Documentation from Amtsgerichte (Courts of Law) in Hessen, Germany In the collection is documentation from ten Courts of Law in the rural area of the Darmstadt Province: Alsfeld, Altenstadt, Bad Nauheim, Bad Vilbel, Bensheim, Beerfelden, Butzbach, Gernsheim, Herbstein, and Hirschhorn. For general information (in German) regarding the sub-group in the original Archive, including details regarding the character of the legal material, see the file: "Hessen G28 Amtsgerichte_Findbuch" in the Multimedia page. For information regarding each of the Courts of Law in the collection and regarding the material that was copied from the collection for Yad Vashem, see the file: "M.55\Hessen Amtsgerichte G 28 Bestandsübersichten (alle).pdf" in the Multimedia page. The grand majority of the files in the collection are files of Jewish businesses (the Courts of Law, by virtue of their authority, were responsible for the registration of the businesses). The files include financial reports, financial accounts and also details regarding the process of the formal liquidation of the businesses during the Nazi period and the deletion of the businesses from the Handlesregister (Business Registry). The collection deals with rural towns, where Jews dealt in small trade and in the agriculture sector (including in the cattle trade, a branch in which Jews were dominant), and as food and clothing merchants; these businesses were typical of those in which Jews worked. There are also files of several small factories, mainly clothing and shoes. Individual files deal with law suits in which Jews were involved, and requests for claims for compensation that were submitted after the war (some of the files relate to the companies, including also requests for claims for compensation). In the files of the Court of Law in Bad Nauheim, there is a file related to the community, and a file in which there is a Declaration by a Jew regarding his departure from Judaism [his conversion to Christianity].