Historical evidence provides a reliable reference point.
The surviving provision concerns appointing Jewish people to municipal office in the Roman Empire and is connected with Cologne. It shows that Jewish life was already present there in late antiquity.
In 2021, commemorations marked 1,700 years since this evidence. The exam uses an approximate figure. You do not need to calculate a new exact number every year to identify the correct timescale among the four choices.
The other three answers
The three shorter periods do not reach back to the documented year 321.
about 300 years ago
About 300 years would reach back only to the early modern period. The surviving evidence is much older.
about 700 years ago
About 700 years leads to the later Middle Ages. The decree already dates from Roman late antiquity.
about 1150 years ago
Even about 1,150 years is too short to reach 321 CE. The appropriate timescale is roughly 1,700 years.
First surviving evidence is not the same as the first beginning.
The source establishes that Jewish life already existed then. It does not prove the exact moment when the first Jewish people arrived in the area. The exam wording is a simplification in this respect.
“In the territory of present-day Germany” is a geographical description. Today’s Federal Republic did not exist in 321. The early evidence also does not imply an uninterrupted, unchanged community history up to the present.
The year 321 · City of Cologne ↗Cologne – 321 CE – about 1,700 years.
Connect the place, the source’s date and the approximate period.
Three words for this question
- das Dekretdecree
- An order issued by a state authority.
- urkundlich belegtdocumented
- Supported by a surviving written source.
- die Spätantikelate antiquity
- A historical period towards the end of antiquity.