October 2001 Schmolz
Eighteenth-Century Anabaptists in the Margravate of Baden and Neighboring Territories
MICHAELA SCHMLZ-HBERLEIN AND MARK HBERLEIN*
Abstract: Throughout the eighteenth century, Anabaptist tenants farmed a number of large impartible estates in the margravate of Baden-Durlach, a small principality in the upper Rhine Valley. Their management of these estates, which belonged to the margrave himself, local noble families or wealthy townspeople and villagers, won Anabaptist leaseholders a reputation for skillful and productive farming, and early in the century the government abandoned its hostile attitude in favor of the fiscal exploitation of the Anabaptist presence. Numerous credit and business ties between Anabaptist farmers and neighboring townspeople and villagers testify to their integration into the regional market economy. When Emperor Joseph II’s policy of religious toleration allowed Anabaptists to lease estates in the Catholic outer Austrian parts of the upper Rhine valley after 1780, they repeatedly encountered opposition from ecclesiastical corporations and local peasants. An analysis of these conflicts reveals, however, that they were motivated primarily by competition for local influence and scarce economic resources rather than religious prejudice.
In 1715 margrave Karl Wilhelm, ruler of the principality of Baden-Durlach, issued a general ordinance (Lands-Ordnung) for his territories. A typical document of the early modern police state, the Baden-Durlach ordinance of 1715 attempted to govern the subjects’ behavior and regulate religious, economic and social life. In a section on Anabaptists and Schwenckfelders, the ordinance specified that the goal of the “Christian authorities” was to “eradicate all such false, damned sects as much as possible and plant the truth in their stead” (alle dergleichen irrige/ verdammte Secten/ so viel mglich/ auzurotten/ und an derselben statt die Warheit zu pflantzen). The text identified three different kinds of sectarians. Those in the first category, consisting of religious leaders and teachers, were to be banished from the principality without mercy. Those in the second category-stubborn sectarians who refused to yield to religious instruction and disobeyed the public authorities-were to be admonished, obliged to attend Lutheran Sunday worship, and visited by the pastors; if these efforts to “reform” them all proved fruitless, these people should be expelled as well. The third category consisted of “simple-minded” persons who erred in matters of religious doctrine but had not yet been baptized and might still be brought to see the “truth.” Like the others, they were to be admonished, instructed, threatened-and banished as a last resort.[1]
While this normative text suggests that Anabaptists were unwelcome in the margrave’s territories in the upper Rhine valley, Anabaptists were already living there by 1715, and the second decade of the eighteenth century actually became a crucial period for the consolidation and expansion of Anabaptist communities in the area.[2] Although the number of Anabaptists in Baden-Durlach remained much smaller than in the Alsace or the Palatinate, the margravate did become a significant center of eighteenth-century Anabaptism in the German southwest. By the end of the century, Anabaptists from Baden had started to move into neighboring Catholic territories in the jurisdiction of outer Austria.[3]
So far, however, historians have paid relatively little attention to their presence in this region, and many estates on which they settled have completely escaped scholarly notice.[4] This essay will fill this historiographical gap by tracing the spread of Anabaptist settlement in the margravate of Baden-Durlach and adjacent territories in the eighteenth century, examining the economic and social characteristics of their communities, and analyzing their relationship with other subjects in the villages and small towns of the area.
The setting of this study is the right bank of the upper Rhine valley, an area extending for roughly 130 miles between the Rhine river and the Black Forest mountains from the towns of Karlsruhe and Pforzheim in the north to the Swiss border in the south. Like much of the German southwest, the area was a territorial checkerboard in the early modern period. The territories of the margraves of Baden, separated into the Lutheran line of Baden-Durlach and the Catholic line of Baden-Baden from the sixteenth century to 1771, were interspersed with small imperial cities like Offenburg and Gengenbach as well as areas under the jurisdiction of the Austrian Habsburgs, clerical rulers like the prince-bishops of Basel, and imperial knights. Baden-Durlach in particular consisted of three geographically disconnected sections: the lower margravate (the area between the towns of Karlsruhe and Pforzheim at the northern end of the Black Forest), the district of Hochberg in the northern Breisgau (to the north of the city of Freiburg), and the upper margravate or Markgrflerland, comprising the districts of Badenweiler, Rtteln and Sausenberg and extending south of Freiburg to the Swiss border. While the whole upper Rhine area had suffered heavy population losses during the wars of the seventeenth century, the eighteenth century was a time of demographic expansion. According to an early census, Baden-Durlach had a population of just over 90,000 in 1764. The districts were administered by princely officials (Amtmnner) who held extensive judicial, financial and administrative responsibilities. These district officials reported to the margave’s governing councils in the capital of Durlach, which was moved to the new residence of Karlsruhe in 1715. The margrave himself ruled in an absolutist manner-the estates had effectively been abolished shortly after the Thirty Years’ War-and reserved for himself the final decision in all administrative and judicial matters. Apart from the three larger towns of Karlsruhe, Durlach and Pforzheim, the margravate was dominated by small towns and villages whose inhabitants engaged in agricultural and craft production for local and regional markets. Due to the prevailing custom of partible inheritance, estates were usually small and scattered. Limited economic opportunity in the region and the lure of new lands led thousands of people to emigrate to Hungary, Prussia, Galicia, Russia and Pennsylvania in the eighteenth century. However, there were a number of large, impartible estates mostly owned by the margrave himself or local noble families.[5] On these large farms Anabaptist families successfully established themselves as tenants and acquired a reputation as skillful, productive and innovative farmers.
ANABAPTIST SETTLEMENT AND ECONOMIC ACTIVITY
For the seventeenth century, the sources permit only sporadic glimpses of the presence of Anabaptists in the margravate. A few years after the end of the Thirty Years’ War, several Anabaptists had settled in Opfingen, Mengen and Tiengen, three villages situated west of Freiburg and belonging to the Baden-Durlach district of Badenweiler, where they met with strong opposition from the local Lutheran pastor Mathias Riehle. In a number of letters he wrote to the authorities in Durlach in 1654 and 1655, Riehle complained that the Anabaptists had formed secret circles and obstinately refused to attend Sunday worship or listen to his instructions and admonitions. Riehle was convinced that the presence of these “sectarians” constituted a grave danger, and he even referred to the example of Thomas Mntzer and the peasants’ war to make his point. Alarmed by these reports, in January 1655 margrave Friedrich ordered his officials to keep a close eye on the Anabaptists and finally decreed their expulsion fifteen months later.[6] The persecutions of Anabaptists in the Swiss cantons of Basel, Zrich and Bern in the middle decades of the seventeenth century had caused many Anabaptists to emigrate to parts of the Alsace and the Palatinate that had been depopulated by the Thirty Years’ War,[7] and it seems likely that the group that aroused the ire of pastor Riehle also came from Switzerland.
As early as the 1670s Anabaptists may have settled on the Weier castle estate (Weierschlogut), a large property near the town of Emmendingen in the district of Hochberg that belonged to the noble family von Dungern. In 1673 Christian Eyer is mentioned as a Bannwart (attendant of the fields), a low communal officer, and renter of a small garden in the records of the town of Emmendingen. In that year he sued the wife of fisherman Hans Boltz before the local court for calling him a liar. While the source does not refer to Eyer as an Anabaptist, the surname repeatedly appears among members of this religious group in the Emmendingen area during the eighteenth century.[8] When Isaak Hodel’s mother died in the nearby village of Windenreute on January 3, 1687, she was explicitly referrred to as a Wiedertuferin. Hodel’s father came from Steffisburg in the canton of Bern, a center of Swiss Anabaptism.[9] In 1709 the protocol of the Emmendingen town council mentions a purchase of oak wood by Hans Hodel of the Weier castle estate, probably a relative of Isaak.[10] While these scattered references do not offer conclusive evidence for a continuous Anabaptist presence on the Weier estate since the 1670s, such a presence does at least seem possible.
