The Jews of Stühlingen

10-1

Ralph

December 26, 2016

¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 To anchor the women in the family trees, we must first construct the male framework. Protection tax records and estate proceedings provide the richest source of genealogical information. Males, who appear frequently in such documents, may be placed confidently in the trees. Conversely, the linkage of individuals lacking protection and and mentioned only occasionally may only be surmised. Individuals with identical names in parallel branches of the same family represent special cases; such duplication frequently occurs because of familial and generational naming patterns. We can usually locate them in the trees, but it is more difficult to attribute specific events or properties to them, because their patronymic may only appear in the appropriate tax records, not in records of legal or commercial transactions. Often the alias name (kinnui) will help, but it is not always consistent (see chapter 2).

¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 This investigation identifies 236 individuals – 190 men and 46 women. But this number represents only a fraction of the Jews living in Stühlingen between 1604 and 1743. If we take the number 20 as the average number of Jewish households during that period, based on tax records, and multiply it by 8, an estimate of the number of members in a typical, contemporary Jewish household,5 we arrive at 160 as rough estimate for the average number of Jewish inhabitants at any time. If we further estimate a life expectancy of 40 years, the estimated number of Jews having lived in Stühlingen over the 140 years will climb to at least 570. About half of those, or approximately 285, were male.

¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 The investigation, therefore, has unearthed about two thirds of the males, but only 15% of the females. No child who died when younger than 16 years of age would have shown up in the records. Records of young women who married outside of Stühlingen without receiving a dowry worth mentioning would not have been kept, as also those of young men who left to study abroad. Since each head of household could keep only one married offspring in town, the rest had to leave (at least in theory). Conversely, servants, teachers, and community employees probably stayed in Stühlingen for only a limited time, thereby further increasing the potential number of distinct individuals. Thus, the 236 persons described represent only a sample of Stühlingen Jews, although a sample heavily biased towards settled men under protection.

5Toch, “Siedlungsstruktur der Juden,”