Soufflenheim History

Since Rosalind Sailer Steele's mother's family was from Soufflenheim, Alsace, France, and lived there for several centuries, I thought it would be helpful to include some of the history from this area.

The following is from:

Soufflenheim, Bas-Rhin, Alsace, France

A collection from Brian J. Smith. His collection is based on his own work and the work of several other people. A link to Brian's website can also be found on my Sources & Links page.

The Destruction of Soufflenheim Church Records by Brian J. Smith

http://members.cox.net/smithgen/places/souff/destruct.htm

"I thank Christian Study, a fellow descendant of the Voegele family of Soufflenheim, for sending the following brief history of Soufflenheim in December, 2000. I had asked Christian why so many of the church records are missing. This is his reply.

First I give his answer in French, as Christian sent it to me. Then follows my amateur attempt at English translation. If any of you can understand French better than I, a better translation would be welcome.

Généalogie History of Soufflenheim

Après la guerre de trente ans (1618-1648 Guerre de religion entre les Catholiques et les Réformés) Soufflenheim était détruite et ses habitants étaient quasiment tous assassinés,il ne restait quasiment personnes dans le village ainsi que dans toute la région. Aprés cette guerre les villages de la plaine d'alsace furent repeuplés par des familles allemandes et surtout Suisse, c'est pourquoi ,c'est quasiment certain que nous avons des Suisses et des Allemands dans nos ascendances. Aprés la révolution française 1789 ,il y eu une période de terreur où tout ce qui appartenait à l'église fut proscrit et c'est durant cette terreur que les églises furent pillées et en partie détruitent .A coté de Soufflenheim il y avait un couvent qui fut totalement détruit, aujourd'hui il n'en reste rien du tout.C'est pendant cette période que les registres manquants furent détruits, c'est dommage car dans la plupart des autres communes on arrive beaucoup plus loin en arrière dans les recherches."

Genealogical History of Soufflenheim by Brian J. Smith

After the Thirty Years War (the 1618-1648 religious war between the Catholics and the Protestants) Soufflenheim was destroyed and its inhabitants were almost all murdered. There was almost nobody remaining in the village, as it was in all the region. After this war the villages of the plain of Alsace were repopulated by German families and especially Swiss, which is why it is nearly certain that we have Swiss and German within our ancestries. After the French Revolution of 1789, there was the period of the Reign of Terror, where many of those who belonged to the church were ostracized, and it is during this Reign of Terror that the churches were plundered and in part destroyed. It is said of Soufflenheim that it had a monastery which was totally destroyed; today nothing very much of it remains. It is during this period that the missing records were destroyed. It is a pity because in the majority of other communities one can travel much farther back in the research.

The following is from Robert Wideen.

SOUFFLENHEIM  by Robert Wideen

http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/w/i/d/Robert-S-Wideen/FILE/0057page.html

BEFORE 1600

Soufflenheim is located in the Ried of North by the banks of the Eberbach and Fallgraben, at the southeastern edge of the immense forest of Haguenau, one of the largest forests in France, about 18 miles north of Strasbourg.

The first traces of civilization appear in Celtic times between 1500 to 450 BC. During Roman times, a road passed through Soufflenheim. The production of pottery probably goes back to the second millennium BC. Nothing concrete proves the existence of a village until the 5th century AD. However, historians agree that localities whose name ends in “heim” are from the first centuries until the time of Merovingian and Carolingian Kings. They are older than those localities that end in bach, feld, dorf, house or hof, which occurred in the 9th and 10th centuries ". The origin of the name Soufflenheim is believed to come from the Celtic root " Sawell " which means furnace. A reasonable thesis considering the ancient tradition of pottery in this area.

