Jewish Culture and History
Abstracts of
articles in Issue 10.2/3
- Benjamin Ravid, All Ghettos
were Jewish Quarters but not all Jewish Quarters were Ghettos
- Jewish quarters have often been indiscriminately
designated as ‘ghettos’ without any definition of what
actually constitutes a ‘ghetto.’ I propose to establish
a definition of the medieval and early modern ghetto as a compulsory
segregated and enclosed Jewish quarter, on the basis of three decisive
characteristics of the institution initially referred to by that name
which came into being in Venice in 1516. Subsequently I demonstrate
that most pre-emancipation Jewish quarters were not ghettos, and that
the loose use of the word ghetto has created much confusion with regard
to understanding the nature of Jewish quarters.
- Fritz Backhaus, The Population
Explosion in the Frankfurt Judengasse in the Sixteenth Century
- Despite the establishment of a ghetto
in 1462 and repeated attempts by the city council and the inhabitants
to drive the Jews out of Frankfurt, by 1600 the population of the Judengasse
had grown from just under 200 to c. 2500, the percentage of the population
from nearly 1 per cent in some years to 15 per cent. This essay distinguishes
different phases of this dramatic population explosion against the
background of the changing economic and political conditions for the
Frankfurt Jewish community.
- Christhard Hoffmann , From Heinrich
Heine to Isidor Kracauer: The Frankfurt Ghetto in German-Jewish Historical
Culture and Historiography
- The essay explores the presentations
of the Frankfurt Judengasse within German-Jewish history and memory
of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It argues that the
perception of the ghetto past among the German-Jewish middle class
was shaped by a deep ambivalence oscillating between the wish to forget
this symbol of oppression and persecution on the one hand, and the
romantic idealisation of a world that no longer existed on the other.
Transcending these conflicting views, the work of the historian Isidor
Kracauer stands out by its effort to maintain scientific distance through
positivist research and by placing the history of the Frankfurt ghetto
into the broader context of its time.
- Wolfgang Treue, Jewish and Christian
Elites in Frankfurt: Power and Control in an Early Modern German City
- Two crucial events took place in the history
of Frankfurt Jewry in the early seventeenth century. The first was
the Fettmilch Uprising, a rebellion of the guilds, directed against
the patrician government, which also led to a temporary expulsion of
the Jews. The second was an internal revolt inside the Judengasse in
the years following the return of the Jews. It was directed against
the Jewish elders who governed the Jewry in nearly the same absolutist
manner as the city council ruled the city at large. Both movements,
aiming for political participation, failed because they provoked the
intervention of superior powers, the emperor and the city council.
Both were interested in maintaining public order and the status quo.
- Yaacov Deutsch, Jüdische Merckwürdigkeiten:
Ethnography in Early Modern Frankfurt
- Johann Jacob Schudt’s Jüdische
Merckwürdigkeiten has been mentioned by many scholars in different
circumstances, however this voluminous work never stood in the focus
of an academic scrutiny. My paper offers a first attempt to describe
the content of Schudt’s work and its scope. I focus on Schudt’s
ethnographic writings in his book and their uniqueness among other
ethnographies that were written during the early modern period. I argue
that in opposition to most other composers of such ethnographies, who
primarily repeated information that appeared in earlier works, Schudt
chose to focus on neglected aspects of Jewish ritual life. In addition
I argue that Schudt’s work reflects an ambivalent approach toward
Judaism and reject attempts to see him as an anti-semite.
- Maria Diemling, The Ethnographer
and the Jewish Body: Johann Jacob Schudt on the Civilisation Process
of the Jews of Frankfurt
- Johann Jacob Schudt’s ethnographic work
Jüdische Merckwürdigkeiten has been described as a turning
point in anti-Jewish polemical discourse because of its use of secular
arguments. This article examines how Schudt writes about the body of
Jews by focusing on notions of cleanliness and pollution. I argue that
Schudt, struggling to reconcile his scholarly ambitions with his devout
Lutheranism, rejects traditional polemical arguments about the Jewish
body based on theological assumptions and judges the physical appearance
according to social and cultural norms and expectations of early modern
Protestant society. However, Schudt does remain committed to his religious
convictions when he suggests that true civilisation can only be found
in Christianity. In order to turn into proper members of society, Jews
not only have to change their hygiene but also their religion.
- Birgit E. Klein, The 1603 Assembly
in Frankfurt: Prehistory, Ordinances, Effects
- At an assembly in Frankfurt am Main in 1603,
representatives of the most important Jewish communities in Germany
adopted a range of ordinances, including a draft for a common autonomous
Jewish jurisdiction. Later these ordinances were the basis for a trial
for high treason Emperor Rudolf II conducted against the Jews in Germany
for the crimes of conspiracy and lese-majesty. New archival material
shows that the informer of the ordinances was not a Jewish butcher
as generally believed until now but a court Jew avant la lettre. Starting
from this new insight the article discusses the circumstances of the
Frankfurt assembly, its prehistory, context and results and devotes
particular attention to the role of the Frankfurt community. Finally,
it situates the Frankfurt community within the political structure
of the Holy Roman Empire.
