Burials in Bremen from 1634 - 1811

In Bremen, there were generally no death entries in the church registers before 1811. The following is an excerpt from the booklet 11 Blätter der Maus, p.11:

The tradition of burial records in the parishes of the city of Bremen is special. In contrast to the rural parishes, death or burial registers were generally not kept in the city of Bremen, but only account books. The reason for this may have been that burials usually took place without the presence of a clergyman. For this reason, no death registers were kept to record official acts, as was the case with baptisms, marriages and proclamations. In the case of deaths, the individual parishes were only interested in the income for the opening of graves and other services for funerals.

The date on which the graves were opened and the fee collected in each case are the most important records for deaths in the period mentioned. The information is rather sparse.

In most cases, only the name of the husband/head of household is mentioned, regardless of whether he died himself, or his wife or child, in which case either the addition “wife” or “child” was noted, in each case without giving the first names or maiden names of the wives.

More details in the booklet mentioned above.