1-2
Despite Rosenthal’s Herculean efforts, the research in his book is poorly documented. Sources are often implied rather than explicit. Nevertheless, one gets a strong impression that most statements are based on valid primary sources. In a June 1957 letter to Florence Guggenheim-Grünberg, a historian of Swiss Jewry, Rosenthal regrets that most of his notes on Stühlingen were lost in 1940 during his hasty escape from Germany.8
But, as the title implies, Heimatgeschichte does not focus on Stühlingen alone. The book is organized into major time periods, and within those, by region. Stühlingen is covered separately in the section dealing with the period up to the Westphalian Peace, and again in a section that traces the period up to the Napoleonic Wars. Within these sections, the geography extends from Heidelberg, along the Rhine, and up to Lake Constance – a wide field to cover indeed, but not enough. In addition, the appendix contains a fifteen-page essay describing one particular event in the history of Stühlingen’s Jews: the “Urfehde Affair.”9
Statutory, administrative, financial, and judicial files regarding Stühlingen are to be found mainly in the Archives of Prince Fürstenberg (Fürstlich Fürstenbergisches Archiv [FFAD]) in Donaueschingen, and in the Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe (GLA). Rosenthal seems to have relied mainly on the former. In particular, he made extensive use of the “Jews’ files”10 in the Politica section. But Rosenthal also copied eighteen tax-list summaries from the account books for the years 1634 to 174311 and used those as background material.
8 Rosenthal, Berthold Rosenthal Collection, reel 13, frame 721.
9 Urfehde means “oath of truce,” an act used in medieval law to settle a conflict. See ch. 4, p. 30.
10FFA, Judenakte, Politica.
11Rosenthal, Berthold Rosenthal Collection, reel 4, frames 712–30.
