Volume 20, Issue 1

Paul Christian Kirchner's book »Jüdisches Ceremoniel« counts among the most important sources of research into Judaism in Germany at the beginning of the 18 th century. We know little about the author himself. He was a rabbi in Fürth and converted to Protestantism in 1713. His book »Jüdisches Ceremoniel« has been published several times since 1716. In the edition of 1719 we find a dedication to members of the upper classes in Basle which indicates that Kirchner had been supported by them. From 1724 »Jüdisches Ceremoniel« was no longer edited by Kirchner but by the historian Sebastian Jacob Jungendres from Nuremberg. Jungendres added copperplate prints made by J. G. Puschner to the new edition presenting scenes of the Jewish community in Fürth. Jungendres' preface to the book suggests that Kirchner had probably become Jewish again. Despite Kirchner's polemic remarks against Judaism his book provides important information about Jewish life in early 18 th century Germany.

In her very important monograph »The Court Jew« Selma Stern analysed, 60 years ago, the structural elements of the German Court Jewry in the Baroque Age as a contribution to the History of Absolutism in Europe. The New York exposition with the title »From Court Jews to the Rothschilds – Arts, Patronage, Power«, prepared and procured by Vivian B. Mann and Richard L. Cohen (1996/1997), lately showed different aspects of this development from its beginnings in the 17 th to its end in the early 19 th century. The historical sciences offer less information about the court Jews who were no longer of the classical type (privileged trader and financier of the territorial or imperial courts, such as Samuel Oppenheimer) and not yet of the modern type (independent banker without attachments to the territorial or imperial Courts, such as the early Rothschilds and later on Gerson Bleichröder). The present study is based on newly discovered archival sources about a personality and his family who represent the link between the two types mentioned: Feidel David who, for his part, facilitated the rise of Meyer Amschel Rothschild at the court of the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel. He anticipated the financial transactions that the Rothschilds continued, completed and extended into a European system.

By analyzing data from different archives for the first time the paper provides an account of the conflict regarding the imitation of Protestant cassocks by Jewish rabbis in 19 th century Bavaria. The author compares the motives of both the rabbis and the representatives of the Protestant church and examines the role played by the state authorities in the conflict. Five very liberal rabbis in Franconia chose a robe similar to the Protestant cassock in use at the time, a decision that was inspired by their aspirations for acculturation and their claim for equality both as citizens and as a religious community. They wanted to make their aims visible by choosing modern work cassocks that the general public would consider dignified. The representatives of the Protestant regional church, however, wanted to protect their own identity as a privileged religious community that was superior to Jews. The particular denomination played a decisive part in the way the dispute developed: Moderately liberal rabbis living in a Catholic area accepted the Munich rabbinic cassock which had been approved by the state of Bavaria and which resembled the catholic soutane.

The article points out that inversions are of great importance in Franz Werfel's »Class Reunion«. These inversions mostly concern the protagonists Adler and Sebastian who both epitomize dualism as in mind and body, Jew and anti-Semite, Christ and the devil. Werfel here refers to Gnostic ideas as well as to anti-Semite stereotypes, but he turns them against the anti-Semite Sebastian. Furthermore, he criticizes the inner-Jewish conception that the Jews could only survive the struggle for existence by training their muscles intensely. In Werfel's novella Adler seems to be the exact opposite of such a »muscular Jew«. His degeneration is enhanced by the fact that his body gradually begins to dominate his mind. Last but not least, the main conflict of the novella reflects Werfel's mental reservations about Friedrich Nietzsche's later moral philosophy. With his book, Werfel wanted to show the reader that the ›re-evaluation of all values‹, that Nietzsche had called for, would harm the mind and plunge the world into anarchy.

This essay discusses Die Vertreibung aus der Hölle (2002) by the Austrian writer Robert Menasse in terms of the author's playful self-presentation as a Jew. It locates the text's genre between self-narration and historical novel and places it in the context of Menasse's œuvre on the one hand and that of other Jewish writings in late 20 th century Austria on the other. Menasse's novel tells the stories of a fictional first person narrator in close connection with that of the historical Manasse ben Israel, a so-called »Marrano«. I argue that the striking similarities between these two biographies are due to the fact that they are both modelled on the author's own life-story. Through this mix of biographical/historical fact and fiction which is further played out in the identity of names, Menasse asserts his own Jewish identity.