Currently there are three main resources for Nikolsburg Jewish vital data — the State Archives in Prague, the Jewish Museum Archives and the Jewish Community office in Brno. Future research will almost certainly reveal additional resources in the provincial and local archives in Brno and Mikulov.
Státní ústrední archiv
Milady Horakove 133
CZ-16000 Praha 6
Tel: 00420 224311509
Opening hours: Mon-Thur 8.30-12.00, 13.30-18.30
The vital data from the Jewish community of Mikulov - Nikolsburg is kept along with that from all other former Jewish communities in the Czech Republic at the state archives. Dr. Lenka Matusikova (office 2nd floor) is in charge of the archive, which can be consulted in the reading room on the first floor. Registers for Mikulov - Nikolsburg cover births and marrriages after 1850 and deaths from 1850 to 1873. Additionally there are indexes to the registers, and also an index for deaths after 1873. The registers are not the original ones, they are probably the copies that were made by the Christian church authorities as they were required to do by law. This is also the case for the indexes (with the exception of the index for the death register, which is evidently the original one covering 1848-1872).
The registers and indexes are filed according to a reference number HBMa ####. The reference numbers that I have available (unfortunately not complete) are the following:
Births 1850-1873: HBMa ????
Births 1874-end: HBMa 1223
Marriages 1849-1873: HBMa 1224
Marriages 1874-end: HBMa 1225
Deaths 1850-1873: HBMa ????
Birth index 1850-1873: HBMa 1228
Birth Index 1874-end: HBMa 1230
Marriage index 1850-1873: HBMa 1231
Marriage index 1873-end: HBMa 1232
Death index 1848-1872: HBMa 1233
Death index 1874-end: HBMa 1235
Special note!!!! Because the deaths index refers to the original register, but only the transcribed copy of the register is available, the page numbers given in the index do NOT correspond to the actual page numbers in the register. I have compiled the following correspondence list - the first column is the page number given in the index, the second column is the corresponding page number in the register:
| 21 | 1 |
| 37 | 10 |
| 54 | 20 |
| 70 | 30 |
| 85 | 40 |
| 100 | 50 |
| 114 | 60 |
| 139 | 70 |
| 164 | 80 |
| 184 | 90 |
| 203 | 100 |
| 218 | 109 |
| 230 | 117 |
Židovské Muzeum v Praha
(Jewish Museum in Prague)
Jachymova 3
CZ-11001 Praha 1
Tel: 00420 224810099
The original vital data kept by the Jewish record keeper in Nikolsburg went back much further than the copies now surviving in the State Archives. Luckily, in 1913 Rabbi Moritz Levin decided to compile a "Familien-Register", a complete index of the birth, marriage and death registers up until that year, and this massive tome has survived in the Nikolsburg collection of the Jewish Museum Archive. The index contains useful information in addition to the family names, according to which it is organized. The birth index starts in 1767 and gives first name, family name and year of birth as well as the names of father and mother. The marriage index starts in 1798 and gives first and family names of the marriage parties and the year in which the marriage took place. The death index starts in 1798 and gives year of death and age as well as often the name of father, mother or spouse, or else profession.
The person in charge of this section of the Jewish Museum Archive is Dr. Hamackova. The collections are kept in a depository outside Prague, so it is very important to enquire in advance with Dr. Hamackova, well before visiting the archive, whether the "Familien-Register" is currently available for viewing in her office, or whether it has to be ordered from the depository (which takes some days).
The "Familien-Register" contains a complete inventory of the then still existing register books for the vital data of the Nikolsburg Jewish community. They were as follows:
Židovská obec Brno
(Jewish Community in Brno)
tř. Kpt. Jaroše 3
CZ-60200 Brno
In the possession of the Brno Jewish Community is the Graveyard Register prepared by the Nikolsburg Chevra Kadischa on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the rule of Emperor Franz Josef I, in 1898. The register includes mostly family name, first name, grave number, sometimes an alternative name or a Hebrew religious name, and for deaths after 1880 ususally a date of death. It is unclear how the register was compiled - whether from existing documents or directly from the gravestone inscriptions or both.
The data from the Nikolsburg graveyard register has been entered into a searchable database available on the JewishGen Databases site.
Copyright ©2000 Mark Tritsch. Updated 12-Feb-2007, WSB.