archion.de

ARCHION is an online portal for historical church registers (Kirchenbücher) and other sources used in genealogical and biographical research. It has offered digitised archive material since March 2015. Users can search for registers by place and time for free, view digitised pages, and use automatic transcription of handwritten entries, with transcription of a large number of pages already available. Downloads carry an automatic source citation.

The portal is operated by Kirchenbuchportal GmbH, which is based in Stuttgart. Its customers are family and genealogy researchers who buy time-limited access passes; passes end automatically and do not renew on their own. Searching is free, and a free personal user area stores bookmarks and search history. Partner archives, including Protestant, diocesan, municipal, association and state archives, supply the images and keep data sovereignty and image rights, while ARCHION holds a simple usage right. The archives pay nothing for online presentation or data hosting.

The company was founded in 2013 by the Evangelical Church in Germany together with eleven regional churches, and other shareholders and partners have since joined. The portal reports over 200,000 church registers from more than 25 archives, with new digitised registers added daily. The operator is in public and church ownership.

Product: Paid time-limited access to digitised church registers and historical sources, with search, transcription and downloads.