With more than fifteen years experience in historical research and genealogy, we’re here to help you build your family history, decipher that illegible document, break through the brick wall, or get you a German passport.
Whatever your family history needs, we’ve got you covered.
Expertise
- Reclaiming citizenship
- Historical documents
- Old German handwriting
- Finding living relatives
- Archival visits in Germany
- Stolpersteine
Research areas
- Germany, Prussia, Habsburg
- Leipzig Jewish History
- German citizenship
- Restitution (property & art)
- 19th & 20th centuries
- German, English, Hebrew
Dr. Jutta Faehndrich
Founder and senior researcher
A chance encounter as a student got me into family research, a journey that has become both a passion and a profession. For more than fifteen years now I have been researching family histories, both my own and others. My experience as a cultural historian (MA, PhD) and avid genealogist makes for a unique expertise with an extremely broad spectrum.”
Cultural historian Dr. Jutta Faehndrich holds an MA in Cultural Studies from Leipzig university and a PhD in history from Erfurt university. Her doctoral thesis on the memory books of German expellees (Eine endliche Geschichte, Böhlau 2009) was awarded the Polish Ambassador’s 2010 Dissertation Prize.
Her latest book portrays the Dutch cartographer and landscape painter Charles William Meredith van de Velde (1818-1898), who traveled to Palestine in the 19th century, surveying and drawing the land: “Als Künstler und Kartograph im Heiligen Land (1851/52) – Die drei Palästina des C. W. M. van de Velde” (Reimer 2021).
As a student, she learned how to decipher old handwritings and prepare critical text editions. She was involved in editing Georg Simmel’s first dissertation on the origins of music (with K.C. Köhnke) and Ernst Cassirer’s late works on cultural anthropology (ECN VI, with G. Hartung and K.C. Köhnke).
When she found the first version of Cassirer’s “Essay on Man” in the archives of Yale University Press, she was made an honorary co-editor by her academic superiors.
Hunting down evidence and solving historical puzzles has been her favourite business ever since.
More about her scholarly work at Academia.edu.
Get in touch: mail@germangen.de
Caroline Fries, M.A.
Researcher
A classicist and performance scholar by training, I have always loved deciphering texts, digging into archives and presenting complex material for others to see. “
With a BA in Classics from King’s College London and an MA in Text & Performance Studies from King’s College London and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, her expertise is in the fields of Holocaust scholarship and cultural memory. Her PhD project at Mainz University focuses on affective strategies of memorial sites in Israel and Germany.
After career stages in London, Tel Aviv and Mainz, she is now an independent researcher in Berlin. English, German and Hebrew are her main languages.
Links & Cooperations
- Discovering Roots.pl — Poznan-based researchers & tour guides
- Fraenkelufer Berlin — Berlin Jewish Community and Synagogue
- IGRA — Israel Genealogy Research Association
- Gabriel Fawcett — Tour guide extraordinaire
- Stephan Heidenhain — Our Attorney & German citizenship expert