Zeitweiser Index
The Zeitweiser was created by the “Bund der Christlichen Deutschen in Galizien”—“Association of Christian Germans in Galizien” which was founded by Pastor Theodor Zoeckler in 1907. It was disbanded by the then current authorities in 1923.
The Zeitweisers in the beginning were annual books, which contained an almanac, monthly calendar pages, and some stories for the enjoyment of the reading public.
Pastor Theodor Zoeckler (1867-1949) came from Germany on a short mission to Galizien, and returned in 1891 to Stanislau, eastern Galizien (now Iwano Frankiswk, Ukraine). He spent his lifetime and his wife Lillie’s inheritance (and many prayers) on outreach to and maintaining the ethnic identity of the Germans living far from their homeland, important when Galizien ceased to be an Austrian province after World War I. He founded a children’s home, continuing education for young famers and a soccer team, a German elementary school, and eventually a German college preparatory high school. Along with other Germans he was forced to leave in 1939. In 1946 he founded along with others the Hilfskomittee der Galiziendeutschen (Aid Committee for Galician Germans) to reach out to the Galizien German refugees. He died in 1949 in Stade, northwest Germany. The current editor of the Hilfskomittee newsletter Blickpunkt Galizien is his grandson Christofer Zoeckler.
The Hilfskomittee helped Betty Wray, one of our founders, in setting up GGD and we still have close contacts with them. They published "Zeitweiser" Yearbooks from 1954 to 2012, over 50 years, with most articles detailing the history, customs, and genealogy of various villages as remembered by those born in Galicia. They are in German with the earlier editions being in the old script. Some articles may be very familiar to users of this website as much material in our own publications and on our website has come from the Zeitweisers. GGD members have prepared a 48 page list all the Zeitweiser articles in which we have access to author, page number, and village of interest. They are sorted by year, but you can use the pdf reader's "Edit => Find" command to search for an author, name or village.
Please be aware that years 1909-1919 and 1954-1958 are in the old Gothic or Fractur typeface which is not handled by most translation programs. Most of the years are not Optically Character Recognized (OCR’d), meaning that you would have to type in the German words to Google Translate yourself. Even when they are OCR's, the resulting text is far from perfect. Members can request copies from the webmaster which will be sent via email. Note that they are for personal use only. If you translate any articles, it would be appreciated if you share them with your editor, who can then prepare these translations for inclusion in upcoming GGD newsletters. They don't have to be perfect - we can polish them up later.