German Biographical Index

Part of the database World Biographical Index contains short biographical details on people who either lived in, or were influential in Europe, Africa, Asia, the Australasian-Pacific region, and North and South America. It is an index to a total of 38 of K. G. Saur Verlag's Biographical Archives and is in addition, an independent instrument for biographical research on about 4,38 million persons. The Deutsches Biographisches Archiv (DBA) is the first major collection of biographical sources for the whole of the German-speaking area. In 18th and 19th century Germany a large number of biographical dictionaries was produced. These are still invaluable reference sources because of the wealth of information they contain. Even larger libraries do not stock complete collections of these works, and the 18th century editions are particularly difficult to locate. The DBA was designed to make available material from the most important of the reference and source works - a total of 480,000 biographical articles, published between 1700 and 1910. Included are works from Austria, Switzerland and from areas where German used to be the spoken or written language (e.g. East Prussia, Silesia, Pomerania and Livonia.)