The migration from and to
Germany from Czech Lands of former Austro-Hungarian Empire was quite frequent
during the history of Jewish people in the region.
Some examples can be traced in
Census 1793 of Bohemia : e.g. in Chynov, Tabor region, Feidesch MECKLENBURG
„gehört nach Mecklenburg“ dwelled; a widdow
Catharine HART from Frankfurt lived with the family of Jakob WOTTITZ in Neuhaus
(today Jindrichuv Hradec); Rosa,
daughter of Samuel BOBELLE of Neuhaus, married to Bamberg, etc.
The family history can be
further traced in Bohemia and Moravia. A complex relationship of the central
and local authorities to the Jewish families resulted in a variety of Jewish
records in Bohemia/Moravia. There are three main sources of family data : vital
records (1784-1949), Jewish Censuses (1724, 1783, 1793, 1799, 1811) and Books
of Jewish Familiants (1760-1849). The latter two data sources are more or less
associated with so called „official antisemitism“ based on the Emperor´s decree
called Familiant Law (issued in 1726 by the Charles VI.). The
Law dramatically changed the social life of Jewish families for the next 120
years by imposing a population restriction allowing only firstborn sons to marry.
The obligation of Jewish
communities to keep the vital records was introduced by the Emperor´s decree of
Joseph II. in 1784. Since then the records had fixed structure till 1949. Birth
records: birth place, birth date, circumcission date/girl´s naming date,
gender, legitimacy vs. illegitimacy, child´s name, father´s name, father´s
profession and status (familiant, schutzjude), mother´s name (often the names
of grandparents ), witnesses names, godfather´s name (= sandek´s name concerning the boys); marriage records
(see attached example): name and age of groom, name and age of bride, dates of
banns, date of marriage, place and date of marriage, name of marrying person,
names and profession of the witnesses; death records: date of death, date and
place of burial, name and age of deceased person, profession of deceased and
his/her domicile, cause of death. In 1949, the Jewish records were implemented
into the civil records, kept by the state. Most of the vital records are stored
today in the National archive in Prague.
The demographic pattern of Jewish communities in Bohemia and communities in
Moravia was quite different due to the different status, esp. due to more
relaxed attitude of the local government in Moravia and individual landlords to
the Jews. In Moravia the Jews mostly lived in larger towns, and the records
were kept in each town´s Jewish records. In Bohemia, besides few large
communities like Prag, Kolin or Jung Bunzlau, most of countryside Jews (Landes
Juden) lived scattered in the hundreds of
small vilages/small towns. The vital records were often kept in „the
administration districts“ under the name of one central village covering the
Jewish families from other villages around. The location of local parish must
then be reflected when one wants to study the catholic duplicates of Jewish
records (see below).
The vital records contain the surnames since 1788 when Emperor´s decree was
issued by Joseph II. The decree ordering the usage of German first names and
surnames induced a wave of objections and protests made by Jewish officials.
However, the subsequent decree issued soon after confirmed the former
regulations and fixed 115 male and 35 female first names. The formation of
German first name can be often traced : Löwy > Löbl > Leopold, Cvi > Hirsch > Hermann, etc. The dynamics of
surname formation is a truly fascinating topic, elaborated in several onomastic
studies. Before 1787, the most of Landes Juden used patronyms; sometimes the
toponyms indicated where they come from (Prager, Amsterodamer, Furth,
Frankfurter, etc.).
The change and/or adoption
of a new surname is a crucial issue in the process of tracing the family
backwards. Some of the earliest vital records show charts with the former and
the new name. The Books of Jewish Familiants also often show the surname change
made in abt. 1787.
The legitimacy of children
is another issue that was produced by the existence of Familiant Law. Due to
the restrictive decree that only first-borns sons were allowed to marry, the
children of other couples were considered illegitimate and they bore mother´s
surname. After 1849 when the decree was lifted, the marriage books contain
enourmous amount of records since many couples wanted to legitimize their
children. Only then their adult children obtained father´s surname. If the
parents already deceased, the children stayed with mother´s surname.
Jewish vital records were
started in Bohemia and Moravia in 1784
but the records were not always kept according to the proposed guidelines. In
1794, a new regulation was issued which entitled the midwifes to keep the
separate birth reports. This produced a first series of duplicate records. In
1799, a Systemal Patent entitled the catholic priests in nearby parishes to
lead so called „catholic duplicates“ of Jewish vital records. Since the
catholic duplicates were not started yet in many parishes, in 1839 another
decree enforced this agenda. The catholic duplicates were mostly led till 1873,
in some cases even till 1900. Another duplicacy appeared since the Jewish
communites were ordered to keep duplicates of their own records since 1874. In
the 2nd half of 19th century, the records of small towns/villages were geting
tenuous as Jewish families gradually moved to large towns and/or abroad.
In 1938/1939 the gestapo
bureaus attempted to collect all Jewish vital records in the area of first-wave
sieged part of Bohemia and Moravia (Sudettenland) and gathered most of the
records in town Liberec. In 1941/1942, similar campaign was launched in the
rest of the occupied country and the Jewish records were gathered in Zentralamt
zur Regelung der Judenfrage in Böhmen und Mähren. In 1943, the various
duplicate records including the catholic duplicates were collected by Sippenamt
für Böhmen u.Mähren and reposited outside of Prague. Those duplicate
collections were reportedly covered and saved by the Czechs employees in the
repository and thus were not transfered to Prague during the war years. The
original records were then destroyed by the nazis in April 1945.
Today, the old Jewish vital
records (1784-1949) are rather well preserved although most of the interested
public is not aware of this fact. As shown above, there were many duplicate
records that can be used today for family history research. Taken all
information about Jewish vital records together it indicates that there were at
least 3 collections of the vital records, overlaping more or less each other
for the time when vital records were ever kept. Even today some of the catholic
duplicates can be recovered in several district archives of Bohemia and
Moravia.
The duplicate records
regained its significancy after the WWII, when the duplicates were claimed as
legally acceptable documents. The death records were supplemented by
painstaking large „claimed-dead“ sections. Also, the birth and marriage records
were re-opened to the recovering communities in Czechoslovakia. In 1949, the
state legislature took over the agenda of all vital records and the Jewish
records were no longer kept as a separate collection.
Julius
Müller
Bibliography:
Kukanova
Z., Matusiková L.: Matriky zidovskych nabozenskych obci v Cechach a na
Morave z let 1784 az 1949. Czech. In: Paginae historiae, no. 0, pp.
103-122, Prague 1992.
Julius
Müller is a director of Toledot, public interest institution aimed to gather
and develop the genealogy databases and to digitize the Jewish records of
former Bohemia and Moravia.
He can
be reached at library@toledot.org