In 1815 the Congress of Vienna returned the Polish city of Kempen (Kępno) from Russian to Prussian rule and the Jewish community built a new synagogue to replace its hundred-year-old dilapidated prayer house. Shortly afterwards, the renowned cantor Shlomo ben Shimshon (1781-1829), revered throughout Eastern Europe under the nickname Kashtan ("chestnut"), toured the Duchy of Posen. The community in Kempen sought to hire him, and applied for the necessary residence permit. When the government rejected three separate requests, Kashtan gave up and moved on. We know about this from two sources. One is Kashtan's biography, written in Hebrew by his son, Cantor Hirsch Weintraub (ca. 1812-1881). The biography is significant for many reasons: Kashtan was the most famous cantor of his time, cantorial history before 1840 is not well documented, and it made a modest contribution to the revival of the Hebrew language. The second source is a small group of German documents that I discovered in the Secret State Archives of Prussian Cultural Heritage in Berlin. The synagogue's board outlines the entire episode, expressing the minority community's aspirations and frustrations. A memo from Prussia's minister of the interior to the local governor confirms and rationalizes the decision to deny the community's request (the excuse: Kashtan held Russian citizenship, whereas the government wanted Kempen to hire a cantor from Prussia). My paper will present the sources, show how they substantiate and supplement each other, and broaden our understanding of what happened and why. The archival documents are particularly important for bringing independent testimony that confirms Hirsch Weintraub's credibility as his father's biographer. They help establish a chronology of Kashtan's life, and constitute his earliest known appearance in the historical record. Finally, they expose the Jewish community's unequal relationship to the xenophobic and uncooperative Prussian regime.