on 1 August 1938, and state registry offices (Standesämter) were set up on 1 January 1939 for births and deaths: in Vienna alone, 34 of them. Since then the parish books have been church records only, and the state books are kept by the municipalities.

Where the old books are. It depends on the diocese. The Austrian diocesan archives' own guide (2018) gives examples: in Graz-Seckau the diocesan archive holds the old registers in trust, while the books of the last 100 years stay in the parishes; in Gurk (Carinthia) the registers are in the diocesan archive, partly as copies; in Eisenstadt (Burgenland) most are deposited in the diocesan archive and the rest are in the parishes; in Feldkirch (Vorarlberg) most originals are still in the parishes. The Archdiocese of Vienna lets researchers see parish registers only in the parish office, under supervision, and forbids copies from old registers: it sends them to Matricula instead.

Language. FamilySearch notes that most Catholic records were written in Latin until the 1800s, and Protestant records usually in German.

Protestant registers. Joseph II tolerated Protestants from 1781 and allowed them to found parishes. According to FamilySearch, until 1849 the baptisms, marriages and burials of non-Catholics were also entered in the Catholic registers, so look in both. Protestant (Lutheran and Reformed) registers are on Matricula for each province.

Jewish registers. In Vienna the Jewish Community (Israelitische Kultusgemeinde, IKG) keeps the birth, marriage and death registers of the IKG Wien from 1784/1785 to 1938, and those of the Turkish-Israelite community from 1846/1859 to 1938. Write to its archive (address matriken at ikg-wien.at); it says it cannot currently do genealogical research or draw up family trees, and fees are due under its fee schedule.

Read the registers online: Matricula and Matriken Tirol

Open Matricula, choose the Bundesland and the diocese, then the parish, and read the books yourself. Matricula is owned and published by ICARUS Archival Research, a non-profit company in Vienna; each diocese or archive owns and edits the registers on its own pages, so the scans come from the dioceses themselves. The Archdiocese of Vienna's leaflet describes it as a service of the dioceses of St. Pölten, Vienna, Linz (with the Upper Austrian Provincial Archives) and Passau, free and open 24 hours a day.

What you can see. Entries about living people are withheld; in Austria, the leaflet says, that means the last 100 years. The Graz-Seckau diocesan archive explains the rule for its registers: birth and baptism books are closed for at least 100 years, while marriage and death books are open up to 1938, because from 1939 the registry offices kept the records.

Tyrol. The Tyrolean Provincial Archives publishes Matriken Tirol Online, made from microfilms of the Catholic registers of Tyrol and of the Protestant parish of Innsbruck. Where the archive holds them, baptism books are online up to 1923 and marriage and death books up to 1938. Use is free, for private and scientific purposes only; extracts and certificates from the old registers come from the parish offices.

The Austrian diocesan archives note that the registers of almost all Austrian dioceses have now been digitised. If you cannot find a book online, write to the parish or the diocesan archive: the Gurk archive, for example, is the main contact for family research up to 1939 and answers a first written inquiry with up to 30 minutes of research.

From 1939: the registry office (Standesamt)

For a birth, death or marriage from 1939 on (marriages from 1 August 1938), the record is with the state. Under the Civil Status Act 2013 (Personenstandsgesetz), civil status is a task of the municipalities: the Gemeinde is the registry authority, and several small municipalities may share one registry office (Standesamtsverband).

Who may ask. Under § 52 of the Act, information and certificates are given to the persons the entry concerns, to others whose civil status the entry affects, and to anyone who shows a legal interest (rechtliches Interesse), unless the protected interests of the persons concerned weigh more. These restrictions lapse:

• 100 years after a birth was registered;
• 75 years after a marriage was registered, if the entry does not concern a living person;
• 30 years after a death was registered.

Where and how much. For a birth after 1 January 1939 a birth certificate can be requested from any registry office, not only the one where the birth was registered. The federal portal oesterreich.gv.at lists the fees (January 2026): free if you apply in person, 21 euros for a written application, plus 11 euros federal fee and 2.10 euros administrative charge for the certificate; postage may be extra. An Austrian embassy or consulate can also issue the certificate if the data are already in the central civil status register (ZPR).

Before 1939. For births before 1 January 1939 the same portal sends you to the parish offices of the various religions. In Vienna: the Roman Catholic Archdiocese, the Protestant Church Council (Evangelischer Oberkirchenrat), the Jewish Community, or, for people without religion, the city's immigration and citizenship department (MA 35). Vienna's registry department MA 63 issues marriage certificates from 1 August 1938 and birth and death certificates from 1 January 1939, and they can be ordered online.

