This article is adapted from a presentation at the IAJGS conference in Los Angeles, July 2010—Ed.

 Most Jewish genealogists researching their European ancestry eventually confront 19th-century civil rec­ords, but the variety of types and forms of such documents may be confusing. In addition, Jewish civil records vary somewhat from those of their Gentile neighbors. To make sense of the content of Jewish civil records, researchers need to understand the structure, history, legal basis, and fate of the records. This article focuses on Jewish records from Bavaria and Wuerttemberg, but much of its content applies also to other areas in Germany and Austria.

Nature of the Records

Most genealogists’ first reaction when they see 19th- century German documents is an almost visceral recoil. The challenge represented by the unfamiliar script often leads North American genealogists to ignore a potentially valuable resource. The variety of German script styles adds to the confusion. The nature of the documents requires the text of interest to be handwritten rather than printed. Handwriting, with the exception of block lettering, is referred to as “current” or “cursive” script. German paleography distinguishes between fractured current scripts. In addition, German current script takes two forms: Gothic and Latin (or Roman) Current. Latin script is more rounded and flowing, more similar to our modern cursive style than is Gothic Current, which tends towards the spiky. In Gothic script it is often difficult to distinguish between an individual letter containing several spikes and a combination of several short letters.¹

Prior to about 1830, records were written with quill pens. While they had a somewhat idiosyncratic ink flow, quills made it easy to identify the direction of the stroke. Pointed steel nibs from England were introduced in 1830, which accentuated the spiky nature of the Gothic Current. In 1907, the broadheaded nib was invented, again giving the script a more prominent stroke direction. Over the years, Gothic script evolved somewhat differently in different regions. Consequently, depending on the region and the scribe, the same character may appear totally different.

A further level of complexity results from the variable spelling of Jewish surnames in the first half of the 19th century. At different times, the same person may have been recorded either as Levi or as Levy. The same is true of Cohn, Cohen, and Kahn; Schnaddicher and Schnaittacher, and Buttenwieser and Buddewiser are used interchangeably. In the second half of the 19th century, the desire for assimilation led some German Jews to change their given names from biblical or other, typically Jewish names to names they regarded as more elegant alternatives. Sometimes the old and new names alliterated, but often they did not.

Journal Style Records

Civil records reflect life events such as birth, marriage, and death. A typical birth record from the early 19th century may look like this:

Figure 1. Excerpt of Gailingen (Baden) birth register: Emilia, March 24. 1837.²

This record appears in journal (sometimes called Napoleonic) style. One paragraph is devoted to each individual specific vital event. All information is presented in full prose. Even the dates are written out in words. Civil rec­ords written in journal style sometimes are organized by year; a section for births is followed by one each for marriages and deaths. This sequence is repeated for each year. Typically, at the end of a volume, the author of the records created alphabetical indexes of births, marriages, and deaths by page and/or item number. Occasionally, one finds marginal notes added later. Depending on how well the rabbi did (or did not) know German, the initial death record also may have been written in Hebrew, with the date given in both Hebrew and Gregorian notation.

Figure 2. Hebrew death record from Sulzburg (Baden), 1844.³

Ledger (Tabular) Style Records

In contrast to records in journal style, many jurisdictions preferred or prescribed that civil records be kept in ledger (or tabular) style. Figure 3, shown on the next page, is an example of a ledger record.

Ledger-style records normally extend across two adjoining pages. Each column is labeled at the top. Some commu-

nities used preprinted ledger pages in later years. Mostly, however, the column categories and their order are somewhat idiosyncratic, reflecting local customs and the record keepers’ preferences. Family and given names of the principal person and the actual date of the event always appear, but not necessarily in a consistent order. The recording of some specific information was prescribed by the authorities. Separate ledger style record books extending over many years were kept by type of event.

Certificate Style Records

A third record style is the certificate. These were issued by the civil authorities for a given event and person, and issued in addition to the creation of register entries.

Figure 4. Certificate of a birth; Hürben (Bavaria).

