The study of source material is necessary, but unfortunately there are almost no sources about our family. This is not unusual if one considers that the lower middle-class people were not interested in memories etc. Documents, letters and so on were not always treated with care. Some of them were probably destroyed in the big fires in the 16th and 18th century in Weinsberg. The register office of Weinsberg and the city hall burnt down completely in 1707. Records are preserved from then on.

Now and then the name Haeberlen is mentioned in them and also in a chronicle from 1860 written by Decan Dillenius, but we learn nothing of importance. Some information might have been found in the files of the bakers' guild, which some of our ancestors belonged to - Jacob Friedrich Haeberlen (V,3) had been guild master in the second half of the 18th century. But the files seem to have been destroyed. That means that we know next to nothing about our family history until the 19th century. We who are living today, have to try not to make the same mistakes. Therefore it is a good thing that, initiated by Johanna Haeberlen, some members of the family write down their recollection of their parents and grand-parents, so that after a while we'll have family records which will be completed by photographs etc.