The Jews of Stühlingen

5-2

Ralph

December 23, 2016

¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 Berthold Rosenthal’s and Hans Brandeck’s transcripts agree practically word-for-word, except that paragraphs 20, 21, and 23 appear in Rosenthal’s, but not in Brandeck’s, version.3

¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 Paragraphs 1, 10, and 13 delimit the terms of protection for the next fourteen years: Eight households were permitted to live in six houses they already owned. A household consists of a head, a spouse, children, servants, maids, farmhands, and other dependants. The latter often included elderly parents, unmarried adult children, and probably even unmarried siblings of either head or mistress of the household. Furthermore, the heads of household are also permitted to have their married children live with them. Given the size of families, that could have quickly led to a very crowded house. In principle, the count could permit a young couple to rent, purchase, or build their own home. But such permissions seem to have been granted rarely. No additional Jewish households will be permitted in the county. This restriction seems not to have been observed very strictly.

¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 Formally, Stühlingen’s 1615 letter of protection applied only to the town and village of Stühlingen itself, and that was its major flaw. Scattered around Stühlingen, but mainly along the course of the Wutach River, was a series of villages, at various times under Stühlingen’s control. But during the decline of the house of Lupfen and the messy succession struggles thereafter, much of that control was lost. Already in the late sixteenth century, an extended Jewish family, headed by a Moses (Moschi), lived in Ofteringen, halfway between Stühlingen and Tiengen. They had not been included in the 1615 letter of protection. The same was true for the villages of Eggingen, Untermettingen, Lauchringen, Schwerzen, and Horheim, all places where Jews would be living over the next 140 years. Although the original letter mentioned only the village and town of Stühlingen, subsequent administrations started to manage residency permits and collect taxes from all these Jews in the absence of a firm legal basis. Whereas the number of Jews in the village and town of Stühlingen was fixed by the original letter of protection, this was not the case for Jews living in the various villages and hamlets within “Greater Stühlingen.”

¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0  

3 Rosenthal, Heimatgeschichte der badischen Juden, 75; Brandeck, Geschichte der Stadt, 87.