Record Atlas
4 eras · 1214–2026 · 16 places

The Palatinate

Speyer, Kaiserslautern, Landau, Zweibrücken, Neustadt. Which empire held this ground in which years — and, the part that matters, which archive that means.

Whose archive this ground was

YearsWho held itWhose archive that means
1214–1794 Electoral Palatinate and the neighbouring states FamilySearch

The Wittelsbachs ruled the Electoral Palatinate from 1214; the area was split among ecclesiastical states, secular principalities and free imperial cities.
1794–1814 France — Mont-Tonnerre department FamilySearch

French forces occupied the region in 1794; the department of Mont-Tonnerre was formed in 1797.
1814–1945 Bavaria — the Palatinate (the Rheinkreis, called Pfalz from 1835) Landesarchiv Speyer · Archion · FamilySearch

Placed under Bavarian rule after the Napoleonic era.
1945–2026 Germany — Rhineland-Palatinate Landesarchiv Speyer · Archion

French occupation authorities combined the Palatinate with other territories to form Rhineland-Palatinate (1947 in Wikipedia's article; 1946 in a note at its end).

The rings are approximate — deliberately. They exist to shade which filing system a place fell under, not to adjudicate a border. A place near a ring's edge should be checked against both neighbours.

See the whole span, 1214–2026, on the map →

The map takes a range, and a range that crosses one of the rows above is where records get lost: the family never moved, and the archive on the far side of the handover will tell you it holds nothing.

16 places on this ground

88 FamilySearch collections reach this ground

Ranked with the regional ones first — a collection for a province is usually a better lead than a national index, though the national index is often where a name is actually written down. A free account opens the images.

…and 28 more.

All record regions · The map