The Jews of Stühlingen

2. Collecting, Sifting, Sorting, and Matching

Ralph

November 25, 2016

¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 After the existing secondary sources on the Jews of Stühlingen had been exhausted, the time came to search for primary data. Not unlike a camera, whose lens characteristics and settings define the image it records, the specifics of primary data sources will largely determine the resulting aspects and colour of the historic object that is being examined.

¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 Since primary, internal Jewish documents such as community protocols, diaries, and letters are nonexistent, we have to rely on external sources. Two major repositories exist: the municipal protocols for Stühlingen from 1600 to 1745 in the Baden-Württemberg State Archive, Karlsruhe, and a motley collection of documents, account books, and court records from the Fürstlich Fürstenbergisches Archiv (Archives of Prince Fürstenberg), Donaueschingen. The Karlsruhe archive is well organized; its finding aids are accessible on the internet, most conveniently through the German Digital Library.1 The Donaueschingen archive, on the other hand, can only be explored on site. Unfortunately, many valuable, early documents relating to the history of the Jews in Stühlingen had been confiscated and removed from the Donaueschingen archives by the Imperial Hapsburg authorities in the course of the Pappenheim succession controversy.2 By their very nature, extant sources will emphasize taxes, commercial transactions, failed deals, conflicts, offences, and misdemeanors. Community and family life, friendships, and personalities will be all but invisible.

1Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/.

2Tumbült, “Das Fürstlich Fürstenbergische Archiv,”