State Archive in Katowice — Cieszyn Branch (Archiwum Państwowe w Katowicach oddział w Cieszynie)

The Cieszyn Branch of the State Archive in Katowice is the relevant archive for the whole of Cieszyn Silesia — the former Habsburg Duchy of Teschen, whose history overlaps with neither Prussian Silesia nor Galicia. For research on families from Cieszyn, Bielsko, Skoczów, Strumień, Jabłonków, Frýdek, or Třinec, this is the primary archive.

Its holdings include, among others:

• parish books of Roman-Catholic, Lutheran (Augsburg-confession), and Jewish communities across Cieszyn Silesia;
• records of the Cieszyn Chamber (Komora Cieszyńska) — the Habsburg dynastic estate that covered most of the duchy (forests, ironworks, mines, granges);
• records of the Lutheran Jesus Parish in Cieszyn — the largest Protestant parish in the Habsburg Monarchy after the 1781 Patent of Toleration;
• records of towns and communes (Cieszyn, Bielsko, Skoczów, Strumień, and others);
• circuit-court files, land registers, and mortgage books (18th–20th centuries);
• records of the Bielsko-Biała textile industry;
• records of the Austrian (Cieszyn circle) and Polish state administration.

The Cieszyn holdings are being digitised in stages and made available through the online catalogue szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl. The branch reading room is in Cieszyn itself, and we visit it in person for research on families from the Polish-Czech-Slovak borderland.

Get in touch: office@mypolishgenealogy.com