Soufflenheim was mentioned for the first time in 1147 in a document issued by Pope Eugene II, under the name of "Suvelnheim". It is supposedly at this time that the potters of the village offered Emperor Barbarossa, who lived in Haguenau, a crèche made in Soufflenheim clay. In return, he granted them the perpetual right to extract the clay needed for their work from the forest. This right was extended to all male descendents. The forest of Haguenau has subsoil rich in impermeable clay that remains stable after firing. In the fifteenth and sixteenth century there are very precise documents on the "Schüsseldreher" (the pottery throwers). They were admitted to the potter’s guild of Alsace in 1622 through the protection of Emperor Frederick II.

Much of the history of Soufflenheim between 1354 and 1648 is tied to that of the nearby free imperial city of Haguenau. During this time Soufflenheim was allied with and administered by Haguenau. What affected Haguenau affected Soufflenheim and many other villages in the area.

Beginning in the twelfth century, the Hohenstaufen dynasty set their imperial power from Alsace, founding cities among which Haguenau was the capital. Founded in the twelfth century around the Hohenstaufen castle, Haguenau quickly won the ranking of free Imperial City. In the Middle Ages it was an imperial residence and the second most important Alsatian city, after Strasbourg (which in 1262 had been released from the supervision of its bishop and acquired the title of "free city").

Haguenau is located on the Moder River, and is located at the edge of the Haguenau Forest, which surrounds the city. In the Middle Ages great imperial hunts took place there. In 1354, the cities of Munster, Turckheim, Kaysersberg, Sélestat, Obernai, Rosheim, Wissembourg, Haguenau, Colmar and Mulhouse united and created a league called the "Decapolis" (Ten Free Cities). The Decapolis was under imperial protection, but was very independent. The area around Hauguena underwent various calamities like the invasions of the troops during the One Hundred Years War, an epidemic of Black Death in 1349, the Peasants Rebellion in 1525, and perpetual feudal war. Haguenau was deftly run by a liberal government, and a successful craft industry provided for its material well being. Several schools helped maintain the level of intellectual activity. Richard the Lion-Hearted, who was held prisoner by Henry IV, appeared before the assembly of princes in this very city.

Soufflenheim became an Imperial Village (a large bailliage of Haguenau) in 1354 when the Decapolis was created. A document of the emperor Mathias in 1613 confirmed the village to the Niedheimer of Wasembourg.

A document in the year 1500 indicates 116 inhabitants were obliged to pay taxes. A document in the Archives of Haguenau compiled in the year 1476 lists the population as 126 heads of households. Assuming five people per household, the population would have been between 600 and 650 inhabitants, plus a certain number of valets, servants, and apprentices, especially apprentices of the potters, bringing the total number of inhabitants of Soufflenheim in the year 1500 to about 700.

AFTER 1600

During the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) Soufflenheim and the surrounding area suffered greatly. The war pitted the Catholic emperor against the German Protestant princes and Swedes. Hageunau joined with the Catholic emperor and was besieged on several occasions. In 1621, Ernest von Mansfeld, with the help of the Protestant princes, took the city and devastated the area. He was driven out in July of 1622 and Haguenau became a large-bailiff and its independence was strongly reduced. It was in 1622 that the soldiers of Mansfield burned Soufflenheim and killed many of its citizens. The community house was set aflame, destroying the documents relating to the history of the village.

In 1632 the armies of the King of Sweden, led by Gustave Horn, invaded Alsace and forced the fortifications of Haguenau. The Swedes brutalized the villages in the area and tortured and massacred their inhabitants. In retaliation, a Swedish garrison that was left in Haguenau was massacred in January 1633. Returning to avenge his soldiers, Horn built a dam on the Moder to assist in taking the city. Horn was not successful and left without taking Haguenau.

In 1634 a French garrison was established in Haguenau protect it. In 1648, the treaty of Westphalia gave France certain privileges in Alsace. Haguenau and the surrounding area was devastated and depopulated by the thirty years of war. The Decapolis (ten free towns) tried to maintain the special privileges of the free cities against the strongly centralized France.