Vienna residence records, Heimatrecht, military records and land maps

Vienna residence records. Vienna's population cards (Meldezettel) of 1850 to 1928, mostly from 1890 to 1925, give name, date and place of birth, marital status, and old and new addresses; they are filed in a complex phonetic order. FamilySearch filmed them at the Vienna City and Provincial Archives (catalog entry); some images need a login or a FamilySearch centre. For about 1904 to 1975 the archive answers requests from the police registration records: give the full name and one identifier (date of birth, occupation or an address at a given date), one form per person. It costs 35 euros for every half hour of research, at most two hours, charged even if nothing is found; the answer comes within two months. Lehmann's address books (1859 to 1942) list only owners and main tenants, and the death inspection records (Totenbeschauprotokolle) survive from 1648 to 1920 and are online.

Heimatrecht. Introduced in 1849, the right of domicile (Heimatrecht) tied every Austrian citizen to one municipality, which owed them residence and poor relief. It came by birth or admission (for example through marriage), and from 1896 after ten years' residence. Municipalities kept a register (Heimatrolle) and issued certificates of domicile (Heimatscheine). It was abolished in 1939 and replaced by proof of citizenship. Vienna's register is held by MA 35, with older parts in the City Archives. A Heimatschein among family papers names the municipality where the holder “belonged”, which is not always the birthplace.

The Austrian State Archives. The State Archives (Österreichisches Staatsarchiv) has no central register of persons, and it does not hold parish or civil registers, except military parish registers. Its War Archives (Kriegsarchiv) keeps the central military records up to 1918 but does not do research for you: it gives orientation and suggests a professional genealogist. For soldiers of 1740 to 1820 there are muster rolls by regiment; from 1820 to 1868 each regiment kept a record sheet (Grundbuchblatt) for every soldier, and both can be viewed online. You need the name and the regiment, and from about 1820 the approximate year he left. See the archive's research guidelines for the period after 1868.

Land maps. The Franciscan cadastre (Urmappe, 1817 to 1861) was the first survey of every plot in the monarchy. For today's Austria the originals are kept by the Federal Office of Metrology and Surveying (BEV), which sells sheets at 10 euros (PDF) or 15 euros (JPEG) each.

Emigrants: where they went and how they were counted

FamilySearch notes that before 1918 the exact number of Austrians who emigrated to the United States is unknown, because Austria was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Many Austrians settled in New York City, Pittsburgh and Chicago, and many went to Latin America; between 1919 and 1924 fewer than 20,000 Austrians went to North America, mainly from Burgenland.

The official tables shown on this site's map count:

Figures: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Yearbook of Immigration Statistics 2019, table 2 (Austria and Hungary not reported separately for all years during 1860 to 1869, 1890 to 1899 and 1900 to 1909; Poland included in Austria, Germany, Hungary and Russia from 1899 to 1919); Australian Government, Department of Home Affairs, Historical Migration Statistics (November 2025); Historical Statistics of Switzerland online, table B.21; Argentina, Dirección General de Inmigración (reports of 1904 and 1925). Borders changed over time: a country name may not cover the same territory in every decade. Each country uses its own definitions: compare with care.

Departure lists. Many emigrants sailed from the German ports. The Bremen State Archives explains that Hamburg's passenger lists survive more fully, from 1850 to 1934: the originals are in the Hamburg State Archives and they can be searched on Ancestry (paid) or FamilySearch (Hamburg passenger lists). For Bremen, complete series survive only for 1907/08, 1913/14 and 1920 to 1939; the 1920 to 1939 lists are in the archive of the Bremen Chamber of Commerce. Look first for the arrival record in the country where your ancestor landed: it often names the village.

Writing to a Pfarramt or a Standesamt

For a record before 1939 (before 1 August 1938 for a marriage), first read the scans on Matricula or Matriken Tirol Online. If the book is not online, write to the parish office (Pfarramt) of the parish, or to the diocesan archive where the books have been deposited, and ask for an extract or copy of the baptism, marriage or burial entry (Matrikenauszug). For a record from 1939 on, write to the registry office (Standesamt) of the municipality; any registry office can issue a birth certificate. Give the full name, the date and place, the parents' names and the religion, and say that you are a descendant, with proof; once a birth is more than 100 years old, a marriage 75 or a death 30, the legal restrictions on access lapse. Ask the fee and how to pay it from abroad. For Jewish records in Vienna, write to the IKG archive, which does not do genealogical research. Write your letter in German with our free generator.

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