Band 31, Heft 1

We always face a certain danger when we investigate cultural-historical situations or conditions. Our chronicles and other documents tend to emphasize dramatic, if not tragic cases that color our understanding in rather dark light. This also applies to the relationship between Jews and Christians during the late Middle Ages, which has been discussed already from many different perspectives. Less consulted have been late German medieval verse narratives (verse-couplets, or mæren ), where we encounter a number of times quite remarkable frameworks which situate the Jews in a much more mundane, ordinary context. As much as the poets endeavored, of course, to present the possibility of converting Jews to Christianity, as much they thereby also reveal a variety of different relationships characterized by a surprising degree of normalcy, free from the usual anti-Judaic hostility. We gain additional support for our approach by way of including two prose novellas by Boccaccio in his Decameron (ca. 1350).

Safe conduct functioned in the Middle Ages and in the Early Modern period to provide a particular safety to travelers with proper protection on the one hand; on the other, it was practiced as an authoritative tool for the establishment of income and the control over travelers. Since the 13th century, a development of particular safe-conduct evolved, to which also tax-like dues were inherent. From its beginning, Jews, too, were integrated into this system – both as those receiving safe conduct and, especially in the 14th century, also investors, who leased tax revenues from local lords. Receiving safe-conduct was imperative to Jews in the later periods of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern age because of their mobility for trade and moneylending businesses. From the 14th century on, the social position of the Jews in Germany significantly worsened, and they were increasingly expelled from many cities and territories. Hence, Jews were only allowed to enter specific cities if they paid for the specific safe conduct. Contrary to earlier times, this did not include protection anymore, but merely the permission to enter the city. This essay describes this development by examining several case studies from the 13th to the early 16th centuries. One focus rests on the reign of Emperor Maximilian I, from which stem several revealing cases. From the safe conduct, which was granted to Jews, the term »Judengeleit« (safe-conduct for Jews, often simply called »safe-conduct/Geleit«) was developed in the 14th century, determining the acceptance and the right of abode for Jews in the cities and territories, which were common especially in the western regions of Germany. This phenomenon is discussed in this essay only concerning its formation and not regarding its further development.

Der Judenfeind (1570), eine virulent antijüdische, polemische Schrift des prominenten evangelischen Theologen und Pfarrers Nigrinus (Georg Schwartz), die vorwiegend an die hessischen Landgrafen adressiert ist, gewährt uns Einblicke in die zeitgenössische Rezeption von Martin Luthers »Von den Juden und ihren Lügen.« Uns schockiert die feste Überzeugung von Nigrinus, dass seine vom tiefsten Judenhass animierte Schmähschrift eine Hommage an Luther darstellen sollte. Bei seinen Bestrebungen, deutsche Herrscher dazu anzuspornen, die Juden aus ihren Gebieten zu vertreiben, scheiterte Nigrinus. Trotzdem werden seine Hetzbefunde regelmäßig bei denjenigen Autoren zitiert, die bestrebt sind, die Juden als eine der christlichen Umwelt problematische sowie bedrohliche Präsenz zu brandmarken.

The toll registers of Aschach in Upper Austria covering the period from 1627 to 1775 are an outstanding series of sources for the history of transport and trade in the early modern Upper Danube basin. At the Aschach toll station each vessel shipping up- and downstream the Danube as the most important traffic route in the Upper-German and Austrian area had to pay dues. The information comprised in the toll registers enables us to reconstruct the movement of goods and people between the Austrian Danube region and its neighbouring countries. This study analyzes the significances of the Upper Danube as a traffic route for Jews in the 1 st half of the 18 th century. Especially the Viennese Court Jews used the waterway for the supply of the Imperial army in Hungary with provisions and other military goods. They also received foodstuff, beverages and other consumer products via the Danube. Jewish traders, especially from Prague, used the Danube for their frequent journeys to the fairs in Linz, whereas other Jewish travelers on their way to Vienna or even further frequently embarked on vessels in Regensburg.

This article reconstructs the continuity of Moses Hessʼ orientation towards the ideal of the ›old, holy nation-state‹ of the Jews from the beginning of his philosophical and political writings in the 1830s to the time of his Zionist engagement in the 1860s. In particular, it presents a new reading of his writings that also traces his conflict with Marx and Engels in the years from 1845 to 1847 back to this orientation.

Arnold Zweig and Walter A. Berendsohn, who were in correspondence with each other between 1909 and 1968, continuously sought to convert the other to their beliefs. Around 1910 Zweig wanted to convert Berendsohn to Zionism as coined by Buber, while his views changed after his exile in Palestine, when he tried to win Berendsohn over to communism. Berendsohn, for his part, wanted to convince Zweig of social democracy around 1910, but after traveling Palestine in the 1950s tried to convince Zweig of Zionism. Viewed retrospectively, both appear as idealistic German intellectuals whose eagerness to reform society in 1910 led them in very different directions due to their individual experiences especially in and after the Second World War.

The Stuttgarter Jüdische Kunstgemeinschaft (Stuttgart Jewish Art Society) existed only five years from 1933 to 1938 before the November Pogrom put an end to Jewish cultural work in Stuttgart. In just these five years, however, the Kunstgemeinschaft had become a nationally known and celebrated institution of Jewish cultural work – despite and in reaction to the National Socialists’ repressive policy of exclusion and surveillance. The Kunstgemeinschaft offered working alternatives for Jewish artists who had become unemployed and cultural events for the Jewish population excluded from society. In addition, the idea of »geistiger Widerstand« (intellectual resistance) found its way into the work of the Kunstgemeinschaft. But the real achievement of the Kunstgemeinschaft was its sheer existence in times of adverse and constantly changing political circumstances: it offered the Jews of Stuttgart and Württemberg a place of cultural enrichment and a home in difficult times.