The Jews of Stühlingen

2-7

Ralph

December 21, 2016

¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 Regarding actual dates of birth and death, we can only make educated guesses. When a man set up his own household, he had to start paying protection tax. That occurred usually in the age window from twenty to thirty years old. However, some people started to do business – or got into trouble already as teenagers – and were recorded. Conversely, a dead person did not pay protection tax, but the name may still appear in various posthumous business matters and estate proceedings for many years. Unmarried men not engaged in business may remain invisible.

¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 As discussed above, most of the 4826 records are only summaries of more extensive proceedings. The entire reference apparatus presented here can thus be used as an index for further in-depth research.

¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 Identified persons and their family relationships are illustrated as family trees in the searchable database.

¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 Besides the Stühlingen Jews proper, we also list Jews from Endingen, Gailingen, Lengnau, Randegg and Tiengen who had a letter of passage (Geleitbrief) allowing them to do local business, and Jewish visitors from further afield..

¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0 Ultimately, it does not really matter which Jew lived in which house. But the mental discipline required to squeeze every last drop of information from dry archival material fuelled the distillation of data into knowledge.