As a result of the depredations committed during the Thirty Years War the population of Soufflenheim and the surrounding area decreased considerably. In 1662 Soufflenheim contained about 60 farms. Assuming an average of five people per household, about 300 people lived in the area. The population stayed around this number for most of the remainder of the 17th century. In 1693 the parish contained 60 Catholic families, so still about 300 people in the area. In 1701 the population is listed at 117 names. Of these names 93 are families. Assuming five people per household the population reached 450 to 500 people by 1701.

At the beginning of the War of Holland (1672-1679), a garrison under the command of Conde was established in Haguenau. During the Devolution Wars in 1674, the population of Soufflenheim left the village to find refuge in the marshes of the Rhine. In August 1675 Conde repulsed 20,000 soldiers of the Imperial army. The imperial army returned, and in January-February 1677 Conde withdrew. Under orders from the French Minister, Conde destroyed and made uninhabitable the town of Haguenau. Conducted by the French army in reprisal for the murder of a lieutenant, the city was set fire by a troop of roughneck soldiers. In September 1677, the city was burned a second time.

The rebuilding of the city was authorized in July 1678. General Montclar was named Grand-baillif and was installed in Haguenau in October 1679. The war of the League of Augsburg (1688-1697) was fought primarily in the Palatinate, saving the city and surrounding area from more destruction. During the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714) Soufflenheim and the surrounding area once again was exposed to nearby battles and the movements and quartering of troops.

Soufflenheim and its vicinity was the site of a number of other conflicts, notably Pandours in 1744. In 1744 it was part of the theater of war between the French and Austrian Armies.

The present St. Michel’s Parish was built in 1825. The parish church before 1831 was located on the present Oelberg, an old strengthened cemetery. In addition to the old church, the Oelberg was also the site of the grab of the Niedheimer, lords of the manor of Schirrhein, in 1609 and 1617. Traditional half-timbered houses can still be found in Soufflenheim. The current population of the village is 4,400.

ALSACE

(Unknown Author)

Even if the name of Alsace appeared first in the 7th Century, the origin of the name of this province is unsure. It might be of German origin (Alis-lauti-sat : a founding in a foreign country), of Celtic origin (Alis-atia : the area at the bottom of a mountain), or it might derive from the words Ell (Ill river) Sass (inhabitant in old German).

The Romans occupied the plain of Alsace and they were followed by the Alamanni after the Great Invasions which happened as soon as the 4th Century. The Alamanni imposed their language and transformed the roman city of Argentoratum into Stratebourg or 'city of the roads'.

After the invasion by the Huns and Barbarian tribes, the Alamanni reorganized the region with the help of the Church. In 842, the Oath of Strasbourg written in Old German and in Old French was the starting point of the division of Charlemagne's Europe. Alsace was part of the Holy Roman Empire from the 9th Century until 1648 when it became part of France.

From the 12th Century, many peasants leave their fields and they become craftsmen or shopkeepers in towns which are growing. Strasbourg liberates itself of the protection of its bishop, and becomes a free city in 1262. Colmar, Sélestat and Obernai are surrounded by walls.

In 1354, the towns of Munster, Turckheim, Kaysersberg, Sélestat, Obernai, Rosheim, Wissembourg, Haguenau, Colmar and Mulhouse join together to form a league, the Decapole, which is put under the imperial protection, but remains however independent. The region suffers many disasters like the invasion of troops during the Hundred Years War, a Black Death outbreak in 1349, and everlasting feudal wars.

From 1519 in Strasbourg, thanks to Gutenberg, printing presses can be used to publish Luther's works. As soon as the end of the 15th Century, the flaws of the society, more particularly those of the clergy, are fought against. The Reformation spreads. In the country, a rebellion roars among the peasants who hope for an improvement in their condition. Armed bands muster and a bloody war occurs, ending in 1525 after the slaughter of 18,000 peasants.

In 1555, the Peace of Augsbourg clarifies the distribution of Catholics and Protestants across the country : your religion is the religion of the lord who owns the land you live in.