When the Anabaptist Christian Rupp, who had come from Khnheim in the Alsace, agreed in 1713 to rent the large estate at the Hochburg, a former fortress near Emmendingen, for the considerable annual sum of 650 guilders, Michael Mller, tenant on the Weier castle estate, stood surety for him.[11] The likely reason for Christian Rupp’s migration from Khnheim to the Hochburg in 1713 was the decree of expulsion which the French king Louis XIV had issued for the Alsace in the preceding year. Over the next decades, the two large estates near Emmendingen became the centers of Anabaptist economic activity and community life in the district of Hochberg, and the tenant families of the Hochburg and the Weier castle remained closely allied. After Rupp died in 1746, Michael Mller took over the contract for the Hochburg for the large sum of 1225 Reichstaler. Nine years later, Christian Mller (probably Michael’s son) and Michael Iseli became his partners in the contract.[12] From 1734 to 1759 the “Anabaptist on the Weier castle” also rented a meadow from the town of Emmendingen for two and a half guilders annually.[13] In 1741 Christian Berner, Anabaptist on the Weier estate, was witness to a quarrel between the Hochburg leaseholder Christian Rupp and the Emmendingen Jew Jakob Weil.[14]
After the death in 1772 of Michael Mller, who had been living on the Weier castle and Hochburg estates for at least six decades, his sons Christian and Jakob Mller together with Jakob Zimmermann took over the lease contract for 1200 guilders annually. At that time, the estate comprised several hundred acres-154 Juchert of fields, 85 Juchert of meadows, 79 Juchert of pasture, and 3 Juchert of gardens[15]-and was stocked with 7 horses, 3 colts, 32 oxen, 16 cows, 20 calves, 26 sheep and 23 pigs.[16] The brothers Christian and Jakob Mller played an important role in community affairs. Jakob Mller was referred to as head of the Anabaptist community (Wiedertufer Vorsteher) and represented his co-religionists from the Hochberg area at the meeting of Amish Mennonites in the Palatine village of Essingen in 1779.[17] In his capacity as Vorsteher, Mller petitioned the Emmendingen district official in 1779 for a marriage permission. Barbara Wagner from the Hochburg, who was presumably working there as a servant or laborer, intended to marry Nikolaus Roth, who came from the Alsace.[18] Another Alsatian named Jakob Roth, possibly a relative of Nikolaus, became preacher of the Hochburg community after his marriage in 1785. The roots of the Roth family lie in Steffisburg in the Swiss canton of Bern, from where they emigrated to Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, Montbliard and eventually to the Hochberg area.[19]
Along with the Mllers, Jakob Zimmermann and his family played an important role in the Hochburg Amish Mennonite community in the late eighteenth century. According to genealogists Joseph Roth and Paul Bernard Munch, the Zimmermann family, originally from Zollikhofen in Switzerland, lived in Markirch (Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines) in the Alsace before settling at the Hochburg.[20] Around 1800 Jakob Zimmermann’s household comprised “two grown sons, four farm hands, a part-time farm hand (Halbknecht), a dairyman, 2 maids and 3 shepherds.” While the tenants of the Hochburg concentrated on agriculture, craftsmen like weavers are known to have lived and worked there as well.[21]
The protocols of the Hochberg weavers’ guild reveal the names of several Anabaptists who worked on the Hochburg and Weier castle estates as weavers. Hartmann Eer was permitted to weave on the Hochburg estate from 1716 to 1719, while Johann Jakob Krapf der Wiedertufer worked in the same craft on the Weier castle estate from 1716 to 1718. Johann Peter on the Hochburg estate worked on three looms in 1723-24, and Samuel Landricher also produced cloth there in 1723.[22]
The Anabaptist presence elsewhere in Baden-Durlach rapidly expanded in the second and third decades of the eighteenth century. From 1716 Anabaptists are documented as weavers on the Steckenhof, a noble estate of the Besold von Steckhofen family in the district of Hochberg near the village of Denzlingen. Rudolph Peter wove cloth there from 1716 to 1719 and on the nearby Mauracher Hof in 1721; he had moved away by 1723. Christian Mller obtained permission to weave on the Steckenhof estate from 1717 to 1721.[23] When the noble Teufel von Birkensee family took over the Steckenhof estate in the 1740s it obviously allowed the Anabaptists to stay. Jakob Rupp-a son of Christian Rupp, the deceased tenant of the Hochburg estate-had leased the Steckenhof estate by 1757.[24]
In March 1739 Christian Zimmermann leased for nine years the so-called Widdumsgut in Denzlingen, a hereditary fief of the collegiate chapter of St. Margarethen in Waldkirch administered by the community. Zimmermann had to deliver 60 Malter (9000 liters) of rye-30 to the collegiate chapter, 20 to the margrave’s Burgvogtei and ten to the community-and pay 135 guilders annually. When Zimmermann renewed the contract for the Widdumsgut in June 1757, Jakob Rupp, Anabaptist tenant of the Steckenhof estate, gave surety for him. Zimmermann rented the estate until his death in 1771. His widow then took over the lease contract with her son Andreas, for whom the Anabaptists Christian Leutweiler (Litwiler) of Schupfholz and Jakob Zimmermann of the Hochburg estate gave surety in 1774. By that time the annual lease amounted to 315 guilders. After his mother’s death in 1780, Andreas Zimmermann continued the lease on his own. In 1782 he advanced 600 guilders to the community of Denzlingen, for which 100 guilders were deducted from his lease during each of the following six years. When Andreas Zimmermann renewed the contract for another nine years in 1792, he once again advanced 200 guilders above the annual sum of 300 guilders to the community.[25] In 1790 district and local officials had praised Zimmermann for his expert breeding of the communal steers, and the village of Denzlingen acquired a reputation for the remarkable extent and quality of its hog and cattle raising, for which the Anabaptist tenants seem to have been largely responsible.[26] Before the end of the century Johannes Mller had taken over the lease contract of the deceased Andreas Zimmermann; in 1800 Jakob Zimmermann of the Hochburg estate gave surety for him.[27] According to Hermann Guth, one or more members of the Leutweiler family also worked on the Mauracher Hof, another large estate near Denzlingen.[28]
Anabaptists in the Vicinity of Tiengen
In 1719, three years after Anabaptists first appeared in Denzlingen, an Anabaptist tenant settled on the Wangen estate near the village of Tiengen, district of Badenweiler, a property of the margrave himself. In 1722 the Swiss-born Hans Hochsttt(l)er rented a large farm near Tiengen, the upper Schlatthof. His contract was renewed in 1728 and again in 1735; when Hochsttt(l)er’s daughter Barbara married the Alsatian Anabaptist Hans von Gund(en) in 1729, he was also identified as the tenant of Wangen, which by now belonged to the nobleman Baron Schilling von Canstatt. Hans von Gund(en), meanwhile, was referred to as a brother-in-law of Hochsttt(l)er’s stepson; his marriage to Barbara therefore testifies to enduring ties of kinship and migration between the Anabaptists of Alsace and Baden-Durlach. A letter that Hemberger, the Lutheran pastor of Opfingen, wrote to the estate owner details the circumstances of the marriage. According to Hemberger, Hans Hochsttt(l)er had planned to send his daughter Barbara to people he knew in the Alsace, “since in our area she was being attacked not a little, and therefore the parents had to live in continual fear and anxiety, seeing their daughter disgraced and experiencing her being put to the utmost shame.” When Hans von Gund(en) came forward and proposed to marry Barbara, Hochsttt(l)er found that he was not only a relative but also possessed a “not inconsiderable fortune” and “offered to work diligently and do his utmost” to improve the Wangen estate. A difficulty arose, however, because Barbara had been banned “by the Anabaptists or so-called Brotherhood from the community of their assembly, church and congegation.” Since readmission to the Anabaptist community might be “delayed many months, even whole years, according to their strange way of thinking,” Hochsttt(l)er had asked pastor Hemberger to marry the young couple, “since the Anabaptists living in our area had almost all been married by Reformed priests in Switzerland.” After some initial doubts, Hemberger supported the request and asked Schilling von Canstatt to intercede with the margrave on the tenant family’s behalf. The margrave actually permitted Barbara Hochsttt(l)er and Hans von Gund(en) to be married before pastor Hemberger and the Badenweiler district official Cellarius. When Cellarius reported back to Karlsruhe on the marriage ceremony, he noted that he and the pastor had avoided all liturgical ceremonies except for a brief prayer. Cellarius did not fail to mention that he had read about Mennonite marriage practices in Holland-“wie Benthem in dasigem Kirchen und Schulen Staat cap. 12. §. 8. erzehlet”[29]-and the Karlsruhe government, apparently impressed by the official’s knowledge, replied that he had done a good job during this wedding ceremony.[30]
