A mosaic often fails to show a continuous image, particularly at its edges; this is true also for the representation of the Stühlingen Jewish community. An individual’s time line suddenly appears, and equally suddenly vanishes, often without revealing the circumstances. Of the 190 distinct male individuals, death was reported explicitly for 27%. Another 21% departed for a clear destination. At the time of the final eviction in 1743, 13% left for unknown destinations. Another 10% over the previous 140 years were simply reported as having left. That leaves us with 29% whose fate remains a mystery. Some of those may have died quietly, some may have moved in with their children and stopped running their own households; but a large number just moved on. Jews might have left Stühlingen for a variety of reasons. They might have been living in Stühlingen illegally to begin with; their employment might have come to an end; they might have run afoul of the law; they might have been unable to pay their protection tax; or they were simply caught up in the final global eviction of 1743.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Jews could not simply pull up their stakes and take up residence wherever they wished. They were required to acquire a precious letter of protection where available; they had to find a place in a protected household; they had to be lucky enough to find protection-exempt community employment, or they vanished into the black hole of homeless Jews, the fate of probably 20% to 30% of our sample. For the other roughly 350 Jews who had lived in Stühlingen at one time but never really reached an identifiable documentary presence (see chapter 11), this percentage must have been even higher.

What do we know about the fate of these castaways? According to some authors, they might have amounted to as much as 90% of Western European Jewry,1 likely an excessive estimate. The reality of the roaming gangs of homeless Jews during the late Middle Ages and early modern period is one of history’s accidental secrets. Jewish scholars were too embarrassed to acknowledge their existence, and they have become of interest to gentile historians only recently.2 It is to the credit of another Jewish refugee and scholar, Dr. Rudolf Glanz, that their history was finally told; Glanz began research on the topic in 1936 in Vienna, and the book was eventually published thirty years later in New York.3

The tale of the vagrant Jewish hordes probably began in the Middle Ages, when religious students used to move from one yeshiva to another. Jews had always valued education highly. After the eviction of Jews from the large German cities, Jewish students had to travel far from their small, scattered rural communities to reputable institutions of higher Jewish learning.4 Public transportation did not exist, so most youth had to walk hundreds of miles, often supporting themselves by begging and surviving without adult supervision. Frequently, social graces wore thin.5

Although migrating students were common in the Middle Ages, Jewish students represented a disproportionately high number among them.6 Since wandering students in general tended to come from the upper strata of society, impecunious young Jews represented a minority among the general, more wealthy German student population.7 Nevertheless, despite their poverty, wandering students were the rule rather than the exception among Jewish learners.8 Once students finished or broke off their studies, they often had to take to the road again to find work; the benefit of modern newspaper advertisements and employment agencies did not exist. Graduates had to wander from town to town, village to village, in search of someone willing to hire them.

With the subsequent eviction of Jews from midsized towns and the institution of general settlement restrictions, the number of vagrants who could not find localities prepared to accept them swelled massively. As they roamed the land, men, women, and children who did not migrate to Eastern Europe were quickly reduced to begging or crime to avoid starvation. Pillage and destruction resulting from the Thirty Years’ War added gentile paupers to the mix. Army deserters and discharged soldiers introduced weapons and violence. Poverty was not limited to the Jewish population in the seventeenth century: it was endemic.9 But whereas the gentile poor could eventually settle down again when the political and economic circumstances improved, Jews were trapped, with their options seriously limited. These lawless, vagrant hordes gradually evolved into a subculture with its own customs, norms, and a language called "Rotwelsch (cant).10 The jargon contains a large proportion of Yiddish-origin words, thus providing evidence for the significant contribution of Jewish vagrants to its development.11 Musicians, jugglers, and acrobats, while also travelling with the crowd, were able to support themselves without necessarily resorting to begging or crime.

This ubiquitous stream of transient, Jewish poor presented a major problem for the established Jewish communities12 and put a stress on their charitable infrastructure and taxes. The seventeenth-century minutes of the Heidingsfeld Jewish community lists a variety of special taxes implemented to deal with the situation.13 There was a monthly tax to support the paupers’ hostel (Hekdesh), the obligatory meal and lodging vouchers (Pletten) for transients, and finally voluntary contributions to celebrate special occasions. Part of Jewish community charity was motivated by the Halacha, part out of the awareness that this fate could easily await any one of them. Taking care of their own poor was also necessary to deflect recriminations by the authorities.

Stühlingen’s Jews also had to deal with this problem of vagrants. They were warned [R2729] against and fined [R899] for giving refuge to transient Jews, and hospitality could have much more serious consequences. In 1737 Schmuli Weyl sheltered four transients over Shavuot (Pentecost), who were subsequently caught committing theft in Schaffhausen. Schmuli found himself charged and imprisoned [R2459] for having hosted the criminals.14

A statute from 1632 was quite explicit regarding the hosting of vagrants and hinted at one of the reasons behind this policy:

"The local Jews are not to house poor foreign Jews for longer than eight or ten days. Rich foreign Jews are to enter an agreement with the dominion.(!)"

Against special recognition, this period could be extended somewhat:

Decision: The foreign Jews are to pay half a florin per week and are to leave and search shelter elsewhere within a fortnight. If the Jews cannot pay, the fee is to be paid by those who took them into their households without permission. - As none of those foreign Jews have any property, the fee was gracefully reduced by the Landgrave. [R2065].

