Dear Richard & GerSIG Members

Your posting asked "Does anyone know of a website similar to Lagis for
research in Hessen, for the town of Brakel in the district of Hoexter
in North Rhine-Westphalia?" (NRW)

The answer is that Hessen is Hessen and NRW is NRW, and each of the
German Lander or States is organised differently. The main NRW
archival portal is at this site:

http://www.archive.nrw.de

There is a short presentation film on you tube in English about the
archives: https://youtu.be/rhFGPxIyYXw

The archives publish (in German) a helpful guide on how to research
your family tree in NRW and what sources can be found where. It can
be downloaded free at the following link: http://tinyurl.com/yag94jhc or
http://www.archive.nrw.de/lav/abteilungen/fachbereich_grundsaetze/BilderKartenLogosDateien/Publikationen/LAV-Brosch-Genealogie.pdf

The archive structure for NRW is dividing into two main records
offices for birth marriage and death records. For the two western
areas of NRW, the archive is at Duisburg and for the 3 eastern ones it
is at Detmold. This web pages has a map showing this in more detail:
http://tinyurl.com/yd4adt8a or
http://www.archive.nrw.de/lav/abteilungen/ostwestfalen_lippe/profil_zustaendigkeit/index.php

The GerSIG Invited Guest Speaker to the IAJGS Conference in Florida
last summer was Dr Bettina Joergens >from the regional archive for NRW
that covered Brakel. Dr Joergens and her colleagues are very happy to
help genealogists all round the world with their research. You are
welcome to write to the archive in English and they will most
certainly respond to you.

I have visited the archive at Detmold a number of times and have
corresponded with the archivists too, they are always very helpful.
At present, there is an ongoing project to digitise the Jewish records
for the area - known as Projekt " JuWeL " - See:
See: http://tinyurl.com/s5acprl or
http://wiki-de.genealogy.net/Juden-_und_Dissidentenregister_in_Westfalen_und_Lippe

There are also several useful reference volumes covering this part of
Germany - notably the 5 volume set by Elfi Pracht-Joerns called
Juedisches Kulturerbe in Nordrhein-Westfalen and the 4 volume set
called "Historisches Handbuch der juedischen Gemeinschaften in
Westfalen und Lippe" All 9 volumes sit on my bookshelves!

One last thing - the local archive website for Brakel NRW is
https://www.brakel.de/Stadt/Portrait/Geschichte/Stadtarchiv it
probably won't have the records you are looking for if you want the
kind of records that Lagis has!

Best regards, Jeanette R Rosenberg OBE Jeanette.R.Rosenberg@googlemail.com
Director GerSIG - IAJGS Conference Arrangements - London UK