After the Pogromnacht of 9 November 1938, the German Reich illegally confiscated the written tradition of Jewish cult communities in Bavaria. A number of municipal archives first entered the care of the state archives of Bavaria. After the Second World War, this document was sent to Jewish Historical General Archives (JHGA), the predecessor of the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP) in Jerusalem. In this way, the tradition of Jewish communities in Jerusalem should be concentrated and a worthy monument should be placed to the destroyed Jewish communities and their members.
The archives of Jewish cult communities are important and widely used sources for research on the Jewish history of Bavaria and Germany. The documents reflect wide areas of community life: from the municipal administration (statistics and protocol books) to the economic life (invoicing documents) to the school and burial system, the rabbiate or the local festival culture. Free digital access to the municipal documents was therefore a long-awaited desire for local and international networked researchers.
On the initiative of the commissioner of the Bavarian State Government for Jewish life and against anti-Semitism, for remembrance work and historical heritage and with financial support by the Bavarian State Ministry for Science and Art, the Bavarian State Archives 2022 concluded a cooperation agreement with the CAHJP. In a five-year project, the documents of about 200 Jewish municipal archives are digitized and made available online via the finder database of the Bavarian State Archives.
The extent of the individual Jewish municipal archives is very different. Many stocks of small rural communities cover only a few files, while others consist of 200, in some cases more than 500 archives. The tradition of important cult communities with a long history dating back to the early modern age, such as Bamberg and Fürth, is particularly extensive.
The digitized documents of the Jewish communities are researchable in the Finder database of the State Archives of Bavaria.
For more information on the project start “Digitalization of the Transfer of the Jewish Cultus Communities in Bavaria” you will find in Press release.
A Online presentation by Prof. Dr. Michael Brenner Owner of the Chair of Jewish History and Culture at the Historical Institute of Ludwig Maximilians University Munich, on our YouTube channel informs about the history and significance of Jewish community tradition in Bavaria.
Breakdown by location Thematic portal on the history of Jewish life in Bavaria hosted by the House of Bavarian History, combining diverse information.
Contact:
Dr. Alexis Hofmeister
Tel.: +49 (89) 28638-2614
E-mail: poststelle@gda.bayern.de