June 9, 1879.⁵

When issued, certificates usually were additional to register entries. Birth, marriage, and death registers generally followed the same style within a given community or region. Typically, registers were maintained by the rabbi in those communities that could afford one. In the absence of a resident rabbi, a Jewish parochial school teacher or a community leader was responsible for keeping the register.

In addition to the original registers kept by the rabbis, a second copy, kept by the local pastor of the dominant local church, commonly existed. These were copied, usually once a year, from the rabbi’s original. Often, the rabbi had to countersign the second copy. Many of the second copies kept by pastors still exist. Frequently, the clergy possessed superior penmanship, at least during the first half of the century. Sometimes a pastor would alter a Jewish-sounding given name to a more German form in his copy.

Record Headings

Extant Jewish civil records typically cover the period 1780 to 1876. Earlier registers are rare. After 1876, civil records were no longer kept separately by religion but became the responsibility of the state authorities. Depending on the jurisdiction, some headings were compulsory, while others were optional. With some exceptions, Jewish rec­ords tend to follow the outline generally prescribed for the Gentile records.

Typical headings (items) for birth records included:

• Time of birth
• Date of birth
• Place of birth
• Gender of child
• First name of child
• First and family name of father. Marital status of father, if not married
• Origin of father (where the father came from)
• Occupation of father
• Maiden and given name of mother
• Marital status of mother, if not married
• Names, occupations, and homes of witnesses
• Name of midwife or physician present
• Date of circumcision (for boys)
  • The name of a stillborn child, or one who had died within the first ten days of life, usually was not listed.
  • Typical headings (items) for marriage records included:
  • Date of marriage
  • Place of marriage
  • First name and family name of groom
  • Marital status of groom
  • Age or date of birth of groom
  • Occupation of groom
  • Origin of groom
  • Name of bride’s and groom’s parents including maiden names of mothers
  • Name and maiden name of bride
  • Marital status of bride
  • Age or date of birth of bride
  • Origin of bride
  • Date of issuance of the marriage license
  • Name of officiating rabbi
  • Death records typically had the following headings:
  • Date of death
  • Time of death
  • Name and civil name
  • Age or date of birth
  • Marital status
  • Occupation
  • Address
  • Name and civil (maiden) name of spouse (if married) or names of parents
  • Cause of death
  • Date of interment
  • Name, civil names, professions, and relationships of witnesses
  • In addition to vital records, other public documents touch on the civil records as well, such as the name adoption lists from the turn of the 18th to the 19th century that document the forced adoption of German-sounding civil names in place of the previously customary patronymic names used by Jews. These lists show the old, patronymic name in one column and the new civil name in the second column. Name adoption lists from Baden were collected by the genealogist and historian Berthold Rosenthal and now are housed at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York. Name adoption lists are being transcribed by Wolfgang Fritsche and are available on the Internet at www.a-h-b.de/ AHB/links_e.htm.
  • Unlike vital records and name adoption lists that document specific events, the Matrikel (family book), another document of value to genealogists, recorded a family’s composition at a certain point in time or, sometimes, over extended periods. Matrikel were organized by households or houses and initially enumerated the head of the household by name and indicated the number of dependents by Later, all members of a family unit were listed with name, birth dates, and their relationship to the head of the household. Later entries frequently were added to family books.
  • Unfortunately, not all public records can be categorized clearly, and not all are easily legible. At the beginning of the 19th century especially, some rabbis were only partially literate in German. Some registers have no discernible structure. Some dates are given in Gregorian form, others are written in Hebrew letters, and some appear as the name of the Torah portion recited on the Sabbath following the event recorded.
  • Figure 7. Excerpt of family book entries from Hechingen, Wuerttemberg, about 1830.⁸ (Film: Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart).

