Am 10.07.2018 um 21:58 schrieb
webtobesocial@gmail.com:
Am Montag, 7. Juli 2003 23:14:23 UTC+2 schrieb Hugh Eagle:
I want to convert a large number of German PLZ post codes into
latitude/logitude coordinates.
Is there a data file that can be downloaded from the internet that
gives this information?
Hugh Eagle
I had an similar question and I couldn't find anything like this for free. So I decided to scrape this data and open source it here https://gist.github.com/webtobesocial/2702ff19b2f9f16001399f3f07b02782
your enormous work is appreciated, still it might not be that helpful as
it seems to.
I live in Ettringen Rheinland-Pfalz, the postal code is 56729, my
village shares it with 27 more villages spread over more than 50 square
miles. Google shows the zip as belonging to Kirchwald which is in the
east of the pertaining area, so your longitude and your latitude does
not tie in with all of the other villages. Google shows my house at
lat 50.357442 and lng 7.221719 which is true according to my GPS for the graveyard 200yards east and 300 yards north. My village beeing the most
eastern of the zip code area, others are up to 20 miles west.
The same will apply to most rural areas in Germany. Thus the situation
is shown only vague.
There is an other problem. All towns exeeding about 100.000 inhabitants
will have more than one postal code, and most authorities and bigger
companies have own postal codes.
A rough orientation as to the area is the first digit of the code
showing des biggest community in the area,the second shows a circle of communities around the biggest, all of those forming 89 delivery centers.
1 is around Berlin, 2 around Hamburg, 3 around Hannover, 4 is the Ruhr
area, 5 around Koblenz, 6 around Frankfurt/Main, 7 around Stuttgart,
8 around Munich, 9 around Nürnberg, the 0 means Saxony.
For genealogy purposes it is neccesary to know, that the 5 digit postal
codes are modern (1993.07.01) and pertain to the current status. Four
digit postal codes existed as of 1967, different systems for
Bundesrepublik and DDR, as of 1920 there existed 2 digit codes, which
were amended after WW II by an "a" or "b", later even "c".
As of 1870 smaller communities had to be addressed with "bei" and the
next bigger town, or by "am Rhein" or an other river.
In the years from about 1870 a first wave of adminstratory reforms
combined new towns from seperate communities, so that documents issues
before may show communities which do not exist anymore. The next wave
combined even very big towns to a single one, for exampls the towns Charlottenburg and Spandau had each more inhabitants than Berlin to
which the were merged. The next up to now last completed wave was in the seventies of the twentieth century, when it was decided that all
communities should have at least 10.000 inhabitants so that only about
20p.c. of the former independent units survived, in most cases merged to
a town, which got an entirely new name.
Despite of this, there are many towns having the same or a very similar
name.
So if you find a postal code for a community issuing a document from the
19th century you are either very lucky, or simply ignore facts.
mfg
bjk
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