Klaus Mendler Historian · M. A.

Genealogical & historical research in Germany — for families abroad

The records are there.
Reading them
is the hard part.

Your German ancestors left baptisms, marriages and civil entries scattered across parish books and regional archives — much of it now online, almost none of it legible to a modern eye. I find those records, read the old German hands, and turn them into a documented account of where your people came from.

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Open letters, memorial cards and a cigar box holding a family's documentary papers
from a family’s papers

The wall you’ve hit

Perhaps you traced your family confidently
across an ocean—and then stopped.

At a German village name. At a record written in an alphabet you cannot read. At an archive that does not answer email in English. This is where I begin.

I read Kurrent, Sütterlin and the Latin of Catholic parish registers; I know which record survives where — on Matricula, on Archion, or only on a shelf in Duisburg, Münster, Detmold or Koblenz; and I visit those archives in person for what was never digitised. Seeing a record online is not the same as being able to read it. That difference is my work.

What I do

Five ways I help.

  1. i.

    Reading the unreadable

    Transcription and translation of old German documents — Kurrent, Sütterlin and early-modern hands, and Latin parish entries — rendered into clear, modern English.

  2. ii.

    Breaking through brick walls

    German ancestry and problem-focused research from primary sources, with full source criticism: lineages, ancestor charts, and the resolution of contradictory or missing evidence.

  3. iii.

    German citizenship by descent

    Research and certified records to establish and document a German line of descent in support of a citizenship application.

  4. iv.

    A family history, written to be read

    Your findings prepared not as a stack of documents but as a documented narrative — as a report, an online publication, or a printed book your descendants will still want to open.

  5. v.

    On-site archival work

    Systematic searches and record retrieval in state, church, municipal and parish archives across North Rhine-Westphalia and beyond, fully documented — including material that exists nowhere online.

An example of my work

A father invented,
a father found.

A man married near Essen in 1841 giving parents who, it turned out, had never existed — an invention to hide an illegitimate birth. His baptism named only his mother; the trail seemed to end there.

It reopened in the civil duplicate of an elder sibling’s birth, where the father had acknowledged himself by name and birthplace — and it closed, after research in the parish books of a village more than 150 kilometres away, on a single man who could not be confused with any other, despite an age that at first seemed impossible.

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This is what I mean by a documented narrative: not a name added to a chart, but a conclusion argued from the sources — and honest about what remains open.

About

Patient.
Thorough.

My name is Klaus Mendler. I read history, German studies and philosophy at the Freie Universität Berlin (M.A.) and have worked as an independent genealogist and historian from Krefeld since 2002. Over those years I have come to know the archives of the Rhineland and the wider former Prussian Rhine Province from the inside; I am listed on the referral roster of the Landesarchiv NRW — the list to which the archive directs enquirers whose questions exceed what its own staff can undertake.

For me, genealogy is not a collection of data points but a reading of traces. Every fragment of an entry, every priest’s marginal note, stands for a life. What I deliver is never just a list: it is a documented narrative, argued from sources — in English or German.

How it works

Four steps,
no obligation to start.

  1. 1.

    Tell me what you know

    Send me the names, places and dates you already have, and what you hope to find.

  2. 2.

    Get an honest assessment — free

    I will tell you what can realistically be done, and what it is likely to involve.

  3. 3.

    I research

    Online across the German portals, and on site in the archives for what is not digitised.

  4. 4.

    You receive a documented result

    A sourced report — and, if you wish, a written family history.

Contact

Write
to me.

A first enquiry is free of obligation. Tell me what you already know and what you would like to find out, and you will receive an honest assessment of what can reasonably be done. I work with clients in Germany and abroad, in English or German.

Terms of engagement

Conditions, in brief

  1. German civil law (BGB) applies to all engagements; individual cases are decided by the court.
  2. My work covers historical and genealogical research, archival searches, parish-register transcripts, the transcription and translation of old documents, and the publication of results.
  3. All research is conducted in accordance with the established methods of historical scholarship.
  4. Responsibility for any subsequent use of the findings rests with the client. No liability is accepted for any infringement of copyright, data-protection, or personality rights by the client.
  5. A fee is payable. Archive fees, photocopies, microfilm prints, and photographs are charged separately.
  6. Travel costs are calculated using current Deutsche Bahn rates from Krefeld Hbf to the relevant destination. If overnight stays are necessary, those costs are also charged.

The full version is available on request.