Metadata: Jaunjelgava City Board (Courland Governorate)
Collection
- Country:
- Latvia
- Holding institution:
- Latvian State Historical Archives
- Holding institution (official language):
- Latvijas Valsts vēstures arhīvs
- Postal address:
- Slokas iela 16, Rīga, LV-1048
- Phone number:
- +371 20 017 505
- Reference number:
- 409
- Title:
- Jaunjelgava City Board (Courland Governorate)
- Title (official language):
- Jaunjelgavas pilsētas valde (Kurzemes guberņa)
- Creator/accumulator:
- Jaunjelgava City Board (Courland Governorate)
- Date(s):
- 1819/1915
- Language:
- German
- Russian
- Extent:
- 152 files
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
-
The collection contains records of the Jaunjelgava (Friedrichstadt) City Board from the 19th century until the German occupation of the city during the First World War in 1915. The material reflects the life of the city in different spheres and includes data on its residents. The collection comprises minutes of the meetings of the city council and reports of the board; correspondence on the education system in the town; documents on financial situation and on collecting the city's taxes; papers on the town's institutions including the hospital; judicial papers of the town's residents including documents on custody; papers on supervision of sanitation, food supplies and commerce; materials on the elections to the Russian Duma (parliament) in 1907-1908; vital data on the town's residents and more.
Part of these materials, such as papers on parliament elections of 1907-1908, include Jewish-related records. The collection also contains special files that relate to the life of the Jews in Friedrichstadt. Among these records are materials that refer specifically to the local Jewish community's institutions. A file from 1902-1904 deals with the establishment and opening of a Talmud Torah in the city (inventory 2, file 131). A few other files relate to the town's synagogues and their boards in the end of the 19th century, as well as to the elections of a "crown" rabbi in 1888-1891 (inventory 2, files 61, 98, 115). The file of 1906 contain papers on the collection of korobka tax (a tax on kosher meat) in Friedrichstadt (inventory 2, file 146). Another important part of the collection are the metrical records of the town's Jewish residents. The collection includes a book of divorces of Jews from 1907 and data on births, death and marriages of Jews in 1881-1892 (inventory 2, files 72, 145). The only book of divorces from 1907 includes the names of the spouses, their age, the date of the divorce, the reason for the divorce, the names of the rabbi and witnesses, and also on whose decision the divorce is initiated.
- Archival history:
- After World War I, with the establishment of independent Latvia, the archival materials of the Tsarist administration were consolidated in the newly established State archive of Latvia that existed throughout the interwar period.
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
From 1870 executive bodies of municipal self-government system in the Russian Empire were city boards that were headed by mayors (gorodskoi golova). The members of the city boards were elected by municipal councils (dumas). The city boards were responsible for supervising finance, business, infrastructure, health, education and other issues in the cities.
By the beginning of the 19th century the town had become an important commercial centre, and Jewish entrepreneurs were engaged in foreign trade as middlemen between German importers and Russian merchants. With the opening of the Riga-Dünaburg Railroad in 1862 the commercial importance of the town began to wane. By 1881 the 4,128 Jews who lived in Friedrichstadt made up 71% of its overall population. The Jews in the town were mostly shopkeepers, timber and flax traders, and some of them owned medium-scale manufacturing plants. In 1891 from two out of the six members of the Friedrichstadt city board were Jews. Until 1646 the town was called Neustadt and in 1920 the name was changed from Friedrichstadt to Jaunjelgava. In the summer of 1915 the German army occupied Friedrichstadt.
- Access points: locations:
- Friedrichstadt
- Jaunjelgava
- System of arrangement:
- The collection consists of one inventory – inventory no. 2. The first inventory does not exist. Inventory no. 2 is arranged in chronological order.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People
- Author of the description:
- Ilya Vovshin, Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, 2019
