Greifenberg Kirchenspiele

Griefenberg Kirchenspiele

During the 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, the church played a central role in the lives of most European people.  This held true in Prussia as we learned while completing the research on this project.  What was evident from our research is that the "Kirchenspiele" freely translated meaning "Church Area" or "Area of Church Influence".  A Kirchenspiele was almost like a county, with the county seat being the church.  More often then not, it resembled a hub and spoke setup, with the Church being the hub and small villages, within walking distance, surrounding the church.  In 1996 when we visited this area, we actually drove on some of these paths from one village to another.

Roads, leading to the church at that time were nothing more than foot trails, cart trails or cow paths leading from one village to another and ultimately to the church were all important events took place.  The individual "Kirche" churches were responsible for keeping records of important events, marriages, births, deaths, baptisms, confirmations, deaths and other important happenings.

Almost all of our European genealogy searches were completed as a result of these wonderful church records that had been copied by the Church of Latter Day Saints and placed on file in Salt Lake City.  Fortunately for us, our entire family has been Lutheran and the records were quite complete.  We were able to track our family, but in doing so, we captured literally hundreds of other "Heuers" names that were not our family.  We dutifully collected  and catalogued them according to the Kirche we found them.  Through a great amount of work, we have created a Kirchenspiele Map which allows users to hyperlink to individual churches to view the names we found at those churches along with pertinent data of those people located there.