Transylvania and the Banat
Cluj (Kolozsvár), Brașov, Sibiu, Timișoara. Which empire held this ground in which years — and, the part that matters, which archive that means.
1918–2026 — Pre-1918 records are HUNGARIAN and largely at Budapest; post-1918 are ROMANIAN and at the county archives. A family in one village, unmoved, is filed in two countries and two languages either side of 1918 — and the village has a Hungarian name, a Romanian name and often a German one.
Whose archive this ground was
| Years | Who held it | Whose archive that means |
|---|---|---|
| 1200–1526 | Kingdom of Hungary — Transylvania | no registers survive Before registers. |
| 1526–1699 | Principality of Transylvania, under Ottoman suzerainty | no registers survive Saxon Lutheran towns keep records earlier than most of the region; elsewhere very little survives. |
| 1699–1867 | Habsburg — Grand Principality of Transylvania | Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár (Hungarian National Archives) · Hungaricana · Arhivele Naționale ale României · FamilySearch Four recognised religions and a Romanian Orthodox majority, each keeping its own registers: Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, Unitarian and Orthodox. |
| 1867–1918 | Austria–Hungary — the Hungarian half | Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár (Hungarian National Archives) · Hungaricana · FamilySearch Civil registration from 1 October 1895, in Hungarian, whatever the family's language at home. |
| 1918–2026 | Romania | Arhivele Naționale ale României · Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár (Hungarian National Archives) · Hungaricana THE TRAP. Pre-1918 records are HUNGARIAN and largely at Budapest; post-1918 are ROMANIAN and at the county archives. A family in one village, unmoved, is filed in two countries and two languages either side of 1918 — and the village has a Hungarian name, a Romanian name and often a German one. |
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, 1200–2026, 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.
11 places on this ground
1 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.
- Romania, Civil Registration, 1865-1903 ↗ 1865–1903 759 records