Between 1618 and 1648, Alsace becomes a battlefield for the armies of the Thirty Years War. The soldiers ransack villages and slaughter their inhabitants. The region loses more than half its population. In 1648, Alsace, broken up into many lordly territories, becomes French by the Treaty of Westphalia. However Alsace keeps many particularities in its institutions and in its traditions. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes was not applied and the use of the French language was not made compulsory, even if German was the usual written language of most Alsatians. However French becomes the official language, and the Catholic religion becomes the only acknowledged religion, but predominant Catholics cohabit with Lutheran or reformed Protestants, all of them having their parishes.

The capitulation of Strasbourg occurs in 1681 and sets the city as a part of France, but its privileges in local administration and in religion matters are still preserved. The Treaty of Ryswick, drawn up in 1697, confirms the annexation of Alsace to France.

During the French Revolution, on July 21st 1789 as the people hears of the fall of the Bastille, the city hall of Strasbourg is ransacked. The departments of Bas-Rhin and of Haut-Rhin are created in 1790. The Revolution puts Alsace under the same laws as the rest of France, overturning habits and mentalities.

During the Napoleonic wars, Alsace provided many soldiers, generals (Kellermann, Kléber, Rapp, Lefèvre...) and supplies to the armies. After 1815 et the allied occupation, the region suffered from a major economic crisis and Alsace had to wait for the industrial rise to get out of recession about 1850.

Between 1870 and 1918, the region, except an area that will become later the Territoire de Belfort, is annexed by the Germans. Alsace becomes an "Imperial Territory" (Reichsland) and gains a particular regime in many domains. The province returns to France at the end of the First World War, and remains French until 1940. Annexed to the third German Reich during the Second World War, Alsace returns to France when it is liberated on March 20th, 1945.

HISTORY OF ALSACE

From "Visit Alsace" Website: http://www.visit-alsace.com/librairie/index.html

Though excavations have shown that Alsace was inhabited during the Stone Age and Bronze Age by wandering hunters, it was not until 1500 BC that the first settlers - the Celts- began to clear and cultivate the country. In 58 BC the Roman invasion ushered in a long period of prosperity and a burgeoning of culture in many areas.

It is generally agreed that the Romans established viticulture as a serious and organized business. the great Caesar himself referred to his newly conquered land as “optimus totius Galliae”, the best of all Gaul...” and to protect it built a series of fortifications and military camps.

One of the camps, known as Argentoratum, was eventually to develop into Strasbourg.

Roman Empire

With the decline of the Roman Empire came the Alemans (or Alemanni), an agricultural people whose language forms the basis of the dialect of Alsace. In the Fifth century the Franks drove out the Alemans and Alsace became a part of the Eastern Kingdom of Austrasia.

Next came the Merovingian period, an intense period of evangelism. In 750, Pepin the Brief, father of Charlemagne divided the duchy of Alsace into two parts : the Nordgau and the Sundgau. The approximate equivalent of today’s two departements of Haut-Rhin and Bas-Rhin.

The Empire Of Charlemagne

Under Charlemagne (742-814), the church’s power in Alsace increased still further, monasteries and convents flourished and the province prospered. Though the Emperor only visited Alsace twice, his inspectors came regularly.

The impressive list of provisions specified in advance of their visits shows that Alsace in the eight century was rich and prosperous.

After the death of this first Great European Emperor, his sons dismantled his large Empire : first it was Lothaire who inherited the region but Louis the German temporarily snatched Alsace away from his brother. Then in 842, Louis and their half-brother Charles the Bald ganged up on Lothaire, swearing the oath of Strasbourg just outside the city. In signing this document - historically important as the earliest in which both French and German almost modern languages were used - they pledged themselves to an alliance against Lothaire.

