Skip to Main Content
Library of Congress Research Guides

Germany: Address and Telephone Directories

Telephone and address directories are used by genealogists and historians to identify people and businesses from a particular place and era. This guide lists uncataloged and cataloged directories from Germany in the Library of Congress collection.

Introduction

Image of German telephone books on shelf
German telephone books. Library of Congress General Collections.

Most residential and general organizational telephone directories are not cataloged by the Library of Congress, even though the Library maintains a large collection of foreign and domestic directories. We have therefore compiled this list of directories from Germany as a finding aid for our staff and researchers.

The uncataloged directories listed in this guide reflect holdings as of 2011.

In addition to the uncataloged directories listed in this guide, the Library also holds a handful that are cataloged and may be requested using the online catalog. To locate these directories, search the Library of Congress Online Catalog using subject keywords such as "Germany" or the name of a city and "directories" or "Fernsprechbuch" or "Telefonbuch."

 

 

Freely Available Online Directories

Besides using printed telephone directories, a reader may find it helpful to use current online directories available for free on the Internet.

  • Das Telefonbuch External – This website provides telephone numbers of persons and businesses. Includes reverse phone number look up.
  • Das Örtliche External – This is a database of business entries. There are also listings for private individuals if they own a business. provides addresses, maps, telephone numbers, website address of the business.
  • Gelbe Seiten External – Yellow Pages. Allows search by business owner, name of business, type of business, federal state, town, and smaller geographic areas.

Below is a small selection of books about telephone books and other directories from Germany. There are many more books in the library's catalog covering a wide range of topics related to directories and types of directories, for example there are hundreds of church records and registers.


The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. This list is organized alphabetically by title.

Hosted by Springshare
Library of Congress Legal SpringShare Privacy Policy