The Saint Petri cathedral is a Romanic church made out of sandstone and bricks. The cathedral was built in the The oldest surviving Bremen church registers are the baptism and banns of the parish of St Ansgarii, which began in 1581, and the baptismal register of the parish of Unser Lieben Frauen, which began in 1583. The council resolution of 8 September 1639 made it compulsory for all parishes to keep church registers.
From 1925 to 1935, the church records were deposited in the Bremen State Archives. The increase in air warfare during the Second World War caused the church records to be moved to a storage location in central Germany. From there they were taken to the Soviet Union as loot in 1945. Subsequently, the majority of the church records remained in the custody of the Soviet Union, while the smaller part was handed over to the State Archive Administration of the German Democratic Republic and stored in the German Central Archive of the GDR. Long-standing efforts to return the abducted church records were only successful after the political constellations in the GDR and the Soviet Union changed. The retained church registers were returned from the GDR in 1987 and from the Soviet Union in 1990. A review of the returned parish registers revealed that some parishes are still missing parish registers that must be considered lost for the time being.
Source: Staatsarchiv Bremen (translated with DeepL.com )