Anabaptists in the Vicinity of Stein
In the 1720s Anabaptists also established themselves in the northern section of the margravate, the area between Karlsruhe and Pforzheim. Christian Krehbhl, for example, managed the Remchingen estate in the district of Stein from 1721 to 1728. After Krehbhl’s death his son Samuel and his son-in-law Bernhard Ghler took over his contract. Since Ghler was identified as a citizen of Singen, he was apparently not an Anabaptist.[31] In 1728 the nobleman Schilling von Canstatt, who was a member of the margrave’s Secret Council and owned the Wangen estate mentioned above, rented out his Hohenwettersbach estate to Anabaptists for six years, and a 1730 report by the district official at Stein mentioned the Anabaptist Christian Guth as a tenant at Kleinsteinbach.[32] Hermann Guth also mentions Benedikt Eyer, an immigrant from the area near Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines in the Alsace, and Jakob Dettweiler as leaseholders of a large estate near Langensteinbach in 1728. Benedikt Eyer’s sons-in-law Hans and Joseph Oesch lived with him on the Langensteinbach estate and his son Christian Eyer was present there in 1748. Christian’s brothers Hans Jacob, Abraham and Rudolf Eyer became leaseholders at Hohenwettersbach (1754), Drrenbchig (1763) and Remchingen, respectively. According to Guth, Peter Rothacker, who represented the Amish Mennonites of the Durlach area at the Essingen meeting of 1759, was leaseholder on the Hohenwettersbach estate at the time.[33]
The influx of Anabaptists after 1712 caused the Baden-Durlach government to reconsider its policy regarding this religious minority. Instead of threatening them with expulsion, the government now concentrated on the fiscal exploitation of their presence. According to a 1722 decree, each household had to pay an annual protection fee of 25 guilders-the same amount that was demanded of resident Jews and more than four times the annual sum Anabaptists had to pay in the electoral Palatinate. The next year, however, this fee was reduced to twelve and a half guilders. In addition, the margrave demanded certain fees in the event of death (Todfallgebhren), from one and a half guilders for small girls to twelve guilders for married men. These relatively high fees, which remained constant throughout the eighteenth century, may have kept the number of Anabaptists in Baden-Durlach relatively low compared to the Palatinate, but the decrees of 1722-23 also provided them with a certain measure of security. Official recognition of their presence became a basis for limited tolerance.[34]
Anabaptists on the Estates of the Margrave
In the middle decades of the eighteenth century, Anabaptists tilled the fields and tended livestock on two of the margrave’s large estates in the vicinity of Pforzheim, Katharinenthal and Karlshausen. At Katharinenthal, where their presence is documented from 1740 onward, the Anabaptist tenants had their own graveyard, which they were allowed to surround with a stone wall in 1757.[35] Hermann Guth identifies Jacob Kurtz and Ulrich Fischer as co-leaseholders of this estate in 1751; Kurtz’s daughter Jakobine was married to Benedikt Eyer, Jr., who also worked on the estate, while Veronika Kurtz, probably Jakobine’s sister, was the wife of Benedikt’s brother Rudolf, leaseholder on the Remchingen estate. Jakob Knig had emigrated to Pennsylvania from Katharinenthal in 1744; when Jakob Haas replaced him, several “Anabaptists” gave surety for him. According to Guth, Nikolaus Brennemann, Sr., his son of the same name and his son-in-law Hans Kendel (or Kennel) had leased the Karlshausen estate around 1750.[36]
By 1753 Christian Knig occupied another of the margrave’s estates, the former monastery at Nimburg in the district of Hochberg. In 1776 Knig reportedly had a large household and numerous cattle. Around that time, the Nimburg estate comprised 65 Juchert of arable land, for which the tenant had to pay 455 guilders per year.[37] The Knigs held the lease for Nimburg throughout the remainder of the century. In January of 1797 Christian Knig died after French soldiers had mistreated him when they occupied Nimburg during the French Revolutionary wars. He left eleven children, six of whom were still minors.[38] In 1759 the Karlsruhe government permitted Johannes Haler, an inhabitant of the village of Knigschaffhausen, situated near the Rhine river in the district of Hochberg, to rent out his farm in Tiengen to an Anabaptist tenant.[39] Margrave Karl Friedrich also granted the nobleman von Reitzenstein’s request to lease his farm in Inzlingen near the town of Lrrach in the southernmost part of Baden-Durlach to an Anabaptist in 1766.[40] It is not clear, however, how long these tenants stayed at Haslach and Inzlingen.
The Anabaptists in Baden-Durlach suffered a setback when two of the large noble estates they had farmed for decades-the Weier castle estate near Emmendingen and Wangen near Tiengen-were auctioned off in 1764 and 1766, respectively. Since they were not normally allowed to acquire real estate, the tenants had to stand by passively as townsmen and villagers bid for parcels of land. One of the many parcels that Johann Wilhelm Zimmermann, mayor of Emmendingen and the richest man in town, acquired from the Weier castle estate also contained the Anabaptist burial place.[41] Nearby estates like the Hochburg, Nimburg, the Steckenhof near Denzlingen, and the upper Schlatthof near Tiengen remained in Anabaptist hands, however, and there are references to Anabaptist tenants in other Baden villages for the last three decades of the eighteenth century. Thus, for example, in 1767 the records of the Hochberg weavers’guild name Christian Gautsche as a tenant on the Wpplinsberg, an estate of the Cistercian imperial abbey of Tennenbach within the bounds of the village of Niederemmendingen.[42] Johannes Gysler, who had earlier managed the so-called Reutehof of Johann Martin Engler, citizen of the village of Gundelfingen north of Freiburg, in 1779 rented the farm of Andreas Buchmller’s widow in Haslach, a village west of Freiburg.[43] The same person-or someone with the same name-lived in Mllheim, the district seat of Badenweiler, in 1781.[44] Christian Leutweiler appears in the village of Schupfholz from 1774 to 1791.[45] In 1787 Michael Zimmermann, who managed the Laberhof, another property of the Cistercian abbey of Tennenbach, was summoned to declare his allegiance to the margrave of Baden-Durlach. Zimmermann, a native of Denzlingen, was married to Anna Maria, daughter of the tenant on the Hochburg estate (probably one of the Mller brothers).[46] In 1789 Sebastian Haler of Tiengen leased a large farm in Mengen to the Anabaptist Andreas Gysler, a son of the deceased Johannes Gysler of Mllheim. Andreas Gysler provides us with a rare example of Anabaptists’ geographical mobility in the upper Rhine area: in the 1780s he lived and worked on three different estates (Mllheim, Steinenstadt and Mengen). It is impossible to tell from the existing sources, however, whether Gysler’s mobility was related to his young age, his persistent pursuit of economic opportunity, or to the particular difficulties members of his religious group had in making a living.[47] An Anabaptist named Leutweiler-perhaps identical with or related to Christian Leutweiler who had earlier resided in Schupfholz-left the village of Weisweil on the banks of the Rhine river just north of the Kaiserstuhl hills for the Alsace in 1795.[48] And in Gundelfingen, a village to the north of Freiburg, the Anabaptist David Boshard settled some unspecified conflict with a Jewish inhabitant in 1798.[49]
Summary
When we survey the evolution of Anabaptist settlements in the principality of Baden-Durlach in the eighteenth century, several characteristics stand out. First, these settlements were mostly confined to the large estates of the margrave himself; local nobles like the von Dungern, Besold von Steckhofen, Teufel von Birkensee, or Schilling von Canstatt families; and occasionally wealthy villagers like Andreas Buchmller’s widow of Haslach or Sebastian Haler of Tiengen. These estates, where Anabaptists engaged in a mixed economy of farming, cattle-raising and domestic craft production, often lay outside the villages, which may have limited their contacts as well as conflicts with other inhabitants of the countryside. Second, the evidence indicates that the Anabaptists in Baden-Durlach maintained close ties among each other: leaseholders repeatedly stood surety for one another, and their children tended to intermarry. There are also several references to ties of migration and communication with co-religionists in the Alsace. Third, the margrave of Baden-Durlach and his government abandoned their intolerant attitude towards this religious minority early in the eighteenth century and sought to profit financially from the Anabaptists’ presence.
