Barnack's Birth Certificate

[derleicaman]

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Looking for a little help here. I am working on a short article about the spelling of Barnack's first name Oskar, with a 'C' or a 'K'.

Many of you have contributed to the other thread I started on this. I am still lacking a copy of the original Birth Certificate. I have later certificates of what we would call in America a certificate of live birth, confirming the date and the names of his parents. These are good, but seeing the original would be better.

Can any of you help out here?

TIA

[willeica]

2 hours ago, derleicaman said:

Looking for a little help here. I am working on a short article about the spelling of Barnack's first name Oskar, with a 'C' or a 'K'.

Many of you have contributed to the other thread I started on this. I am still lacking a copy of the original Birth Certificate. I have later certificates of what we would call in America a certificate of live birth, confirming the date and the names of his parents. These are good, but seeing the original would be better.

Can any of you help out here?

TIA

Did you get in touch with Ottmar? He showed it to me on his phone. The writing is spidery and in 'Old German'. From what I saw, it looked like a 'K' was used, as is shown in the printed records, but it was difficult to read.

My take is that he was born and christened as 'Oskar' and that he used this spelling for official and business purposes, but 'Oscar' was used for personal and family purposes, including for his marriage certificate and his gravestone. 

William 

[derleicaman]

Ottmar has yet to respond

[derleicaman]

OK, I heard back from Ottmar, and here it is.

Very hard to read. I would love feedback on what it says for Barnack's Vornamen.

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[willeica]

19 hours ago, derleicaman said:

OK, I heard back from Ottmar, and here it is.

Very hard to read. I would love feedback on what it says for Barnack's Vornamen.

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That is the one he showed to me. Good luck with that writing. Try sending it to Lars.

William

 

 

[derleicaman]

Hello William, I also shared it on the German LUF. Take a look, some very interesting observations there. One thing I noticed is that this document is dated on the 8th November. My guess is they waited for the christening to record Oscar's birth. The concensus on the German side is that it is a 'C'. But yes, it is very hard to read!

[mazdaro]

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Source:

Wikipedia, Deutsche Kurrentschrift.

The alphabet:

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[mazdaro]

Last line, 2nd ligature: "ck"

[jankap]

Very good, I have found the same source. The letter "s" is difficult.

Conclusion: it is Oscar!

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[derleicaman]

4 hours ago, jankap said:

Very good, I have found the same source. The letter "s" is difficult.

Conclusion: it is Oscar!

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Now how do we get Wilhelm out of the first word?!?

[pop]

5 hours ago, derleicaman said:

Now how do we get Wilhelm out of the first word?!?

This is how I interpret the both words in that snippet.

"i" looks like in a modern script, i.e. a small downstroke with a dot over it.

"l" looks like a modern "l",

The very tall letter with a long  ascender and a very long descender is an "h".

"e" is made of two small downstrokes, joined by an oblique upstroke (a bit like an reverse printed uppercase "N" in roman script, but smaller and tied in). In this case, it's followed by another "l".

"m" ends the word and is clearly recognizable.

Everything that stands before the "i" is an uppercase "W". Many uppercase letters are much complicated and will still be confused by modern readers.

----

I don't quite see how people read the next word as 'Oscar'.

"O" is complicated and still recognizable as such.

The following letter is a "round s" (as opposed to a "long s"). The rules for using those different glyphs for the letter "s" are not all that obvious, but the "round s" is appropriate here. It resembles, BTW, the Greek lowercase Sigma, only that it is run together with the following letter.

The letter following the round s with the long ascender is clearly a "k". It's followed by a  somewhat squished "a", followed by an "r"

---

I only just noticed the table of glyphs a few posts before mine. You should realise that there are several variants of the German writing script and that there was not so much agreement about the upper case letters as we might have hoped. Individual variations (and, perhaps regional variations as well) make reading such material a bit of a challenge.

I would like to suggest to use a higher resolution for this kind of exercise. Also, the whole image is a bit on the blurry side. A better reproduction would be helpful in discerning the finer points of some of the glyphs, at least for elderly readers like me.

Edited June 29, 2022 by pop

[pop]

On another note, the civil servant who filled out the form may or may not have asked the client about the spelling of the different first names. After all, a civil servant was of a very high status, not to be compared with the peasants and yokels daring to beg for his services, and knew perfectly well how common first names were to be spelled. At that time, consistent spelling did not always have the topmost priority, as anyone dabbling in genealogy has learned.

[Pyrogallol]

There is another factor to consider as well. Did the official who wrote out the certificate get the spelling right? Did he record the wishes of the parent registering the birth or spell the name as he assumed it should be spelled? If that was the way births were registered there at the time? was there a different procedure? A work colleague born in the USA in the 1940’s had his birth registered by the local doctor who wrote down his middle name as just an initial “A” instead of the full name, so for the rest of his life his middle name was just A.

the previous post by “pop” overlapped with mine as I was writing it.

Edited June 29, 2022 by Pyrogallol

[willeica]

6 hours ago, derleicaman said:

Now how do we get Wilhelm out of the first word?!?

With difficulty. The marriage cert uses Wilhelm. Any luck with Oscar Fricke and the handwritten version of that?

William

[romanus53]

the record is an official document with combined printing and handwritings, mainly filled in by the registrar and bearing his and Ferdinand Barnack's individual signatures at the end. On the main part the registrar who is used to write and trained to some formular lettering has written as best as he could but it's still a hand-writing. I would not compare every single letter with some tables but just read and follow the ductus of his hand. So it's Wilhelm Oscar to me - and you can guess from the signatures that the regitrar writes muchand often, Ferdinand Barnack perhaps less.

[LocalHero1953]

We need someone who can write in C19 script to write both versions for us. On a Leica forum surely there is someone who can do that?

[Kl@usW.]

Am 29.6.2022 um 07:55 schrieb pop:

The letter following the round s with the long ascender is clearly a "k". It's followed by a  somewhat squished "a", followed by an "r"

Definitely not. If you compare the letters to the comparative chart provided by Mazdaro, it´s  Oscar.   Look at the last letter of the underwriting and the names of Ferdinand and his wife Caroline, there you find the lowercase k which is very different from the lowercase c used for Oscar. 

Edited July 2, 2022 by Kl@usW.

[Kl@usW.]

Am 29.6.2022 um 09:07 schrieb LocalHero1953:

We need someone who can write in C19 script to write both versions for us. On a Leica forum surely there is someone who can do that?

what is C19 and what do you mean by "both versions" ? 

[Kl@usW.]

Am 29.6.2022 um 02:09 schrieb derleicaman:

Now how do we get Wilhelm out of the first word?!?

step by step.Letter by letter.  No doubt it´s Wilhelm.

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[pop]

2 hours ago, Kl@usW. said:

Look at the last letter of the underwriting

The underwriting is - of course - in another handwriting. There are several instances of the surname 'Barnack' in the document, written in the hand of the civil servant filling in the form. In all instances  the lower case 'k' is much shorter, quite similar to the letter following the round 's' in 'Os_ar'. There are IMO just too many squiggles between the s and the a for a mere c.