A year later the Empire of Charlemagne was formally divided and Alsace would eventually fall again in Louis arms. For the next eight centuries, Alsace’s destiny was intimately linked to the Holy Roman Empire. Louis the Pious is chiefly remembered for his fondness for hunting in the Vosges. He further distinguished himself by allowing all wine to travel duty-free, thus giving an early boost to Alsace wine exports.

The Hohenstaufen Emperors

The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were the golden age of Alsace under the Hohenstaufen Emperors, one of whom, Frederick the first (Barbarossa), claimed Alsace to be “the dearest of our family possessions”. It was a period of intense urbanization which saw the birth of a powerful merchant class with increasingly sophisticated tastes.

During the second half of this same century Alsace was embellished with many beautiful Romanesque churches. This artistic flowering took place at a time when Alsace could boast of a number of rapidly expanding towns and cities, each with a wealthy merchant class and powerful guilds and trade associations.

In the early years of the thirteen century Strasbourg won the privileged status of “free imperial city”. The city’s magnificent Gothic cathedral was built under the direction not of the bishop, but of a body controlled by the town council.

Other towns that grew in importance during this period were Sélestat and Colmar, Wissembourg, Obernai and Mulhouse. The Hundred Year's war helped in some ways to increase Alsace’s prosperity, as it became a convenient depot and trading post for goods that could not easily be transported through war-torn France.

Then the picture changed dramatically. A succession of bad winters followed hard on the heels of poor harvests and then the crowning disaster of bubonic plague. For this the Jews proved a convenient scapegoat, and they were viciously persecuted in the pogroms of 1336 and1349.

The Habsbourgs

By now the Habsbourgs were on the imperial throne. The Renaissance in the Rhine lands brought a welcome return to peace and prosperity. Excess and riotous living became the order of the day, a fact which drew the fire of both religious and secular writers and orators. The region became a major intellectual and artistic centre.

The brilliant team of architects and stone masons working on Strasbourg's cathedral drew journeymen from far and wide. The Colmar painter and engraver Martin Schongauer influenced artists all over Europe. Strasbourg, the setting of Gutenberg’s invention of movable type thirty years earlier, now had many of the leading printing work-shops in the German-speaking world.

This new vehicle for the rapid dissemination of information helped to spread the ideas and ideals of the Humanists, who were well represented in Alsace : the magnificent library built up by the humanist scholar Beatus Rhenanus, friend and biographer of Erasmus, can still be visited in Sélestat.

The Reformation

In the early sixteenth century the Reformation had considerable impact in Alsace, which still has a fairly large Protestant community to this day. Several of Luther’s tracts were printed in Strasbourg and the great preacher for whom the city was famous included a number of his followers. Calvin, too, spend several years in Strasbourg, meeting Luther there.

The eight formative centuries of Germanic influence in Alsace were drawing to a close as the Holy Roman Empire disintegrated into the tragedy of the Thirty Years war (1618-1648). The Protestant Swedes, provoked by the French to go to the aid of the German Princes, were pitted against the Catholics headed by the house of Habsburg. Alsace was the principal battleground, the country was laid bare, its population decimated, its vineyards reduced to charred stumps, its survivors condemned to a diet of acorns, goatskins, grass and sometimes human flesh.

At the conclusion, under the terms of the peace treaty of Westphalia (1648), the Hapsburgs handed over to France all previously held rights to the province. Seduced by the promise of religious tolerance guaranteed under the Edict of Nantes, Alsace for the first time in its history became French.

Louis XIV

By 1681 Louis XIV was looking over the Vosges and exclaiming over his new territory : “What a beautiful garden...”. Without any pressure from Paris, the province of its own volition became increasingly French in spirit, proud to belong to the country generally regarded as the most civilized in Europe at the time, yet always retaining its Germanic customs and dialects.

By the beginning of Louis XV’s reign in the mid-eighteen century, most of the ruined towns and villages had been rebuilt. Prosperity had returned, symbolized by the elegant Rohan Palace in Strasbourg and Saverne. This was also the period when powerful family dynasties set up successful industries in Alsace. Mulhouse was starting to become a major industrial city, with particular strength in textiles.