An aggregate tabulation of Anabaptist-operated estates in the margravate at three different points in time during the eighteenth century shows that the presence of this religious minority expanded in the Hochberg district from three estates in 1730, to five or six in 1760 and to at least seven in 1790 (see Appendix). The Anabaptist presence in the district of Badenweiler remained more or less constant at two or three estates between 1730 and 1790, whereas it peaked at about six estates in the lower margravate around 1760, but seems to have declined sharply thereafter. While future research is bound to supersede this aggregate picture, and the precise reasons for expansion in the Hochberg district and decline in the Durlach area are not clear, on the whole Anabaptists remained a significant segment of the population on the relatively few large estates of the margravate. In 1804, 46 Anabaptists were living in the district of Hochberg alone.[50]
By the eighteenth century Anabaptists in the Alsace and the Palatinate had already acquired a reputation for skillful estate management, profitable cattle-breeding and innovative farming techniques, and they were considered ideal tenants by many government officials, noblemen and burghers.[51] This reputation for agricultural competence and profitable management extended to the Anabaptist tenants in Baden-Durlach as well. When Andreas Buchmller’s widow applied for permission to lease her farm in Haslach to Anabaptists in 1779, the district official reported to the Karlsruhe government that she was a wealthy, childless woman who could not possibly work the farm herself. Moreover, the rough soil conditions at Haslach required hard work, and since competent tenants were difficult to come by, it made sense for the widow to lease the property to the Anabaptist Johannes Gysler for three years. A member of the margrave’s council in Karlsruhe agreed: the farming techniques of this tenant might serve as an example to other villagers; the community had no objections if he limited his livestock on the common pasture to two heads of cattle and abstained from unfair trading practices; and Gysler had already been living in the Baden-Durlach district of Hochberg. Therefore the councillor supported the petition, provided that Gysler did not cause any trouble in religious matters and would, like other villagers, contribute to the support of the Lutheran pastor.[52]
When the government considered raising the already high annual rent on the Hochburg estate in 1781, the local bailiff came to the tenants’ aid and argued that they were diligently working the extensive property, were constantly striving to increase the agricultural output and the quality and size of the livestock herd, and were solving farming problems by cooperating peacefully and harmoniously.[53] Similarly, the local authorities supported Sebastian Haler’s request to lease his farm in Mengen to the unmarried Anabaptist Andreas Gysler and his two siblings in 1789 because Haler could not manage both his large property in Tiengen and the Mengen estate he had inherited from his wife. The district official affirmed that the Anabaptists were generally known as good tenants and that Gysler had already successfully managed farms in Mllheim and Steinenstadt. Moreover, as in Haslach, the villagers in Mengen had no objections.[54] A dissenting opinion was expressed by several villagers from Drrn near Pforzheim, who had unsuccessfully attempted to lease the margrave’s Karlshausen estate in 1759. Not only did they complain that the number of Anabaptists was constantly increasing and threatening to drive them out of the country, but they also claimed the ability to manage the estate more profitably than the Anabaptist tenants, who had allegedly neglected it. Significantly, the government authorities turned down their petition without much discussion.[55]
COOPERATION AND CONFLICT: ANABAPTISTS AND RURAL SOCIETY IN THE MARGRAVATE OF BADEN
Although Anabaptists, in Baden-Durlach as elsewhere, tended to marry among each other and most of their households were situated on large estates geographically separated from the village communities, their extensive involvement in commercial agriculture frequently brought them into contact with nearby villagers and townspeople. A thorough search of the estate inventories and contract protocols of the Hochberg district town of Emmendingen and the neighboring village of Niederemmendingen reveals a variety of credit ties and other business contacts.
In 1742 the wine-grower Johann Schneider of Emmendingen paid back his debts to the Anabaptist Matthias Jungern, who lived on the Weier castle estate.[56] Two years later Georg Hodel the younger of Niederemmendingen borrowed 200 guilders from Christian Rupp, Anabaptist tenant on the Hochburg estate, for four years. Hodel had to pawn several pieces of real estate as security for the loan.[57] In 1748 Hans Brkle, referred to as an Anabaptist from Niederemmendingen, owed 11 guilders to the Emmendingen blacksmith Martin Gtz.[58] When the innkeeper Johann Wilhelm Legler died in Emmendingen in 1754, his unpaid debts included: 276 guilders and 40 kreuzers due to the heirs of Christian Rupp; 16 guilders and 40 kreuzers to Michael Eyer of the same estate still due from the purchase of an oxen; 69 guilders 10 kreuzers to an Anabaptist of Niederemmendingen (probably Christian Gautsche) for two pairs of oxen; and two guilders to Peter Bhler, an Anabaptist living in Windenreute, for medication for cattle.[59] The cooper and innkeeper Johann Gimpel owed Michael Mller, tenant of the Hochburg estate, more than 110 guilders in 1758 and owed Christian Berner, an Anabaptist living on the Weier castle estate, 66 guilders in 1762.[60] Four years later the potter Johann Meyer was indebted to an unmarried Anabaptist on the Hochburg for 26 guilders, while Johann Kaspar Tschira’s obligations to a member of the Hochburg community amounted to 25 guilders in 1775.[61] In 1768 the Emmendingen baker Jakob Friedrich Grnwald owed Christian Gautsche, Anabaptist tenant on the Wpplinsberg near Niederemmendingen, a small sum for wheat.[62] The potter Johann Michael Grnwald borrowed 25 guilders from Christian Leutweiler of Schupfholz in 1786,[63] while the Hochburg tenant Jakob Zimmermann loaned the stocking-weaver Johann Wilhelm Limberger the considerable sum of 300 guilders in 1790.[64] One of the Mller brothers, who leased the Hochburg property together with Zimmermann, had granted the Emmendingen tanner Georg Jakob Knoderer a loan of 100 guilders at some point before the latter’s death in 1802.[65] On the other hand, Christian Knig, Anabaptist tenant of the Nimburg estate, had borrowed 650 guilders from the Emmendingen cooper Georg Friedrich Brief by 1791.[66]
Two kinds of business transactions emerge from these pieces of information. First, innkeepers and artisans living in the small town and Anabaptist farmers on nearby estates borrowed money from each other at interest. The resulting capital obligations ranged from 25 to 650 guilders. Second, Anabaptist farmers sold agricultural products-grain, vegetables, meat, cattle, possibly wine and flax-to inhabitants of Emmendingen on credit. A unique glimpse of a different kind of transactions emerges from the 1773 inventory of Karl Christoph Eisenlohr, bookbinder in Emmendingen and son of a Lutheran pastor. Among the books Eisenlohr had for sale were seven copies of Die Ernsthaffte Christenpflicht (Prayer Book for Earnest Christians), assessed at 1 guilder 24 kreuzers; two copies of a Wiedertufer Liederbuch, probably the Ausbund (1 guilder 40 kreuzers); two Anabaptist new testaments (1 guilder 40 kreuzers); and four copies of the Wiedertufer Glaubensbekenntnis (confession of faith; 2 guilders).[67]
Economic ties between Anabaptists and other inhabitants of the Hochberg district extended to labor relations as well. In 1740 the farm laborer Christian Gundelfinger, who had worked for the Anabaptists on the Weier castle estate, was buried in Emmendingen’s Lutheran churchyard. When Johann Jakob Strbin of Windenreute married Anna Elisabeth von Esch in 1750, the parish register referred to her husband as the Anabaptists’ farm laborer. When Anna Maria Schrodin gave birth to an illegitimate child in 1792, the father was identified as Konrad Strohm, a farm laborer from the Wrttemberg district of Tuttlingen who had been working for the Anabaptist Zimmermann on the Hochburg estate. In 1805 Konrad Meyer, Catholic farm laborer on the estate of Christian Gautsche, fathered the illegitimate child of Salome Bergtold of Mundingen.[68]
Close contacts between Anabaptists and their neighbors might have even resulted in conversions. In 1756 Andreas Laurentius Meyer, Lutheran pastor of the village of Grtzingen near Karlsruhe, reported to the margrave that a young man named Johannes, son of the Anabaptist tenant of the widow Schweigle’s estate, had decided to become a Lutheran. The government supported the convert financially, and he eventually found employment in the margrave’s stables.[69] On the other hand, a Swiss-born maid servant of Johannes Gysler in Mllheim was reported to have converted to Anabaptism in 1781.[70]
