The Jews of Stühlingen

9-15

Ralph

December 25, 2016

¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 The wedding never took place: Vögele declared her intent of becoming baptized [R2326]. Menke, Mauschi, and Mauschi’s brother Abraham were fined for obstinacy, and Mauschi was evicted from Stühlingen [R2329]. Nine years later, Mauschi was dead [R1158]. Menke continued to occupy the courts [R2503] and became an outcast in the Jewish community [R1147]. He was subsequently baptized on the third Sunday in September, 1740 with the name Franz Anton Vest in the church of Rheinau Abbey. The entry in the baptismal records states:

Hoc anno dominica tertia septembris baptizatus fuit solemniter Franciscus Antonius Vest, vir 59 annorum, Judeus ex Stüehlingen prius erat, levantibus archiprefecto s[ocietatis] J[esu] domino Michaele Stüelingensi, et s[ocietatis] J[esu] patri domicello archiprefecto Diengensi.72

(This year, on the third Sunday of September, Franz Anton Vest, a fifty-nine-year-old man, formerly a Jew from Stühlingen, was solemnly baptized, with the Jesuit headmaster of Stühlingen, Michael, and the assistant headmaster of Tiengen acting as godparents.)

¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 Menke died on November 24, 1742 at the age of sixty-one73 and was buried in Rheinau. On his deathbed he invested the ninth altar of the chapel in the tiny village of Altenburg (Jestetten), 2 km to the north of Rheinau, with a donation of 100 fl.74

¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0 The usual resting place for Stühlingen Jews would have been the ancient Jewish graveyard, established in the sixteenth century, on the opposite bank of the Wutach River. Its exact location is unknown today, despite various unsuccessful searches.75 A solitary eroded tombstone placed as a monument in the town’s Jews’ Corner is the only enduring witness of Stühlingen’s ancient Jewish cemetery.

71Rosenthal, “Die Judenmission vor 200 Jahren (II).”

72StAZ, “Kirchenbücher des Klosters Rheinau.”

73Ibid., E III 94.1, fol. 681.

74Ibid., E III 94.1, fol. 682.

75Rosenthal, “Heimatgeschichte der badischen Juden,,” 75.