Finding Herbert Harschnek - a little saga of 99 years parted: Starting with Alois Harschnek whom we mentioned in our last post.

Here’s a fun tip for researching relatives, especially 1st generation German ones. The Library of Congress’ Chronicling America: Historic...

People's surnames often provide clues into their way back family history. Learn what Von and Van mean for the Dutch and Germans.

Beer lovers and German fans can likely answer this riddle in a second. We are talking about Oktoberfest! September brings a nip in the...

I feel so very lucky that my family has saved and cared for both family photos and also diaries, letters and other family pieces. Reading...

It’s the old master’s birthday, and we’ll take that as a happy excuse to talk about names like Bach.

Voyage to America: Servant Class - Independent Woman

German has two variants for ch, depending on whether the surrounding letters are ‘bright’ or ‘dark’.   If you say “ee, ey”  versus “o, oo, a

One of the fun things about digging through old family papers is discovering the whimsical pieces that someone has tucked away. Here's

Nutcrackers, decorated trees and snow on the ground. Christmas must be right around the corner. We've seasonal Germantranslations to get

Houses are adorned with festive lights, decorations and trees. We've some German translations to get you even more in the holiday spirit

Martin Luther, who grew up with the tradition of gifts on Nikolaustag, shifted gift-giving to Christmas, since saints were no longer a focus

Was zum Teufel? What the freaking devil? Santa. Krampus

Sometimes you think you’ve heard almost every family story (often multiple times), but I’ve been so wonderfully surprised recently....and in

Ä, Ö and Ü are simple variations of familiar letters, but the ​​fourth letter that German has that we don’t is the real kicker:  ß  Eszett

German words inspired by US Halloween

When it comes to place names, getting from English to German and vice-versa can be challenging, but it's also loads of fun, and useful,...

Old German letters are tough to read but they are mostly the same alphabet we use - just with a few variations.

Explanation on why old German writing was different than today's writing.