Jews not under protection could be evicted, even if they were employed in a household [R3192].

We have some indirect clues as to what awaited evicted Jews: Young Moyses Bloch (C2.1.2.1.1.2), Menke’s son, was reported deceased three years after his eviction [R1158]. Schmule (G1.2.1.4) Gugenheimb, Seligmann’s son, last paid his protection tax in 1717 [R542] and was no longer listed among protected Jews thereafter. Four years later, Schmuli’s brother-in-law appeared in Stühlingen and accused his nephew Lang Jossel (G1.2.1.4.1):
'of not supporting his father and his mother, who are to move about in the country in deepest poverty for considerable time' [R3061].
Thus, losing one’s protected status appears to have constituted an existential threat to wellbeing, health, and life; and earning sufficient income to pay one’s taxes was a necessary, though not sufficient, safeguard against losing protection.

The controversy surrounding the 1717 renewal of protection should have served as a warning, and some of the more strategic-thinking Jews heeded the signal. Some seventeen families left over the next five years, some of them voluntarily. We do not know how many could find protection elsewhere, but they probably preferred to plan their own moment of departure. The extended Bernheimb family found protection in Tiengen [R546]. Daniel Bickert left for Wangen [R542]. Mayr Bloch (C2.1.4.2.2) had moved to Gailingen [R2964].  

The pressure against the Jews mounted. First the monastery of St. Blasien, then the city of Schaffhausen indicated that they would no longer permit Stühlingen Jews to trade in their territories. Apart from the fact that the population resented the burden of accumulated debts, they probably felt that they now could run their market economy without the Jews. By 1738 it had become clear that the letters of protection would lapse in 1743. In order to ensure a smooth transition, the chief Fürstenberg administrator Michel ordered an official assessment of all moneys owed to the Jews. Each debt was to be examined.15 The resulting list, dated April 25, 1739, is preserved in two pages in the Donaueschingen archives under the title "Extractus summarius", penned in beautiful chancellery script (see fig. 14):16

This list summarizes amounts still owed to twenty-two individual Jewish merchants. The aggregates ranged from 57.20 fl. for Marx Meyer (M1.2.2) to 7923 fl. for Jonas Gugenheimb (G1.4.1.2), together totalling 36,110 fl. Six of those claims would have been insufficient to allow their owners the purchase of new protection letters elsewhere, even if they had been paid back immediately. As it happened, the local debtors were granted generous deferments for settling their debts, and no interest could accrue during this period. Conversely, neither postponements nor relief of interest were granted to the debts of the Jews.17 The other major assets of the Jews were their houses, which were to be sold in batches over the next eight years to townsfolk, with civic leaders acting as official representatives of the Jewish sellers.18

The official date of eviction was March 17, 1743, but seventeen, mainly elderly, Jews were given an extension until April 23 at a charge of 59 fl. per day protection fee [R1214]. The stay was extended further for eight individuals until May 1, 1743 [R1216].

By the summer of 1743, the Jews had left Stühlingen. We know where thirteen of them went: Marum Dicker Weyl and his son Lehmann, as well as Hewen Bickert, moved to Lengnau. Meyer and Mannes Bloch, Marum Sandel’s son Weyl, and his son Salomon moved to Gailingen. Jonas Gugenheimb and Salomon Sandel’s son Weyl moved to Randegg. Lang Jossel Gugenheimb, together with his sons, moved to Hechingen and later back to Tiengen. The whereabouts of the remaining fifteen out of the original 28 remains uncertain. Some of them may have moved to Endingen, Wangen, Worblingen, Emmendingen, and Ihringen,19 but we lack documentary evidence. It is quite possible, though, that some also joined the stream of homeless, vagrant Jews.

The Jews who came to Stühlingen some 150 years earlier, and had brought with them the yeast that made the rural market economy rise, had ignored the age-old wisdom of the Talmud at their own peril that yeast is not necessarily a force for good.20 Yeast is a fungus after all.

Footnotes -> List of References

  1Hippel, "Armut, Unterschichten, Randgruppen," 41.

  2Ibid., 40–1.

  3Glanz, "Geschichte des niederen jüdischen."

  4Ibid., 16.4

  5Glanz, "Geschichte des niederen jüdischen Volkes,"" p. 132.

  6Miethke, “Die Studenten,”

  7Schwinges, "Studenten und Gelehrte," 292.

  8Kanarfogel, "Jewish Education," 49–53.

  9Hippel, "Armut, Unterschichten, Randgruppen,"

10Wikipedia, s.v. “Rotwelsch.”

11Glanz, "Geschichte des niederen jüdischen Volkes, 227–60.

12Heidingsfeld was a Jewish community outside of Würzburg. For the minutes, see Wolf, “The First Pinkes of Heidingsfeld,”

13Rosenthal, "Heimatgeschichte der badischen Juden," 177.

14Ibid. 181.

15FFA, Judenakte, div. I, subdiv. 2, "Extractus summarius."

16Rosenthal, "Heimatgeschichte der badischen Juden, 181.

17See ch. 11, p. 121.

18Rosenthal, Heimatgeschichte der badischen Juden, 182.

19Schapiro, “Yeast and the Yeitzer Hara,” 1.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.