From Wuerttemberg to America
A Nineteenth-Century German-Jewish
Village on Its Way to the New World
by Stefan Rohrbacher |
| This paper gives an account of the
emigration of Jews from Jebenhausen to America. An earlier version was
published in the historical journal "American Jewish Archives" in 1989.
This abridged online version does not contain, i.a., the tables and footnotes
of the original paper but offers important additions and corrections regarding
Jewish families from Jebenhausen in America. |
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| Before the mass
immigration of Jews from Eastern Europe toward the end of the nineteenth
century, the vast majority of America's Jewry was of German descent. The
bulk of German-Jewish immigrants of the period prior to 1880 apparently
came from small towns and villages in southern Germany. One such village
was Jebenhausen. The first Jewish immigrant from Jebenhausen is known to
have arrived in America in 1798, and hundreds of his relatives and former
neighbors were to follow in his footsteps. |
| Between 1830 and
1870 alone, no less than 317 Jews from Jebenhausen went to America. We
learn of entire families sailing to the New World, and of young children
and elderly widows leaving on their own, of young women going overseas
to contract prearranged marriages, of artisans fleeing competition and
poverty. Thus in the exceptional case of Jebenhausen we are able to take
a close look at the process of German-Jewish emigration; indeed, comparable
data are not available for any other place in Germany. |
| The Jewish
Community of Jebenhausen |
| The village of
Jebenhausen had belonged to the family of the Barons of Liebenstein ever
since 1467. In July 1777 a contract was negotiated and signed by the barons
and nine Jews, and the Jewish community was thus founded. |
| The Jews of Jebenhausen were granted
far-reaching liberties and had to pay comparatively moderate dues. It is
not surprising, therefore, that in the first decades of its existence the
Jewish settlement grew rapidly. As early as in 1798, 178 Jews lived in
Jebenhausen, and by 1830 the number had increased to 485, or 44.9 percent
of the village population. Yet life in Jebenhausen was far from easy. In
1793 the district bailiff of Goeppingen reported to the duke of Wuerttemberg
that only one Jewish family in Jebenhausen was well off and in a position
to visit the Frankfurt and Leipzig fairs, whilst all the others were living
in wretched poverty and had to wander as far as Switzerland, Saxony, and
the Palatinate to eke out a meager existence from peddling or dealing in
cattle. Even after the incorporation of Jebenhausen into the Kingdom of
Wuerttemberg in 1806 their lot improved only gradually. |