As far as we can tell from the extant sources, conflicts between Anabaptists and other inhabitants of the Hochberg district were mostly confined to the economic realm. As the protocols of the Hochberg weavers’ guild demonstrate, the Anabaptists on the Weier castle, Hochburg and Steckenhof estates were active in textile production from the second decade of the eighteenth century onward.[71] In the 1760s the guild repeatedly complained that Christian Gautsche of Niederemmendingen and other Anabaptists, who were not members of the guild and therefore were allowed to produce only for their own households, were working for outside customers. In 1767 Gautsche was prohibited from employing a journeyman.[72] While the presence of Anabaptists in the principality of Baden-Durlach was a well-established fact by the middle of the eighteenth century and generally seems to have met with little opposition, Anabaptist farmers encountered a different situation when they began to move into Catholic areas in the 1780s and 90s. Their appearance in the outer Austrian territories of the Breisgau triggered controversial debates that shed some light on the perceptions of this religious minority held by government officials, property owners and villagers.
ANABAPTISTS IN CATHOLIC TERRITORIES AT THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: ISSUES AND DEBATES
When Emperor Joseph II succeeded his mother Maria Theresa on the Austrian throne in 1780, his many reform initiatives included the granting of religious toleration in his extensive Austrian, Bohemian, Moravian and Hungarian territories. While Joseph’s toleration mandates did not specifically mention Anabaptists, they appear to have served as a catalyst for the expansion of Anabaptist activity into Catholic areas of the Breisgau, for a growing number of estate owners now sought their services.[73]
In 1784, for example, the grand prior of the Order of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem at Heitersheim requested permission from the representatives of the outer Austrian government in Freiburg to lease his Weinstdt estate near the village of Bremgarten to an Anabaptist. He reasoned that, since the Austrian ruler Emperor Joseph II had abolished mandatory feudal labor services (socage), he now had to rent out his lands and he intended to lease Weinstdt to an Anabaptist-a group renowned for its particular industry and skill. The grand prior went on to enumerate five arguments in favor of this request. First, Anabaptists were not only tolerated in the (Catholic) Alsace, but in the Prince-Bishopric of Basel as well, and the prior had already leased one of his properties in the Prince-Bishopric’s Schliengen district to an Anabaptist. Second, the Weinstdt estate was situated far from the neighboring village communities, so that the Anabaptists’ quiet and secluded way of worship was unlikely to cause any excitement there. Third, the lease contract was limited to a few years and the Anabaptist tenant farmers would not acquire the right to citizenship or permanent residency but would remain foreigners. Fourth, the example of the excellent manner of farming for which the Anabaptists were justly renowned would help to overcome other peasants’ prejudices against modern farming techniques and thus contribute to the improvement of agriculture in the region. Fifth, the public would thereby profit from their agricultural output as much as the owner of the estate. In this remarkable document, the grand prior combined the enlightened concept of agricultural innovation with traditional notions of the common good and constructed an image of Anabaptists as model farmers whose “sectarian” beliefs nevertheless excluded them from citizenship and confined them to the status of outsiders. The outer Austrian government granted his request.[74]
However, when the wealthy peasant Georg Billmann planned to lease his property in the village of Tunsel in the southern Breisgau to the Anabaptist Christian Leutweiler[75] for ten years in 1787, matters were more complicated. Billmann framed his request for the outer Austrian authorities’ permission primarily in economic terms. Not only would the management of the estate by an Anabaptist yield a higher profit, but it would lead to a considerable improvement of the whole property, whereas a native outer Austrian was more likely to run down the farm. Since Anabaptists were known to be the most knowledgeable and diligent farmers, their example would also contribute to the advancement of agriculture and the promotion of the common good in the village of Tunsel. Billmann also mentioned that the Anabaptists were reputed to be quiet and peaceful people who practiced their religion only in private. Following this request an outer Austrian subject, Joseph Gschwander of Unterglottertal, petitioned the authorities in Freiburg to grant him the lease on the terms that Billmann had agreed on with Leutweiler. Freiburg sided with Gschwander, reasoning that Anabaptists were not generally tolerated but only accepted under particular circumstances. Gschwander remained on the Billmann estate for only three years, however, and in 1790 Billmann made a renewed attempt to obtain an Anabaptist tenant farmer, Christian Gysler. When Gysler had already started to move his household and cattle to Billmann’s estate, the Benedictine monastery of St. Trudpert, which exercised local authority in the village, prohibited him from entering Tunsel. Billmann vehemently protested this act of intolerance, which in his opinion not only damaged his own and his tenant’s economic interests but also ran counter to the emperor’s policy of religious toleration. The documents do not reveal the authorities’ reaction to this situation.[76]
The abbess of the noble nunnery (Damenstift) of Gnterstal likewise encountered resistance when in 1790 she attempted to lease the Mundenhof, a large farm west of Freiburg, to the Anabaptist Jakob Zimmermann, mentioned earlier as a tenant of the Hochburg estate. According to the abbess’ request to the outer Austrian authorities, no other applicant had the required capital and agricultural skills. When Zimmermann prepared to take over the management of the Mundenhof, however, he had the same experience as Christian Leutweiler at Tunsel three years earlier: Michael Gassenschmied, an outer Austrian subject and former bailiff of St. Georgen, also bid for the contract. Gassenschmied styled himself as a father of many children whom he had to provide for, while claiming that the Anabaptists were foreigners who were not allowed to reside on outer Austrian territory without special permission. Although the authorities predictably supported Gassenschmied, the abbess repeated her request and reiterated her preference for an Anabaptist tenant farmer over the Catholic Gassenschmied. The perceived economic benefits of leasing the estate to an agricultural expert outweighed religious considerations. Significantly, Gassenschmied’s lawyer felt obliged to emphasize his client’s farming experience while questioning the economic reputation of the “vagrant” Anabaptists (herumvagierende Wiedertufer). There were examples, he claimed, of Anabaptists who had actually neglected the estates entrusted to them and failed to pay their rents. This is one of the very few dissenting voices from the standard refrain of public officials, estate owners and village communities praising the Anabaptists’ agricultural expertise and skillful farm management.[77]
When in May 1793 the Anabaptist tenants of the Hochburg estate, Jakob Mller and Jakob Zimmermann, leased the pastures on the slopes of the Kandel mountain from the outer Austrian town of Waldkirch, the contract was opposed by the provost and members of the collegiate chapter of St. Margarethen in the same town. The collegiate chapter argued that the town had overstepped its competences because the pastures were under the chapter’s jurisdiction and the town-which held the Kandel pastures as a hereditary fief-had no authority to lease them on its own terms. Furthermore, a lease contract with “foreign subjects” would hurt the interests of outer Austrians who might not find sufficient pasture land for their own livestock. Finally, according to the chapter, the Anabaptist “sect” was not tolerated on outer Austrian territory. The authorities in Freiburg sided with the chapter and summoned the town council of Waldkirch to cancel the agreement. The town replied that the Hochburg Anabaptists could be expected to improve the pastures, which had been “ruined” by the former tenant, and that Anabaptists had already been allowed to bid for pasture rights on outer Austrian territory in 1786. It also denied that the agreement constituted a novelty, for Mller’s father and grandfather had also been permitted to feed their cattle on the Kandel pastures. The town council thus focused on the economic benefits of the agreement.
