The Diefenbach Church Books, the primary source for the Ortssippenbuch Diefenbach, start in the year 1558. The Ortssippenbuch is carried through 1945, though the Church Books continue after that date. The cutoff at 1945 was probably to insure that the fallen members of the military would be included.
The year 1558 is an early date for the Church Books. This is not long after the Protestant Reformation, and the start of the Church Book at this time probably coincides with the conversion of the church from Catholic to Lutheran (Evangelische). There is one gap in the Church Books, from 1631 to approximately 1649. The Ortssippenbuch gives the explanation, "Diefenbach war 1636-1649 verwaist!" It does not take a German dictionary to understand that statement. (For those who don't have a German-English dictionary, it means, in a direct translation, that Diefenback was "orphaned"; that is, it was "abandoned". The war drove everyone out of the village.)
This was during The Thirty Years' War when the armies were rampaging across Germany. The populations of villages were so reduced that it was difficult to maintain essential services. I did a study of the Mundelsheim village ( Beyond Germanna , page 848), which is about twenty miles to the east of Diefenbach. In Mundelsheim, the number of births recorded in the years 1638 and 1639 was zero. There was a lot of activity at the Mundelsheim church, as 320 deaths were recorded in 1635. In the years following, the number of deaths was still higher than the long term average, even in 1638 and 1639. In these few years, the population of Mundelsheim was cut in half.
In Diefenbach, the number of baptisms for the decades 1560 to 1710 was:
1560 - 180
1570 - 169
1580 - 156
1590 - 150
1600 - 192
1610 - 95
1620 - 63
1630 - ?
1640 - 6
1650 - 90
1660 - 70
1670 - 92
1680 - 141
1690 - 51
1700 - 99
1710 - 121
There was a fairly steady growth until in the decade 1870, when there were 295 baptisms. There was a severe drop in the 1690 decade, due to the invasion by the French. Many people moved to the east, and sometimes churches in this region even closed during this period.
Altogether there were 5329 baptisms, 1449 marriages, and 3893 deaths, up to the year 1880. It does not take a large population to produce numbers of these sizes. In the years of the 1710 decade, there were about 13 births each year.
(05 May 04)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.