Volume 33, Issue 1 - Themenheft »Fraktale Räume und jüdische Lebensformen während der Frühen Neuzeit« (Hg. von Michaela Schmölz-Häberlein und Sabine Ullmann)

The article deals with the practice of granting protection in the Franconian possessions of the Teutonic Order. In the early modern period, the examined area was a dominion characterized by structures of small-scale ownership, disputed dominion rights and unclear borders. The Jewish population lived distributed over the entire area in specific focal points. Branches with shared local rulers were of particular importance. The right to settle was nominally granted by the Hochmeister and Deutschmeister. Obtaining protection was associated with an official process for which defined patterns of action were developed. It formed a communication and negotiation process that was conducted across various administrative levels and was characterized by a close exchange between Christian and Jewish actors.

The article deals with the general conditions of Jewish life in two Franconian noble territories in the 17th and 18th centuries. The two market villages of Küps and Mitwitz were divided between different lords. Their population included Jewish inhabitants as well as representatives of both Christian denominations. These villages are thus characteristic of the settlement structure of Jews in the pre-modern period. The settlement of Jewish families was, on the one hand, a privilege of the imperial nobility, with which they demonstrated their imperial status to the outside world. On the other hand, the spatial and lordly fragmentation offered opportunities for settlement among different rulers – a circumstance that Jewish actors deliberately incorporated into their actions. They were well informed about the ruling conditions and knew how to make effective use of the existing competitive situation in order to expand their scope of action.

Quartering soldiers in private houses was still very prone to conflict in the 18th century. In the following article, I focus on this practice using the example of quartering during the Seven Years’ War in the households of the inhabitants of Fürth, a market town near Nuremberg. Particular attention is primarily on the reaction and the opportunities for maneuver of the Jewish community and their efforts to free themselves from the quarterings between them and the Christian community and the Jewish community, respectively, as well as the divided local authorities. This conflict shows the way in which the religious and authoritarian boundaries functioned, and the extent they gave the individual actors room for action or limited it. A praxeological, actor-centered approach is employed to generate new insights into the conditions and manifestations of Jewish life.

The essay deals with the donation activities of Jewish people in the Franconian area during the 18th century. Helping those in need was an integral part of religious practice. Donations to co-religionists as well as to Christian institutions and individuals can be proven regularly. The five charitable foundations, which were set up by wealthy members of the Bamberg rural Jewish community, also served the purpose of maintaining the memory of the founder and his family in the long term. With the proceeds from the foundation capital, scholarships were financed and needy relatives supported. They represented important references for the family members, who often lived scattered. Thus had an effect of forming a Common identity. The case of Meyer Levi, who at the same time established religious foundations in the Franconian rural community of Zeckendorf and the suburban community of Pfersee beyond the gates of the imperial city of Augsburg, documents that the supra-regional and cross-territorial interdependencies of Jewish society can be seen within the Zedaka.

This article examines the influence of different calendar systems on the coexistence of the Christian and Jewish population in the city of Slutsk in the early modern period. Various religious groups lived in Slutsk in present-day Belarus since the early 17th century. As a result, three different calendar systems determined the everyday life in the city: while the Gregorian calendar regulated the administration. The church year of the Orthodox majority was based on the Julian and the holidays of the Jewish residents on the Hebrew calendar. The inhabitants knew about the religious festivals of the other group, not at least because they affected the economic life of the whole city. Mutual consideration and a pragmatic approach to the various holidays enabled a largely conflict-free coexistence in everyday life. Occasional disputes are documented, when the common urban space is used for religious celebrations.

The Mehler family was a distinguished German family from Bingen in the 17 th and 18 th centuries comprised of numerous rabbis and communal leaders. In this essay we draw attention to the physicians of the Mehler clan, a father and son in the late 17 th and early 18 th centuries. Though graduating just forty years apart, they represent the transition of the medical training of students of Ashkenaz (Poland, Germany, and France) from Italy to Germany. Prior to the mid seventeenth century, a young Jewish student longing to attend medical school had essentially one option, the University of Padua. By the early eighteenth-century German universities began to welcome Jewish students. Our father and son physicians straddle this period and reflect the transition of Jewish medical training from Italy to Germany. We have identified some remarkable archival material allowing us to provide also an illustrated history of their medical careers.

The poet Arnold Zweig and the sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, two German-Jewish atheists, are compared in their views on the emancipation of Jews and homosexuals in the 20th century. Without knowing about each other, the two visited Palestine in 1932, where they grappled with Zionism and the idea of a Jewish state. Zweigʼs reflections on Palestine are expressed in his 1932 novel »De Vriendt kehrt heim,« while Hirschfeldʼs »Weltreise eines Sexualforschers,« published in 1933 in Swiss exile, formulated his ambivalent, ultimately negative attitude toward Zionism. Zweig lived and worked in Palestine, despite all his reservations, until the founding of the State of Israel. Hirschfeld, who was almost twenty years older, died in France in 1935. Hirschfeldʼs lifelong fight against the persecution of homosexuals was supported by Zweig in many ways, but in the last decades of Zweigʼs life, as a member of the Jewish community in East Berlin, he almost completely faded into the background of his cultural-political activities.