In early June after the Anabaptist tenants had driven a herd of some 40 cattle and several pigs to the pastures, where they were attended by two farm hands and a herdsman, the collegiate chapter renewed its complaint to the Freiburg authorities. According to the chapter, the Anabaptists had paid 50 talers to the town beforehand. The fiscal interests of the town, however, should not have priority over religious concerns and the interests of outer Austrian subjects. The town rejected the chapter’s claims to jurisdiction over the pastures and reminded Freiburg that Anabaptists were already tolerated elsewhere in the Austrian Breisgau: on the Feldberg, in the valley of Kirchzarten, in Baldenweg, Tunsel, Ohlsperg, Endingen and Selberg. Moreover, the Anabaptists did not wish to remain permanently, but merely for the summer months. The Waldkirch council also emphasized the town’s economic difficulties. There were 365 taxable families but only 185 houses, little arable soil and scores of poor craftsmen who suffered from outside competition while the town had few other sources of income. But these economic arguments did not convince the outer Austrian authorities in Freiburg and Constance, who ordered the Anabaptists to leave the pastures within 14 days in July 1793. All that the town could accomplish was a postponement of this order until late September. Therefore, the Hochburg Anabaptists were able to keep their herd on the Kandel pastures for at least the whole summer.[78]
As in the case of Tunsel, this debate on the use of the Kandel pastures shows how competing jurisdictional claims between ecclesiastical and secular authorities in the territorially fragmented upper Rhine area overlapped with conflicts over scarce economic resources. While the town’s arguments in favor of the lease contract with the Hochburg Anabaptists were purely financial and economic, the collegiate chapter of St. Margarethen emphasized its jurisdictional authority and styled itself as the guardian of Catholic religion. There is reason to doubt the sincerity of the latter argument, however, for, as we have already seen, the chapter’s Widdumsgut in Denzlingen, another hereditary fief, had been continuously leased to Anabaptist tenants since 1739. The main difference obviously lay in the fact that the Denzlingen estate was part of the margravate of Baden, a “foreign” territory where Anabaptists were tolerated anyway and where the collegiate chapter was able to profit from their labor without compromising the principle of religious conformity in outer Austria. But if members of this religious “sect” dared to move into Catholic territory and enrich the town of Waldkirch, which was competing with the collegiate chapter for local influence, they were clearly not welcome.
CONCLUSION
Although less numerous than in the Alsace or the Palatinate, Anabaptists were a significant minority group in the margravate of Baden-Durlach during the eighteenth century. They leased a number of large impartible estates in the Hochberg and Badenweiler districts from local noble families, wealthy villagers or the margrave himself and acquired a reputation for agricultural innovation and skillful estate management. Many of the Anabaptists in Baden-Durlach came from the Alsace after the expulsion of 1712 and retained strong ties to co-religionists there. The estates they managed usually lay at a distance from the centers of the village communities, but the Anabaptists developed strong economic ties to neighboring villagers and townsmen by marketing their products or entering into credit agreements. Their economic activities apparently met with little opposition, apart from several complaints by the Hochberg weavers’ guild regarding textile production on Anabaptist-operated estates.
After 1780 landlords in the outer Austrian parts of the Breisgau seeking to benefit from Emperor Joseph II’s new policy of religious toleration tried to attract Anabaptist leaseholders from the margravate of Baden, who may in turn have sought new economic opportunities for themselves or their families. While they managed to secure a number of lease contracts from villagers, noblemen and ecclesiastical institutions, these agreements repeatedly met with opposition from other villagers or local authorities. This opposition was sometimes expressed in religious terms, but appears to have been primarily economically and politically motivated. In the territorially and jurisdictionally fragmented Breisgau area, town councils, ecclesiastical corporations, local nobles and representatives of the outer Austrian government competed for authority and scarce economic resources, and Anabaptist tenants inadvertently became enmeshed in these power struggles.
By 1800 the Anabaptists living in the area of the upper Rhine were numerically small but an economically prominent element in the region. During the course of the nineteenth century, however, the emigration of most Anabaptist families to other German territories or the United States diminished their presence;[79] and later historians have paid little attention to them. Further research in local sources is needed to add to our understanding of the farming practices, business ties and family relations of this minority group in the southwestern corner of the Holy Roman Empire.
APPENDIX
ANABAPTIST ESTATES IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BADEN-DURLACH
Note: The estates placed in square brackets are mentioned by Hermann Guth, but do not appear in the archival sources consulted by the present authors.
1730 1760 1790
District of Hochberg:
Hochburg Hochburg Hochburg
Weier castle Weier castle Schupfholz
Steckenhof (Denzlingen) Steckenhof Steckenhof
Widdumsgut (Denzl.) Widdumsgut
Wpplinsberg [?][80] Wpplinsberg
Nimburg Nimburg
Laberhof (Freiamt)
[Mauracher Hof’][81]
District of Badenweiler:
Wangen (Tiengen) Wangen Seb. Haler’s est.
(Mengen)
Upper Schlatthof (Tiengen) Upper Schlatthof Upper Schlatthof
Joh. Haler’s est. Mllheim [?][82]
(Tiengen)
Lower margravate:
Remchingen [Remchingen] [Johannesthaler Hof]
Hohenwettersbach [Hohenwettersbach]
Kleinsteinbach Katharinenthal
[Langensteinbach] Karlshausen
Schweigle estate (Grtzingen)[83]
[Drrenbchig]
[*]Prof. Mark Hberlein teaches in the Dept. of History, University of Freiburg, Germany. Dr. Michaela Schmlz-Hberlein, an independent historian living in Freiburg, Germany, has taught at the University of Mannheim and Penn State University, University Park.
1. Lands-Ordnung/ Der Frstenthummer und Landen/ Der Marggraffschafften Baden und Hachberg . . . In Neun Theil verfasset (Durlach, 1715), 141-45. On Baden-Durlach as an early modern “police state,” see Helen P. Liebel, Enlightened Bureaucracy versus Enlightened Despotism in Baden, 1750-1792 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1965); Clemens Zimmermann, Reformen in der buerlichen Gesellschaft. Studien zum aufgeklrten Absolutismus in der Markgrafschaft Baden, 1750-1790 (Ostfildern: Scripta-Mercaturae-Verlag, 1983); Andr Holenstein, “Gesetzgebung und administrative Praxis im Staat des Ancien Rgime. Beobachtungen an den badischen Vogt- und Rgegerichten des 18. Jahrhunderts,” in Gesetz und Gesetzgebung im Europa der Frhen Neuzeit, eds. Barbara Dlemeyer and Diethelm Klippel (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1998), 171-97.
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[2]. In this article we have chosen to use “Anabaptist” as the most direct translation of “Wiedertufer,” the term appearing most frequently in our sources. It is highly probable that the Anabaptists mentioned in this article were actually Amish Mennonites whose theological roots go back to the Amish reform movement in Switzerland and the Alsace in the 1690s.
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[3]. The term “outer Austria” or Vordersterreich refers to the Habsburg (or Austrian) territories in southwest Germany.