Legal Basis of Jewish Civil Records

• Despite the many variations in type, structure, and appearance of Jewish civil records in southern Germany, they also share many common features. Civil records from Pforzheim to Pfersee, in fact from Bremen to Bukowina, are both very similar and also quite different. The reasons are historical. Throughout the Middle Ages, European Jews enjoyed almost autonomous family law, set by Jewish tradition rather than the state. Whereas the granting of sacraments gave the churches power over the Christian population and, therefore, was recorded faithfully in church books, life events of the Jews found their way only into mohel (ritual circumcisers) books for boys, ketuboth (marriage contracts) for couples marrying, and the pinkassim of the chevrot kadisha (records of the burial societies). None of these records were in the public domain.
• Until the middle of the 18th century, demographic data specific to Jews in southern Germany was limited primarily to tax lists, necessary for the administration of the protection Schutzsteuern—special taxes Jews had to pay to the local rulers for the privilege of being allowed to reside in a given community. Then society began to change. The Age of Enlightenment, towards the second half of the 18th century, forced rulers to consider their subjects increasingly as citizens rather than as chattel. This paradigm shift required governments to collect demo­graphic specifics for the purpose of planning, tax collection, and military conscription. The extant church books fitted the bill and, therefore, became the core of the civil record system. While this solution met the government’s needs for the majority of its subjects, the books did not include the Jews. In order to extend the system of church books to Jews, Jews first had to adopt family names.¹⁰ The name changes were documented in official name adoption lists, after which the stage was set for the introduction of a general civil record system. Although the Codex Maximilianeus Bavaricus Civilis of 1756 (Bavaria) codified family law as it was to apply to all residents of Bavaria, it did not deal directly with civil registers.¹¹
• At approximately the same time, Empress Maria Theresia of Austria initiated a systematic legal reform that culminated in the so-called Josephine laws of 1780–90, named after her son, Emperor Joseph II. The Personenrecht (civil law) section included, among other provisions, the imperial patent regarding the administration of civil records, dated February 20, 1784. The Josephine reform attempted to integrate church and state by assigning civil administrative tasks to local church functionaries under the authority of the state. Chief among these tasks was the keeping of civil registers. For the Jews, this task was assigned to a rabbi or Jewish schoolteacher under the supervision of a local Christian cleric, who was required to submit his own copy of Jewish civil records to the authorities. The initial laws were vague, however, and only became fully operational after 1813, after the Napoleonic wars.¹²
• These laws applied initially not only to Austria proper but also to Bavaria, Bohemia, Galicia, Moravia, and other parts of the Hapsburg Empire. The laws and regulations prescribed a tabular form for the civil records. Under the Josephine laws, Jewish girls could marry only if they had completed grade school.¹³ Although this law may have been intended as a hurdle to marriage in order to limit the growth of the Jewish population, it had an unexpected consequence. As we know today, the health and economic achievements of families depend to a great extent on the literacy of the mothers. Perhaps Emperor Joseph II should be thanked for some of the growth of the Jewish population, and the economic and academic success of 19th-century European Jewry.
• Almost simultaneously, the French legislative assembly established a requirement to keep national civil registers. In contrast to the practice in Austria, France eliminated clerical influence in the process by creating a separate dedicated bureaucracy for the maintenance of the civil registers. Not only did the French law prescribe a journal style for the civil records, it also required all dates to be written out in full words to prevent later falsification. The French occupation of large areas of Europe during the Napoleonic Wars widely disseminated this form of civil registers.¹⁴
• With the demise of the Napoleonic Empire in 1830, the restoration partially reversed the influence of Napoleonic reforms in the German states. Responsibility for maintaining civil registers was returned to the clergy, although areas adjacent to France, such as Baden or the Palatinate, retained the journal (Napoleonic) style of civil records. The restoration had further con­sequences for the Jews of southern Germany. Not only had the French occupation greatly eased the restraints previously imposed on Jews in Germany, such as those on residence and occupation for example, but the mass migrations associated with this major conflict also had created an influx of roving Jews in German villages and small towns. The growing Jewish population, many of whom often lacked productive economic skills, generated unease among the local population, which demanded restrictions. This led to the introduction of a quota system based on census lists, the Juden Matrikel (Familienbuch). Probably, the most restrictive system of the time was the Bavarian Jews Edict of June 10, 1813.¹⁵ It set arbitrary limits on the number of residence permits and the type of occupations permitted to Jews. The quota system stimulated massive emigration of young Jewish men from Bavaria, many of whom emigrated to the United States, particularly the rural South.
• Restrictions imposed on the Jews of southern Germany eased gradually.¹⁷ The Matrikel system finally was abolished officially in Bavaria in 1861 with enactment of a law that required the German states to introduce universal civil records.¹⁸ Although, in principle, the law abolished separate civil registers for Jews, some municipalities, for reasons that are not clear, continued to keep separate vital registers and family books for Jews up to the beginning of the Third Reich. Fischach, Bavaria, is one example, where a family book was kept until 1942.
• Two months after he gained power in January 1933, Hitler introduced a law that denied non-Aryans employment in the German civil service. (Reichs­gesetz­blatt vom 7. April 1933: Gesetz zur Wieder­herstellung des Berufs­beamtentums) To facilitate implementation of the law, the Nazis established the Reichsstelle fur Sippenforschung, which in 1941 was renamed Reichssippenamt (RSA) (kinship office).¹⁹
• The office was charged with certifying who was and who was not an Aryan. To this end, the office system­atically collected civil registers from a variety of church, Jewish and German archives. The records were catalogued and archived, and their content was used to support the discrimination against Jews and their systematic exclusion from public life. In 1938, a large portion of the records was microfilmed in Berlin. These films are now at the Deutsche Zentralstelle für Genealogie (Central German Depository for Genealogy) in Leipzig.²⁰
• Toward the end of World War II, the archives were transferred to Rathsfeld Castle in Thuringia, and the Gatermann Company was assigned the task of converting the records to 35mm films a second time, a process that continued through the end of the war. After the war, Gatermann sold the films to the relevant German states and other archives. Most of the data is available from the German federal archives and the various German state archives, the Mormon Family History Library, and the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP) in Jerusalem. The whereabouts of the original films is unclear. Most State archives claim to only have secondary paper copies. CAHJP only has 35 mm contact prints on paper. The original documents are believed lost. Images of all of the RSA files from the State of Baden-Wuerttemberg now are available online.²¹ Bavarian records are more dispersed. Most Bavarian Swabia records are searchable and accessible online.²² Matrikel from Lower Franconia are available in print.²³ Matrikel from Middle Franconia have been published as a searchable compact disc.²⁴

