Volume 21, Issue 1-2

Abstracht: Research on Jewish settlement in the German lands during the high and later medieval periods has tended to focus on the lives of Jews in their urban communities. The present study aims at elucidating the history of medieval Jewish settlements from the perspective of the rural periphery. It shows that the incomplete picture of a predominantly urban Jewish population has to be complemented by a continuity of Jewish presence in rural contexts. Sources of mostly non-Jewish provenance can serve to delineate the spread of rural Jewish settlements, while the terminology used for them can be derived from medieval Hebrew documents. Internal Jewish sources also offer insights concerning the autonomy enjoyed by rural Jewish settlers and their dependence on the urban communities. The development of a rural Jewish presence is traced in light of the question whether there was any continuity with the early modern institution of territorial Jewries ( Landjudenschaften ).

Abstracht: Jewish-Christian relations in village or small-town societies during the early modern period were framed by coexistence and conflict on three major fields of encounter: the rural economy, the practice of religion, and the social relations within the local communities. This study provides case studies of these three aspects by drawing on evidence for the two counties of Castell and Wertheim in Franconia. Analysis of three expulsion proceedings and their different outcomes allows us to add a fourth perspective to this typical picture of integration and segregation, the question of how political rule was enacted and communicated. The conditions of Jewish settlement and community life were always precarious and had to be renegotiated on a regular basis. Negotiations were influenced by the diplomatic skills of individual Jews, by the interests of the community or its leading members, of the rulers and their local representatives.

Abstracht: Over several centuries, the Bavarian dukes and electors pursued the aim of preventing Jewish settlements in their territory. From the expulsion of the Jews by Albrecht V. in 1553 until the beginning of the 18 th century, the Wittelsbach family consistently achieved this aim. For a long time, therefore, Bavaria was a »state without Jews«. With the end of the Holy Roman Empire and the accompanying territorial expansions between 1777 and 1806, Bavaria was faced with a significant increase of its Jewish population at the beginning of the 19 th century. In Bavaria’s new province of Swabia alone, there were Jewish communities in thirteen places in 1808. The incorporation into the state of Bavaria meant a new era for the Swabian rural Jews, if one bears in mind the Jewish policy pursued by the electorate until that point. The present article deals with the key aspects of the Bavarian Jewish policy and its local implementation during the first half of the 19th century, as well as the related effects, particularly on exceptionally small and medium-sized rural Jewish communities in Bavarian Swabia.

Abstracht: This article demonstrates that labelling a group of Jews as either rural or urban masks the changes which this group underwent after attaining emancipation. This will be exemplified by looking at the Jewish cattle dealers in interwar Middle Franconia, a north-Bavarian district. Jewish cattle dealers have traditionally been categorized as a group of rural Jews who were stuck in old patterns rather than casting them off. By analyzing the business structure of their enterprises the author shows that this specific socio-economic group did in fact undergo dramatic changes after becoming emancipated, even though it remained in a profession shaped during an era when Jews were primarily limited to trade. For example, the great majority of the Jewish cattle dealers developed a modern business culture and moved to centrally located small towns rather than remaining in small villages.

Abstracht: Aron Hirsch Heymann ’s (1803–1880) biography is an invaluable source of information on the German Jewry of the 19 th century because it portrays rural Jewish life as well as the rise of the Jewish Bürgertum . What makes this source particularly interesting is the discourse of its characters which contains long passages with remnants of Western Yiddish. Remarkably, this autobiography happens to be the first source of North-western Yiddish found east of the Elbe. Furthermore, we find Jewish characters from east of the Oder whose linguistic signature (as rendered by the author) is quite different from that of their north-western neighbours. The linguistic data this text offers us shed new light on the varieties of Yiddish at the German-Polish border and on the contacts between Eastern and Western Yiddish.

Abstracht: The article traces the involvement of the German-Jewish poetess Else Lasker-Schüler in the diverse activities of the only non-orthodox community in Jerusalem of the 1940s and its founding rabbi, Kurt Wilhelm – himself also a German immigrant. It further demonstrates how Rabbi Wilhelm attempted to transfer to Palestine the tenets of German Jewish liberalism: education, religious tolerance, humanism and meaningful religious services, and how the European Liberal Movement of Judaism supported this endeavour. In addition the essay shows how other prominent German Jewish immigrants like Martin Buber , Hugo Bergmann or Ernst Simon responded to Wilhelm’s liberalism by gathering around his Jerusalem community – and how, as a consequence, this group had a decisive influence on Else Lasker-Schüler ’s final years and works.

Abstracht: In their article Melanie Hanel and Isabel Schmidt analyze the situation of the Jewish students at the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt (THD) between 1933 and 1950. Consciously leaving out the political caesura of 1945, the authors focus on two periods that represent different realities: the exclusion of the Jewish students, divided in »Voll-« and »Mischlingsjuden« during National Socialism, and, successively, the acceptance of the Jewish students among DP-students after 1945. Based on the fact that the THD had the possibility to choose between different courses of action – before as well as after 1945 – the main focus is on the active role and motives of the Hochschule.

Abstracht: In December 1949, the internationally acclaimed Jewish actress Elisabeth Bergner , one of the brightest stars of the German stage before 1933, toured the then newly founded State of Israel . She was known there by immigrants from Germany, and her films had been shown in pre-State Israel. Invited by the management of the Ohel Theater, the first professional ›workers’ theatre‹, she stayed for three months and gave seventy readings. In addition to official readings all over the country, she appeared before soldiers and gave volunteer charity appearances. Her programme included Schnitzler ’s Fräulein Else, a scene from Shaw’s Heilige Johanna , as well her own text, Nachklänge , based on quotations from the Old and New Testament. Although most of the spectators, including young Israelis who had no German, were enthusiastic, some did not hide their disappointment, while others were enraged by the presentation of Nachklänge .