In and around Niederbronn in the north-east, the De Dietrich family created important ironworks. By the time the French Revolution broke out in 1789, the people of Alsace felt thoroughly French, even though they were still culturally close to the German-speaking world.

La Marseillaise

A feather in Alsace’s patriotic cap was the fact that the French national anthem, “La Marseillaise”, was composed in Strasbourg by Rouget de l’Isle in 1792 and therefore should have been called “la Strasbourgeoise”. The excess of the Revolution shocked the traditionally tolerant Alsatians, though they embraced some of the new ideas which it brought.

The establishment of the Empire brought with it a veritable Napoleonic cult : possibly the Alsatians were readily able to identify with this outsider from another far-flung French provinces, and to admire his power and ruthlessness.

It was something of a mutual admiration : Napoleon expressed a special affection for his Alsace regiments, attached as ever to their dialect : “Who cares if they don’t speak French ? Their swords do” was the Emperor answer to his officers poking fun at Alsatian soldiers.

The Franco-Prussian War Of 1870

During the nineteenth century industrialization continued. The Mulhouse’s textile factories became world leaders in chintz and other printed fabrics. Canals and railways were built. The fertile soil of Alsace became a major agricultural producer, with tobacco and hops important.

But only too soon that soil was once again the theater of a disastrous war. The Franco-Prussian war of 1870 was largely fought in Alsace and resulted not only in terrible destruction and loss of life, but in the return to the German-speaking world of a people who were by now, patriotically French.

When Bismarck proclaimed Alsace a Reichsland French was banned in school and all newspapers had to be in German. Thousands emigrated, many to America : Bartholdi, in exile in Paris, created his famous Statue of Liberty, saying that it represented for him precisely that freedom which he and his fellow Alsatians were currently denied.

The annexation years signaled disaster for the vineyards, as Alsace wines were ignominiously used as bulk blending material for tart German wines. The German era brought social benefits not available in France as well an architectural legacy in some imposing public buildings in Strasbourg.

Alsace enjoyed considerable industrial development too, and was soon well ahead of France in the provision of mains water and drainage, and of electricity.

The First World War

The occupation fused inexorably with the First World War, the two countries were at war and, once again, Alsace became a battlefield. To add to the tragedy, many of her sons, conscripted into the Kaiser’s army, had to fight their former French compatriots.

The suffering of the region were compounded when the French authorities decided to intern as enemy aliens any Alsatian who happened to be in France or her overseas territories at the outbreak of war. Even the great Albert Schweiter did not escape this highly insensitive ruling.

The post war period saw local agitation for Alsace to become an autonomous region.

A soviet of soldiers almost ruled Strasbourg in the first days of peace before French troops put a term to this original but doomed situation.

The economic depression of the 1930s inevitably had some effect, and Alsace also suffered from France’s unwillingness to invest in a region on which Hitler was starting to have designs.

This period was also marked by the building of the ill-fated Maginot Line, planned as an impregnable defense for France’s border with Germany.

September 1939

In September 1939 when Hitler invaded Poland, approximately one third of the population of Alsace was summarily evacuated to the other side of France, in Perigord.

In June 1940 the Maginot Line was easily breached and Alsace was once more annexed by the Germans. High German was declared the only permissible language. One hundred and forty thousand men between the ages of seventeen and thirty-eight were drafted into the German army, forced to fight on opposite sides from their own flesh and blood. The majority never returned. they were called the “Malgré-nous” (Against our will).

In 1945, after the Allies victory, the painstaking restoration of towns and villages began, hard work and determination once again led to the rebuilding of industry and agriculture. Shortly after the war, Alsace embarked on its new role as a symbol of European reconciliation and unity.

In 1949 Strasbourg was chosen as the seat of the Council of Europe. Thirty years later the European Parliament held the first of its regular monthly meetings in the city.

Today, Strasbourg is also the European Court of Human rights.