Problems with Genealogy in Luxembourg

• The small county of Luxembourg, founded in 963 by count Siegfried, and which in 1354 became a Duchy, in 1815 a Grand-Duchy, has constantly grown during the centuries, and reached its maximum in 1659, including large territories of todays France, Germany and Belgium. Thus today, a large number of Luxemburgers has to make genealogic researches in the above neighbour countries. No doubt that this is not always simple, as the administrative systems are different for each country.
  
  
• From 15th to 19th century, our country was put under foreign domination; this means that Luxemburg was occupied and governed alternately by the Austrians, the Spaniards and the French. Of course, these turbulent times strongly influenced the political, economic, cultural and administrative life. As a result, the archives are hardly uniform, which makes research rather difficult.
  
  
• The last occupant in that period was France, from 1795 to 1814, during the French Revolution. Following the second motto of the revolution, 'Egalité' ('Equality'), the revolutionaries had all genealogic archives destroyed. Thus, nobody could anymore prove his belonging to a higher class, especially to the aristocracy.
  This unfortunate measure is very deplorable, as in many cases, it prevents us today from a deeper research.
  
  
• The same revolutionaries have installed the French Republican Calendar, which was very different from the gregorian one.
  This leeds us today to burdensome calculations to convert the dates, mostly using tables.
  In order to get rid of this, I judged useful to write a Date-Converter. I hope that this can help some of the searchers to simplify their genealogic battle against French Revolution.

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