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It is rare for a Jewish family, or for any family for that matter,
to be able to trace its roots back twelve generations. We are fortunate
to be able to do so in the case of the Essingers thanks to the careful
research of my maternal grandmother, Trude Levistein Altstädter.
In the late nineteen twenties, she spent many a long hour in the
family's ancestral village, Oberdorf near Bopfingen in southern
Germany, reading old documents and walking around the Jewish cemetery
tracing headstones.
I have augmented my grandmother's research of the family's early
history with information from an archival project being conducted
in the area by a dedicated local historian, Rolf Hofmann (see the
Sources section for information about this wonderful project) and
can therefore tell you a little about our Essinger ancestors.
As mentioned in the introduction, the Essingers arrived in Oberdorf,
which is located about 40 miles north of Ulm, in 1690 as refugees
from a village called Essingen. There are two Essingens in southern
Germany, and my grandmother was not certain from which one of these
the Jews arrived. I think we can safely now guess that the village
from which they escaped is Essingen in the Palatinate (called Pfalz
in German), which is located 20 miles north-west of Karlsruhe.
The reason I have selected this Essingen over the other is that
we know that the Jews were expelled because they were accused by
the Germans of assisting the French forces of king Louis XIV. We
also know that this happened around 1690.
Louis XIV, for those of you with vague memories of your history
teachers, is the "Sun King"-the one with the mistresses,
expensive chairs, and grand assessment of his own worth ("I
am the state" - remember?). This Louis devastated the Palatinate
area around 1690. Since both the timing and the location fit, I
think we can reasonably select the Palatinate's Essingen as our
village of origin.
Our family had to escape from Essingen because their permission
to live in that village was cancelled. They had been accused of
offering succor to the enemy by trading with its forces. I think
there was probably some truth to this accusation, in the sense that
the Essinger forefathers were indeed traders and probably had to
make use of any opportunity to trade in order to feed their children.
However, the furious Germans, whose lands had been devastated by
said Louis, did not view these activities charitably, and the Jews
had to leave.
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