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[4]. References to some of the Mennonite communities in the margravate of Baden can be found in ME 1:204-08 and ME 2:770. See also Albrecht Strobel, Agrarverfassung im bergang. Studien zur Agrargeschichte des badischen Breisgaus vom Beginn des 16. bis zum Ausgang des 18. Jahrhunderts (Freiburg: Alber, 1972), 29, 74f., 154; Hermann Guth, Amish Mennonites in Germany: Their Congregations, the Estates Where They Lived, Their Families (Morgantown, PA: Masthof Press, 1995), 46-57. For a detailed study of one district of the margravate of Baden-Durlach, see Michaela Schmlz-Hberlein, “Die Tufer im baden-durlachischen Amt Hochberg – ein vergessenes Kapitel sdwestdeutscher Geschichte,” Jahrbuch des Landkreises Emmendingen fr Kultur und Geschichte, 14 (2000), 67-84.
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[5]. This sketch relies mainly on Strobel, Agrarverfassung im bergang; Werner Hacker, Auswanderungen aus Baden und dem Breisgau. Obere und mittlere rechtsseitige Oberheinlande im 18. Jahrhundert archivalisch dokumentiert (Stuttgart and Aalen: Theiss, 1980), esp. 43-166; Zimmermann, Reformen in der buerlichen Gesellschaft, 15-43; Mark Hberlein, Vom Oberrhein zum Susquehanna. Studien zur badischen Auswanderung nach Pennsylvania im 18. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1993), 5-79.
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[6]. Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe (hereafter, GLA), 229/66723.
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[7]. See Hans-Ulrich Pfister, Die Auswanderung aus dem Knonauer Amt 1648-1750. Ihr Ausmass, ihre Strukturen und ihre Bedingungen (Zrich: Rohr, 1987), 170-84; Roland E. Hofer, “Tufer im 17. Jahrhundert. Herrschaftsdurchdringung und untertniger Widerstand in der Frhen Neuzeit,” Schaffhauser Beitrge zur Geschichte, 71 (1994), 97-118; Hanspeter Jecker, Ketzer – Rebellen – Heilige. Das Basler Tufertum von 1580-1700 (Liestal: Verlag des Kantons Basel-Landschaft, 1998), 429-521, 592, 603 and passim.
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[8]. Stadtarchiv Emmendingen (hereafter, StadtAEm), B 1a/1, Rug- und Frevelgericht in Stadt und Stab Emmendingen, April 11, 1673.
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[9]. StadtAEm, Genealogical file for the village of Windenreute.
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[10]. StadtAEm, C/VIII/1 (Ratsprotokoll 1701-1718), June 21, 1709, fol. 79v.
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[11]. Guth, Amish Mennonites, 53-55.
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[12]. Ibid., 53, 55.
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[13]. StadtAEm, C IX, Stadtrechnungen 1734-1760.
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[14]. StadtAEm, C/VIII/3 (Ratsprotokoll 1735-1744), January 10, 1741, fol. 123r.
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[15]. A Juchert is a regional measurement equal to .48 hectares or 1.2 acres.
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[16]. GLA 229/97074; Guth, Amish Mennonites, 53-56.
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[17]. Guth, Amish Mennonites, 53, 55. On p. 277, however, Guth refers to Christian Mller as the Hochburg congregation’s representative at Essingen!
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[18]. GLA 61/6537, March 1, 1779: Jakob Mller, Wiedertufer Vorsteher, reports that Nikolaus Roth from the “St. Belter Mhle” in the Alsace and Barbara Wagnerin from the Hochburg estate planned to marry. Mller requested permission to marry them according to their custom (“die Erlaubni sie nach Ihrem Gebrauch zusammen geben zu drffen”).
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[19]. There is some disagreement in the literature on the name and origins of Jakob Roth’s wife. While Joseph Roth and Paul Bernard Munch give her name as Barbara Schwarz of Eimeldingen (Baden), whom Roth married in Mntzenheim (Alsace), Hermann Guth claims that Jakob Roth “married a Barbara Wagler of the Laberhof near Tennenbach.” Unfortunately, neither author presents any documentation for his claim. It seems possible, however, that Guth confused “Barbara Wagler” with the Barbara Wagner who married Nikolaus Roth. See Joseph Roth and Paul Bernard Munch, “Histoire des familles Anabaptistes du Sundgau,” Annuaire de la Socit d’Histoire du Sundgau (1996), 89-95, here p. 90; Guth, Amish Mennonites, 55.
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[20]. Joseph Roth and Paul Bernard Munch, “Religion et agriculture: Contribution l’histoire des Anabaptistes-Mennonites en Sundgau,” Annuaire de la Socit d’Histoire du Sundgau (1995), 213-50, here p. 214. Roth and Munch do not cite any sources. However, Guth, Amish Mennonites, 53-56 does not indicate the presence of the Zimmermann family on the Hochburg estate before the 1770s. For background, see Pfister, Auswanderung aus dem Knonauer Amt, 180-81.
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[21]. Guth, Amish Mennonites, 54.
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[22]. StadtAEm, B V/2, Fasz. 65, Leinenweber 1685-1732, June 14, 1716; May 17, 1717; June 6, 1718; May 29, 1719; May 16, 1723; May 24, 1724.
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[23]. StadtAEm, B V/2, Fasz. 65, Leinenweber 1685-1732, June 14, 1716; May 17, 1717; June 6, 1718; May 29, 1719; June 2, 1721; May 16, 1723.
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[24]. Gemeindearchiv Denzlingen, 1-B 310 (Gemeinderechnung 1757). Guth, Amish Mennonites, 54-55, merely notes that Jakob Rupp, son of Christian, “represented the [Hochburg] congregation in Essingen in 1759 but was not leaseholder in Hochburg.” On the Anabaptist tenants on the Steckenhof, see also GLA 229/17861; Strobel, Agrarverfassung im bergang, 74-75.
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[25]. Gemeindearchiv Denzlingen, 1-B 295 (Gemeinderechnung 1739); 1-B 310 (Gemeinderechnung 1757); 1 B-321 (Gemeinderechnung 1771); 1-B 325/2 (Gemeinderechnung 1775); 1-B 330/2 (Gemeinderechnung 1780); 1 B-332/1 (Gemeinderechnung 1782/83); 1-B 341/1 (Gemeinderechnung 1793). How the Zimmermann family of Denzlingen was related to the Zimmermanns on the Hochburg estate is not clear.
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[26]. Gemeindearchiv Denzlingen, 1-B 247 (Frevelgerichtsprotokoll 1790), fol. 184r-184v, 223v-224r. We thank Andr Holenstein (Bern, Switzerland) for this information. Cf. Strobel, Agrarverfassung im bergang, 154.
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[27]. Gemeindearchiv Denzlingen, 1 B-346/2 (Gemeinderechnung 1798); 1-B 348/2 (Gemeinderechnung 1800); 1-B 350 (Gemeinderechnung 1802); 1-B 353/2 (Gemeinderechnung 1805).
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[28]. Guth, Amish Mennonites, 56.
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[29]. Henrich Ludolf Bentheim, Hollndischer Kirch- und Schulen-Staat (Franckfurt und Leipzig, 1698), 348.
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[30]. GLA 229/105890, 110201; Hans Schadek, Tiengen. Eine Tuniberg-Gemeinde im Wandel der Jahrhunderte (Freiburg-Tiengen: Ortsverwaltung, 1988), 111-112. See also Erwin Hochstttler, “Tufer nach ihrer Flucht aus der Schweiz – Sorgen eines Vaters,” Souvenance Anabaptiste. Mennonitisches Gedchtnis. Bulletin annuel de l’association franaise d’histoire Anabaptiste-mennonite, 10 (1991), 63-65; Guth, Amish Mennonites, 57, 264-66. The quotations are from this translation of the pastor’s letter. But note that Guth identifies pastor Hemberger (whose name he erroneously spells as “Hornberger”) as a Reformed minister; he was actually a Lutheran. According to Guth, Hans von Gund(en) came from Thann in the Alsace.