Summary

• The earliest civil records for Jews of southern Germany appear towards the end of the 18th century. Prior to this time, only tax records, property lists, and court records documented the presence of individual Jews. Jewish family books (matrikel) exist for the first half of the 19th century. Separate Jewish civil records were kept up to about 1876. After that time, vital records for Gentiles and Jews were kept jointly. Although most original Jewish civil rec­ords from the 19th century appear lost, microfilmed copies of many of them survived in the Leipzig and Gatermann films. The Leipzig films can be read only in Leipzig. Baden-Wuerttemberg and some Bavarian records are accessible online. Most can be found in the respective state and district archives. Many records are also available at CAHJP and from the Family History Library.²⁵ The detailed date span for Jewish civil records varies from community to community and often even by life event. This may be due to an uneven implementation of applicable laws, physical loss of records in fires and other misfortunes, incomplete collection by the RSA, fragmentary recording of physical records at the end of the war, loss of films and, finally, lack of access to as-yet-undiscovered films. Learning to read Gothic Current script takes a few days practice using easily available aids, but is well worth the effort. Nineteenth-century civil records for the Jews in Southern Germany are an invaluable source of information for the serious Jewish genealogist.

Acknowledgements

The Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg provided figures 1, 2, 6 and 7. Figures 3 and 4 are courtesy of the Staatsarchiv Augsburg. Figure 5 originates from the Freiherrlichen v. Berlichingischen.

