I have not personally researched records for other types of units such as the artillery, jägers or engineers, but I would assume that these could be found using the same methodology described above.

Military Church Records

Church records for soldiers can be found in Militärkirchenbücher covering the years from 1654 to 1922. They mainly record the deaths of active duty soldiers, but if a soldier got married or had children while in the service, they record the marriages and baptisms of any children.

This was only done if the family was present at the soldier’s location and not if they lived elsewhere. The FHL has these records on 551 rolls of films and they are arranged by military unit or hospital.

Military Identity Books

Although the Grundbuchblätter for Hungarian troops after 1869 are lost, individual soldiers were given small identity books that listed information about their record of service.

These books are sometimes referred to as “military passports” because men used them when immigrating to prove that they had fulfilled their military obligations. Information in these books included name, birth year, class year (draft year), record of active duty, type of unit and regimental number, whether the assignment was in the joint army (k.u.k) or a homeland army (landweir or honved), date of discharge from active service and a description of further obligations in the reserves.

These are the records for András Kotlárcsik who was born in 1874. He served in the “cs és kir” army which is the Hungarian abbreviation for “császár és kiraly” or the Kaiser & King’s Army (k.u.k). This was the joint army and not a homeland army.

His unit was the 6th Huszar Regiment. He was drafted in 1896 (classing year) and these records were taken from page 339 of his regiment’s personnel book for that year. He was registered from Gőmőr county in the 52nd military district of Hungary.

András was born in 1874 and was a farmer in civilian life. He was registered from the town of Csetnek in the Rozsno District of Gőmőr County. (This was his place of birth.) He was discharged after completing basic training seven months after being drafted in 1896. He was now assigned to the 1st reserves until 1911 after which he was assigned to the 2nd reserve classification until 1916.

For various reasons, soldiers were often sent into the reserves, in time of peace, after they had completed basic training. Sometimes it was due to poor health. But often it was a way to save money since soldiers were not paid for reserve service. By this means, the army could could maintain a greater number of men who would have some training and could be quickly mobilized if needed.

Regimental Histories

After finding your ancestor’s records, you can then learn about where he was stationed and any military actions he might have participated in by reviewing the regimental history of his unit. Since Austria had problems controlling the various ethnic groups in its Empire, men were usually stationed outside of their own home districts except for a small depot of the regiment, which handled administrative duties and recruitment.

The remainder of the regiment was garrisoned at some distance from their homes. This was probably done because it was thought that they could be used to put down revolts, which they might not do in their home districts. In addition, it made desertion more difficult. Regimental histories covering the years from the mid 1700s until 1866 can be found in a series of books written by A. Graf Thürheim entitled Gedenkblätter Aus Der Kriegsgeschichte Der K. K. Oesterreichischen Armee, which were published in 1880.

There are at least three books in this series and the first two can be read or downloaded from Google Books. Book one covers the infantry and book two covers the cavalry. I have not found book three but I assume it covers other units like the artillery and the engineers.