Today it has about , inhabitants. The small post-war Jewish community of survivors and "re-emigrants" has grown remarkably in the last years by immigrants from the former Soviet Union. With about 1, members, one-third of its maximum at the end of the 19th century, it now has the second largest Jewish population in Bavaria. They permitted violent pogroms in the Middle Ages with hundreds of victims and finally evicted Jews in the late 16th century.
A few years ago, some thousand Jewish tombstones from the 12th and 13th century were discovered by chance. Well preserved by "Christian mortar" of a former monastery, they are now the greatest relics of a medieval Jewish cemetery worldwide.
The concept had been developed by Prof. Herbert A. Including the parent generation in many of the short biographies on the one hand, the data of emigrants and their families on the other, the period of the dictionary actually extends from a good part of the 19th century to the s. Many items such as birth or death dates in very short biographies of unknown persons needed more research than long articles about seemingly "prominent" persons.
Some readers criticized apparent gaps concerning "VIPS", misunderstanding the aims of the documentation. Some remarks about the data are in order. The situation seemed to be rather difficult at first. Many files in the local archives had been lost in the heavy bombing of the town on March 16th with 5, deaths.
Among the archival losses was the complete "Einwohnerkartei" card index of the inhabitants. Additional data were in many cases found in the "Grundlisten" lists of houses and their residents, arranged by streets. About 1, of the approximately 18, personal files relating to Jewish citizens were evaluated.
