Volume 34, Issue 1 - Themenheft Haskala in Breslau Hg. von Uta Lohmann und Kathrin Wittler

The article deals with the State’s Jewish policies in the Silesian metropolis of Breslau at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Jews played a significant role in the economic life of the important market and trading city, especially as intermediaries in East-West trade. As a result, the central principle of Prussia’s absolutist Jewish policies, that of keeping the number of Jews resident in the country as low as possible, met with little resonance in Breslau. Instead, under the leadership of the long-time Provincial Minister Hoym, an educational policy was pursued, the aim of which was to harmonize the lifestyle, language and professional practice of the Jewish population with those of the non-Jews as a prerequisite for legal equality. Thus, at the end of the eighteenth century, Breslau became an early experimental field for enlightened Jewish policies, the possibilities of which, as well as its ambivalences and limits, became apparent at an early stage.

The article outlines the history of the first Hebrew journal Hameʾassef , focusing on the seventh volume published in Breslau by Joel Bril Löwe and Aaron Wolfssohn from 1794 onwards. It analyzes differences to the earlier volumes, reflects on the intentions of the journal, and discusses possible reasons for the journal’s discontinuation in 1797. The article also provides an overview of the texts published in the seventh volume of Hameʾassef , with special attention given to Aaron Wolfssohn’s Hebrew satire ›Conversation of the Dead‹ ( Siḥa beʾerez haḥajim ).

The danger of burying only apparently dead bodies when following the Jewish custom to bury the deceased within a day was a hotly debated topic in the eighteenth century. Joel Bril Löwe participated in this debate with an open letter to the burial brotherhoods of all Jewish communities. The article reconstructs the dispute between the traditionalists, who argued for the Jewish custom of immediate burial, and the modernizers, who argued for its abandonment. Despite Löwe’s efforts to mediate between the fronts and to convince everyone to allow three days until the funeral were not successful, the dispute escalated, particularly in Breslau. In a number of German and Hebrew journals, Jewish supporters of the three-day limit ran campaigns, some of them rather aggressive, which led to the founding of new burial societies and attracted the attention of the Prussian authorities. The practice of early burial could only be brought to an end by state order.

The article focuses on the history of the Graß or Graß and Barth publishing house in Breslau from the eighteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century. In particular, it tackles the role of women in the management and the involvement of the printing house in the dissemination of Haskalah literature, two chapters that are usually underrepresented in book history. In addition, the commitment of a Christian printer to Hebrew printing and his involvement with the Jewish Enlightenment will be addressed. The hitherto under-researched history of the Graßische Druckerei in Breslau will thus be embedded in cultural-historical questions about booklore, the Central European Haskalah and Gender Studies. Additionally, the paper examines the transfer of knowledge between the majority and minority population.

The article paints a vivid picture of late-eighteenth-century Breslau and places the Jewish writer Esther Gad, who was married to local tradesman Samuel Bernard in 1791, in the city’s sociable life. Mentioning Gad’s many contacts to writers and philosophers such as Christian Garve, Jean Paul, and Elisa von der Recke, the article singles out Esther Gad’s friendship with Rahel Levin Varnhagen, who visited Breslau in 1794 and described her impressions of the city in letters to her family. In 1798, Gad joined her friend in Berlin, seeking for opportunities in the Prussian capital she did not have in her Silesian hometown.

The article presents a close reading of a poem which was written by the local Jewish writer Esther Gad for the occasion of the Jewish Wilhelm School’s inauguration in Breslau on March 15, 1791. On this basis, it offers a feminist perspective on the Jewish Enlightenment: Esther Gad was the first Jewish woman who emerged as a writer in the German language, but the Haskalah did not provide her with suitable conditions for her emancipation as a female Jewish author, as it was restricted to learned men proficient in Hebrew.

While the use of Hebrew was much in decline in most parts of Germany by the end of the eighteenth century, a considerable number of modern Hebrew texts were being published in Breslau with the specific goal of promoting and maintaining the relevance of Hebrew. The article presents a group portrait of the authors who promoted this consolidation of Hebrew study and modern Hebrew writing. It focuses on Mordechai Roch, a lesser-known author whose maskilic activity spanned more than three decades and thus linked the early attempts of the 1790s with a new flowering of Hebrew writing in the 1810s.

This contribution locates the beginnings of emancipation of Central-European Jews with the development of social and cultural modernisation. In order to explain this, I will show facts and conditions of the discourse between on the one hand Christian Wilhelm Dohm, as an enlightened Prussian public official and on the other hand philosopher Moses Mendelsohn. I will place this discourse in the centre of my treatise and I will ask in how far it effected a breakthrough of modernisation. My subject will in particular be the coming into view and including of the public; and also, the cameralistic ideas of the benefit of marginalised parts of the population. In addition, the impetus for the debate deriving from conditions in Alsace. And finally, the question in what way the ideas of Dohm and Mendelsohn, although not identical, make a distinction from former ideas of Jewish equality. Even though complete legal emancipation of Jews was another century in coming this initial trigger resulted in decisive criteria and keywords for the oncoming debate.

On September 17, 2023, the Jewish Medieval Heritage in Erfurt was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List at the 45th session of the World Heritage Committee chaired by Saudi Arabia in Riyadh. This brought a decades-long process to its provisional conclusion, in which research into the history of the Jewish community in Erfurt in the Middle Ages and its material evidence had been intensified in preparation for the World Heritage application and also during the evaluation, thus leading to a great increase in knowledge. This process should and must continue, but an (interim) conclusion can be drawn in this paper.