- Klaus Wolf, ‘Die judden sollen
dis spiel in iren husen bliben!’ [The Jews should remain in their
houses during this play]: The Ghettoisation of the Frankfurt Jews as
Mirrored in Urban Plays
- This article deals with the Jewish–Christian relationship in
the late Middle Ages as reflected in medieval drama. In fact, Frankfurt
is one of the earliest centres for German liturgical plays. The ‘Frankfurter
Dirigierrolle’ [Frankfurt Direction Scroll] dramatises the persistent
conflict between Jewish and Christian burgher in the first half of the
fourteenth century. This play’s anti-Judaism is situated in a Frankfurt
where Christians and Jews lived side-by-side and enjoyed the same legal
status. Following the establishment of the ghetto in 1462 (the so-called ‘Judengasse’),
the ‘Frankfurter Passionsspiel’ [Frankfurt Passion Play]
depicted an even more aggressive anti-Judaism by using biblical and apocryphal
sources or by inventing new scenes.
- Geoffrey Goldberg, Continuity and
Change in Frankfurt Liturgical-Musical Customs: Text and Sub-text in
Salomon Geiger’s Divrey Kehillot
- The Divrey Kehillot of Salomon Geiger, a
meticulously detailed description of the liturgical-musical customs
of Frankfurt-am-Main, was perhaps the final compilation of synagogue
and community customs of the German Jews. It is an invaluable work
for the study of the liturgy and synagogue music, not only of Frankfurt,
but of the South German Jews as a whole. Careful scrutiny of Geiger’s
work reveals, however, a subtext, a critique of change, modification
and decay of many of the liturgical-musical customs of Frankfurt. These
changes, for Geiger, represented more than purely religious infringements,
but a threat to the social cohesion, rabbinical authority and the way
of life which, like the Frankfurt ghetto itself, was coming to an end.
- Rachel L. Greenblatt, Jewish Memory
and Local History: A Commemorative Liturgy from Early Modern Prague
- When the Jews of Prague had passed unharmed
through the volatile events of the early stages of the Thirty Years’ War,
from May 1618 to November 1620, they instituted a local annual commemoration
of their safe deliverance observed, in part, by the recitation of selih?ot
[liturgical poems] composed for the occasion by Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann
Heller. The observance and its liturgy not only expressed gratitude
to God, but also sought to crystallise the community’s pro-Habsburg
political stance. Moreover, in choosing locally-based models for the
liturgy’s form, its author both reflected and helped shape his
community’s historically-based local consciousness.
- Melanie Aspey, The Rothschilds
and the Judengasse: New Documents from the Rothschild Archive on the
History of the Family
- In 2001, a century after the closure of the
Frankfurt bank M.A. Rothschild & Sons, the Rothschild Archive in
London acquired a collection of papers that had been assembled by the
Rothschild family over generations. At the heart of this collection
were found some rare and precious relics of the life of Mayer Amschel
Rothschild of Frankfurt, the founder of the family business.
The collection was handed over in Moscow, where it had been held by the
Special State Trophy Archive since the end of the Second World War. In
1938, just after the Austrian Anschluss, the papers were confiscated
by the infamous Sicherheitsdienst, the Nachrichtendienst of the SS, and
towards the end of the war taken from Berlin to a store at Wölfelsdorf.
From here the collection was captured by the Red Army and taken to Moscow – a
fate similar to that of hundreds of other collections.
An initial appraisal of the papers showed that the collection consisted
of several components, of which the core was an archive that had already
been assembled by Salomon von Rothschild, the founder of the Rothschilds’ Viennese
branch. It was a Frankfurt creation, intended to be preserved by the
Rothschild family. Only after 1924, when the Frankfurt branch of the
Rothschild family died out, was the collection taken to the other German
speaking branch – the Viennese relatives. These Moscow papers – Salomon’s
Archive, and the rest of the collection that became Austrian rather than
German after its final transfer to Vienna from Frankfurt on 1 January
1927 – add significantly to the history of the Rothschild family.
The material sheds light on the Rothschilds’ business, personal
and philanthropic associations with Frankfurt.
In what follows I would like to summarise what other sources for the
history of the Frankfurt Rothschilds are available in the Rothschild
Archive in London and to identify losses. I will also outline the work
that is currently being done on these records and suggest how they
might be of use to the research community.