Record Atlas
7 eras · 1466–2026 · 8 places

West Prussia

Danzig, Thorn, Graudenz, Marienwerder, Elbing. 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
1466–1772 Royal Prussia (Polish Crown) Szukaj w Archiwach · FamilySearch

Royal Prussia belonged to the Polish crown after the Second Peace of Thorn in 1466.
1772–1807 Prussia — West Prussia Archion · Bundesarchiv · Szukaj w Archiwach

Prussia took most of the area in the First Partition of 1772 and made it a province in 1773; Danzig and Thorn joined in the Second Partition of 1793.
1807–1815 Napoleonic order — the Duchy of Warsaw and the Free City of Danzig Archion · Bundesarchiv · Szukaj w Archiwach

The province lost its southern land to the Duchy of Warsaw; Danzig was a Free City from 1807 to 1814. The Congress of Vienna returned Danzig, Culm and Thorn in 1815.
1815–1920 Prussia — Province of West Prussia Archion · Bundesarchiv · Szukaj w Archiwach

Merged with East Prussia in 1829 as the Province of Prussia, and separated again in 1878.
1920–1939 Poland (the Corridor), the Free City of Danzig, and East Prussia Szukaj w Archiwach · Archion · Bundesarchiv

The Treaty of Versailles of 1919 divided the territory: Danzig became a free city, the central region the Polish Corridor, the eastern area part of East Prussia, and the western part joined Posen in 1922 as Posen–West Prussia.
1939–1945 Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia Arolsen Archives · Bundesarchiv

Nazi Germany absorbed the former province in 1939.
1945–2026 Poland — Pomerania and Kuyavian-Pomerania Szukaj w Archiwach · Geneteka

Restored to Poland under the Potsdam Agreement. Danzig is Gdańsk, Thorn is Toruń.

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, 1466–2026, 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.

8 places on this ground

7 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.

All record regions · The map