Anzital, Austria

[grayman]

This is for anyone living in/near Austria, or who knows something about the country.

 

We're doing some genealogy work, and Anzital, Austria is mentioned in a 1930 census record. We can't find it on a map and a Google search turns up nothing.

 

I suspect we have the spelling wrong (though it's taken directly from the record) or the town's name has changed, or post-WWII boundary changes moved it into another country, or it no longer exists.

 

If you can shed any light on this, I'd appreciate it.

 

Thanks.

[Serpentine]

Google's results seems to suggest it's a common OCR concatenation of 'anzi tal' in Italian sources.

 

So my completely blind shot : an Italian speaker annoyed the census guy enough to just fill the form in himself, explaining that he was born 'here'.

[demagogue]

haha, that's a pretty convincing theory. Too bad it doesn't help with the actual purpose of that entry in the census, unless you know where "here" is.

[fibanocci]

Maybe "Anztal". It's mentioned here

 

https://docs.google....doc&chrome=true

 

Also menioned "Oberlohitsch", "Görtz" and "Zirknitzer See" (which is actually located in Slovenia nowadays) in context whith "Anztal" (that's described as swampy, often flooded). Probably these are old names.

Edited April 3, 2012 by fibanocci

[stumpy]

looking a google earth, going over austria, there's loads of places that end in 'tal' but they are usually very small villages, the only place I could find anzital mentioned was a company name in new zealand. There's a big change it could have ceased to exist.

 

east of 'bad gams' in austria theres a place called 'stainztal'

[grayman]

Thanks for the help. The clue that perhaps it was spelled wrong led us to the actual location, which is the alp valley "Achental", located in the southeastern part of Bavaria.

 

Yet another instance of a census-taker screwing up the real name.

 

Danke!

[Tels]

"tal" is German for "valley", so it isn't a town, or village, but more like a place.

 

I am not surprised that something like "achen" gets changed to "anzi" - there are a LOT of German/austrian/bavarian dialekts, and they changed a lot over the last thousand years. We have a street here calle "biergasse", which is not "bier" (German for beer), but "eber" (boar), so it is actually a "boarstreet". Names change a lot and local names always differ from the official ones. Most places in Germany have the roots of their names in ancient words, but are completely unrecognizable to the modern human. It is even worse in Bavaria and Austria, I guess

 

Btw, the Achental is very beautyful! The lake is very nice, and it's wonderful in Winter and Summertime. You should visit it sometime

 

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achental