The fact that the former Minister of Education, Ludwig Spaenle (CSU), not only has nice and relaxing days is not least due to his current position as the State Government Commissioner for Jewish life and against anti-Semitism, for remembrance work and historical heritage. In Bavaria, too, the number of anti-Semitic crimes is consistently high. On Monday, however, Spaenle beamed all over his face at a press conference in the Bavarian Main State Archives. “I’m really happy today from the bottom of my heart,” he said as soon as he was greeted, and he had every reason to be. Finally, he was able to announce the start of a project that he and the Directorate General of the Bavarian State Archives had been working towards for years with the support of the Ministry of Science.
In cooperation with the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP) in Jerusalem, 200 archives of Jewish communities in Bavaria are now being completely digitized. The first three stocks were put online on Monday. The project should be completed by 2028.
Even if this goal may sound unspectacular at first, the archives of the Jewish religious communities are extremely important sources for research into Jewish history in Bavaria and Germany. They enable deep insights into Jewish life in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, much of which is still unknown. There is no doubt that these communities helped shape and enriched life in Bavaria up until the Holocaust. Just consider that many American-based global companies have Franconian-Jewish roots. One example is Levi Strauss, who was born in 1829 as Löb Strauss in Buttenheim near Bamberg and emigrated to America in 1847, where he ran a fabric store and invented jeans. Admittedly, the potential of these people often could not develop in Bavaria due to restrictive laws.
Until now, anyone who wanted to look into the Jewish archives had to travel to Jerusalem to do so. “The fact that the files still exist is a historical coincidence,” said Bernhard Grau, director general of the Bavarian State Archives. Most of the holdings were confiscated by Gestapo agencies or stolen by authorities and the police after the Kristallnacht pogroms on November 9, 1938. Many files survived the war in the state archives of Bavaria. After the end of the war, most of the archive holdings were confiscated by the US military government and handed over to the CAHJP in Jerusalem in the early 1950s. A central place for the tradition of the Jewish communities was to be created there and a worthy memorial to the communities and their members wiped out by the Nazi unjust state.
Jewish communities still exist in 13 Bavarian cities
Free access to the holdings via the Internet has long been a wish of local and national researchers. Jewish communities still exist in 13 Bavarian cities. This is only a fraction of former strength. Spaenle is therefore convinced “that we will find out a wide range of information about social and religious life in Bavaria from log books, lists of members and construction documents”.
As early as summer 2022, the General Directorate of the Bavarian State Archives concluded a cooperation agreement with the CAHJP, the aim of which is the complete digitization of around 200 archives of Jewish communities and rabbinates and online access via the finding aid database of the Bavarian State Archives. The 7,600 or so items in the archives range from the 18th century to the 1930s.
“Prayer for the Happy Birth of Her Royal Majesty Theresa zu Bavaria” in German and Hebrew, handed down in the archive of the Wallerstein Community (Swabia).
(Photo: Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People)
The scope of the individual community archives varies greatly. Many holdings consist of just a few files, others of 200, and in some cases even more than 500 archival items, such as in the case of the religious communities of Bamberg and Fürth.
As a first result, the archives of the Jewish communities Floß (Upper Palatinate), Treuchtlingen (southern Middle Franconia) and Wallerstein (Swabia) were put online on Monday. The tradition from Wallerstein goes back to the 18th century and breaks off in the middle of the 19th century. The one from Treuchtlingen focuses primarily on the first half of the 20th century. On the other hand, the archives of the municipality of Floss cover the period from the 18th century to the 1930s. In terms of content, the documents cover numerous areas of community life: statutes and log books, accounting documents, files on schools and funerals, on the economy, trade and taxes, law, the rabbinate and worship, building materials and estates.
“The historical and cultural-political significance of the digitization of the archives of the former Jewish communities in Bavaria cannot be overestimated,” stressed Spaenle. “We will gain important new insights – in the sense of building blocks of knowledge, which in turn is an important basis against Jew hatred.”
The documents of the Jewish communities in the finding aid database of the State Archives of Bavaria at www.gda.bayern.de/service/