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[31]. GLA 229/70687, 54328.
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[32]. GLA 229/45375, 54328.
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[33]. Guth, Amish Mennonites, 49.
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[34]. GLA 74/6851, 229/39114. See also GLA 229/39113, 66573, 110192. On government policy towards Anabaptists in the Palatinate and the development of Mennonite communities there, see the recent article of Frank Konersmann, “Duldung, Privilegierung, Assimilation und Skularisation: Mennonitische Glaubensgemeinschaften in der Pfalz, in Rheinhessen und am nrdlichen Oberrhein (1664-1802),” in Minderheiten, Obrigkeit und Gesellschaft in der Frhen Neuzeit. Integrations- und Abgrenzungsprozesse im sddeutschen Raum, ed. Mark Hberlein and Martin Zrn (St. Katharinen: Scripta-Mercaturre Verlag, 2001), 339-75.
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[35]. GLA 229/51669, 51810.
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[36]. Guth, Amish Mennonites, 49-51. Guth claims that Nikolaus Brennemann, Jr. left Karlshausen for an estate in Hesse-Darmstadt after 1750, while Hans Kennel/Kendel moved “to the Mnsterhof in the Palatinate.” The case of Jakob Knig, who emigrated from Katharinenthal in 1744, is obviously taken from Hacker, Auswanderungen aus Baden, 431 (no. 5082).
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[37]. GLA 229/75349, 75389, 75397, 75399; Strobel, Agrarverfassung im bergang, 75.
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[38]. GLA 115/378; 229/75396.
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[39]. GLA 229/39114, report of the Badenweiler district official, July 10, 1779.
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[40]. GLA 229/49269.
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[41]. StadtAEm, B 1b/242; C/VIII/7 (Ratsprotokoll 1764-1768), fol. 42v-64r, 72r-75r; Schadek, Tiengen, 113. For Johann Wilhelm Zimmermann’s career, see Michaela Schmlz-Hberlein, “Johann Wilhelm Zimmermann (1700-1788), Brgermeister von Emmendingen: Eine biographische Annherung an Handlungsspielrume und Sozialbeziehungen in einer sdwestdeutschen Kleinstadt,” in Biographieforschung und Stadtgeschichte. Lemgo in der Sptphase der Hexenverfolgung, ed. Giesela Wilbertz and Jrgen Scheffler (Bielefeld: Verlag fr Regionalgeschichte, 2000), 70-95.
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[42]. StadtAEm, B V/2, Fasz. 69, Leinenweber 1755-1832, June 3, 1767.
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[43]. GLA 229/39113, 39114.
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[44]. GLA 229/69948.
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[45]. StadtAEm, B 1b/486; Gemeindearchiv Denzlingen, 1-B 325/2 through 1-B 339/2 (Gemeinderechnungen 1775-1791). Cf. the sparse reference in Guth, Amish Mennonites, 56.
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[46]. GLA 106/86.
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[47]. GLA 229/66573.
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[48]. Hacker, Auswanderungen aus Baden, 471 (no. 6082); Mark Hberlein, “Die Auswanderung aus Weisweil im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert,” in Weisweil. Ein Dorf am Rhein, ed. Gerhard A. Auer and Thomas Zotz (Weisweil: Brgermeisteramt, 1995), 85-100, here p. 86.
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[49]. GLA 61/6768, no. 200, August 1798.
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[50]. Geographisch statistisch, topographische Beschreibung von dem Kurfrstenthum Baden. Erster Theil, enthlt die badische Markgrafschaft (Karlsruhe, 1804), 327-28.
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[51]. See Werner Weidmann, Die pflzische Landwirtschaft zu Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts (Saarbrcken: Inst. fr Landeskunde des Saarlandes, 1968), 281-283; Jean-Marie Boehler, “Die ‘rvolution agricole’ im Elsa im Laufe des 18. Jahrhunderts: Fabel oder Tatsache'” Zeitschrift fr Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologie, 31 (1983), 27-40, esp. 33-34; Jean Vogt, “Wiedertufer und lndliche Gemeinden im nrdlichen Elsa und in der Pfalz,” Mennonitische Geschichtsbltter, 41 (1984), 34-47; Hildegard Frie-Reimann, “Mennonitische Agrarreformer,” in Volkskunde als Programm: Updates zur Jahrtausendwende, ed. Michael Simon and Hildegard Frie-Reimann (Mnster: Waxmann, 1996), 61-74.
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[52]. GLA 229/39114.
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[53]. GLA 229/97074, Burgvogt Bck to margrave Karl Friedrich, March 15, 1781.
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[54]. GLA 229/66573.
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[55]. GLA 229/51669.
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[56]. StadtAEm, C/VIII/3 (Ratsprotokoll 1735-1744), March 5, 1742, fol. 150v.
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[57]. StadtAEm, C IX, Gerichtsprotokoll Niederemmendingen 1730-1754, June 23, 1745.
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[58]. StadtAEm, B 1b/192.
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[59]. StadtAEm, B 1b/823.
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[60]. StadtAEm, B 1b/433, 434.
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[61]. StadtAEm, B 1b/869, 1344.
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[62]. StadtAEm, B 1b/478.
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[63]. StadtAEm, B 1b/486.
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[64]. StadtAEm, C/IV/3, Unterpfandprotokoll 1790-1800, fol. 3v-4v, Aug. 19, 1790.
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[65]..StadtAEm, B 1b/692.
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[66]. StadtAEm, B 1b/208.
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[67]. StadtAEm, B 1b/307.
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[68]. StadtAEm, Genealogical files Emmendingen, Windenreute, Maleck, Mundingen.
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[69]. GLA 229/35829.
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[70]. GLA 229/69948.
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[71]. StadtAEm, B V/2, Fasz. 65, Leinenweber 1685-1732, June 14, 1716; May 17, 1717; June 6, 1718; May 29, 1719; June 2, 1721; May 16, 1723; May 25, 1724.
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[72]. StadtAEm, B V/2, Fasz. 69, Leinenweber 1755-1832, June 3, 1767.
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[73]. On Joseph’s policy of religious toleration, see Peter F. Barton, ed., Im Zeichen der Toleranz. Aufstze zur Toleranzgesetzgebung des 18. Jahrhunderts in den Reichen Joseph II., ihren Voraussetzungen und ihren Folgen. Eine Festschrift (Vienna: Inst. fr Protestant. Kirchengeschichte, 1981).
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[74]. GLA 229/12561. On agricultural innovation and peasant traditionalism, see the general comments of Clemens Zimmermann, “Buerlicher Traditionalismus und agrarischer Fortschritt in der frhen Neuzeit,” in Gutsherrschaft als soziales Modell. Vergleichende Betrachtungen zur Funktionsweise frhneuzeitlicher Agrargesellschaften, ed. Jan Peters (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1995), 219-38.
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[75]. Probably the same Christian Leutweiler who was mentioned above as a leaseholder at Schupfholz from 1774 to 1791.
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[76]. GLA 229/106537-106538. According to the family book of Mllheim, the district seat of Badenweiler, Gysler was born in Denzlingen in 1741 and died in Mllheim on May 5, 1812.-Martin Keller and Ingrid Krafft, Ortsfamilienbuch Mllheim/Baden (bis 1810) (Arlesheim: Keller, 1999), No. 1111.
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[77]. GLA 229/36745.
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[78]. GLA 107/340.
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[79]. Cf. Guth, Amish Mennonites, 54-56; Roth and Munch, “Histoire des familles,” 89-90.
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[80]. First mentioned in an archival source from 1767: StadtAEm, B V/2, Fasz. 69, Leinenweber 1755-1832, June 3, 1767.
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[81]. Date(s) uncertain: cf. Guth, Amish Mennonites, 56.
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[82]. Mentioned in an archival source from 1781: GLA 229/69948.
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[83]. Mentioned in a 1756 source: GLA 229/35829.
492
The Mennonite Quarterly Review
497
Anabaptists in the Margravate of Baden
471