• Notes

1. http://www.kindredroots.com/What/germanletters/germanletters.htm [BROKEN LINK April 1 2015]
2. Film: Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart.
3. Although the Stuttgart archive attributes this record to Sulzburg (J 386 B559, frame 50), the entries do not correspond to the civil register copy maintained by the Sulzburg pastor.
4. Film: Staatsarchiv Augsburg.
5. Nineteenth-century occupational designations are not always easy to translate into English. A dictionary is available at: http://jgbs.org/Occupations.php.
6. Berthold Rosenthal Collection; Box 1, folders 103– 107.
7. http://www.ahb.de/AHB/linkse.htm
8. Film: Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart
9. Film: Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart
10. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewishsurname
11. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_MaximilianeusBavaricusCivilis
12. Kropatschek, Joseph, ed. Handbuch aller unter der Regierung des Kaisers Josephdes II. fr die K. K. Erblnder ergangenen Verordnungen und Gesetze in einer Sistematischen Verbindung. (Systematic manual of all laws and regulations decreed by the government of Emperor Joseph II for the Imperial and Royal territories). 18 vol. Wien 1785–90. 2. Auflage fnde 111. Vienna: J. G. Moesle, 1780–90.
13. Severin Pfleger, Ritter von Wertenau. Die Matriken der Katholiken, Akatholiken und Israeliten (Civil registries of the Catholic, non-Catholics and Jews). Wien, A. Strauss’s sel. Witwe, 1836.
14. Décret du 20 septembre 1792 qui détermine le mode de constater l’état civil des citoyens. (Decree of September 20, 1792 regarding the documentation of the civil status of citizens) WikiSource
15. Max Joseph I. of Bavaria. Edikt vom 10. Juni 1813 über die Verhältnisse der jüdischen Glaubensgenossen im Königreich Baiern. (Edict of June 10, 1813, regarding the conditions of Jewish subjects in the Bavarian monarchy) Regierungsblatt S. 921.
16. Race and Ethnic Relations: American and Global Perspectives, Cengage Learning, 2008.
17. Gesetz über die Beurkundung des Personenstandes und die Eheschliessung. Deutsches Reichsgesetzblatt Band 1875. (Law gazette for the monarchy of Bavaria: Law regarding the documentation of civil status and marriage) Nr. 4, pp. 23–40.
18. Reichsgesetzblatt vom 7. April 1933: Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums. (Law regarding the reconstitution of a professional civil service)
19. Schulle, Diana. Das Reichssippenamt: eine Institution nationalsozialistischer Rassenpolitik. Logos Verlag. (The State kinship office: an institution of the Nazi racial policy)
20. Jude, Renate. Die Jüdischen Personenstandsunterlagen in der Deutschen Zentralstelle für Genealogie, (The Jewish civil records at the Central German Offices for Genealogy) Genealogie Vol. XXIV issue Feb. 1998. Publ. Degener & Co., D, 91403 Neustadt (Aisch).
21. https://www2.landesarchivbw.de/ofs21/olf/struktur.php?bestand=5632
22. http://jgbs.org
23. Rosenstock, Dirk. Die unterfränkischen Judenmatrikeln von 1817. (The civil records for Lower Franconia of 1817) Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh,Wuerzburg.
24. Bavarian State Archives of Nuremberg: The Jewish Registers 1813–61 for Middle Franconia, 2003 Bavarian State Archives.
25. http://www.familysearch.org/eng/search/frameset­search.asp

Ralph Bloch is retired from an academic career in physics and medicine. He and his wife have been deeply involved in Jewish genealogy for the past nine years. Born and raised in Switzerland, he has lived and worked also in Denmark, Israel, U.K., California, and Canada. Bloch is particularly interested in the history of the Jews of Bavarian Swabia, the home of his maternal grandmother. He runs http://jgbs.org, a website dedicated to this region and has a blog at http://papaworx. com/blog. He lives in southern Ontario, Canada.