Perhaps for no group of people were ‘the dark ages’ so aptly named as for the Jews. Over the span of one thousand years life changed wildly for the Jewish people and not in a positive way. At the start of the 5th Century the future looked bright but by the 15th century life was engulfed in darkness. This essay will investigate exactly how the legal position of the Jews was able to deteriorate so badly.
When we are considering the legal position of Jews in Medieval Germany, the question we need to ask is what was Jewry law like at that time? We can understand Jewry law as being Christian legal material and documents concerning Jews (Cohen 1994:30). Jewry Law was executed by two main bodies the monarch and the church. One of the most famous characteristics of the Medieval period was what could be described as ‘Christian piety’ or ‘religious fanaticism’ (Adler 1969:11). Christianity became the focal point of society and the church held great power. People generally followed the edicts of ecclesiastical councils and pontifical opinions (Cohen 1994:36) lest they risk excommunication, a big and dangerous disgrace in medieval society. So whilst secular law was primary legislation and even though canon law did not always have a direct impact on state Jewry law, it is still important to consider church made law when investigating the legal position of medieval Jews(Cohen 1994:42).
Jewry law was, like German medieval law in general, of a disintegrated nature (Kisch 1935: 69). It also frequently overlapped and contradicted itself, thanks to the wide range of sources from which it derived (Cohen 1994:31). Medieval Jewry law has been described as a ‘law of privilege made up of occasional favours and restrictions of various kinds without re...
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...l Socialism’ London: Notre Dame pp9-14
Altmann, Berthold. (1940) ‘Studies in medieval German Jewish History’ in ‘Proceedings of the American academy for Jewish Research Vol. 10’ pp5-98
Brenner, Michael. (2008) ‘A short history of the Jews’ Princeton: Princeton University Press pp97-106
Cohen, Mark R. (1994) ‘Under Crescent and Cross, the Jews in the middle ages’ Princeton: Princeton University Press pp 30-50
Goodman, Paul. (1911) ‘History of Jews’ London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd pp100-118
Kisch, Guido. (1935) ‘The Jewry-law of the medieval German law-books: Part I’ in ‘Proceedings of the American academy for Jewish Research Vol. 7’ pp 61-145
Johnson, Paul. (1987) ‘A history of the Jews’ London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson pp 230
Poliakov, Léon. (1955) ‘The History of Anti-Semitism Vol. I: from roman times to the court Jews’ London: Routledge & Kegan Paul pp35-81
Reading the book “The Trial of Tempel Anneke” raises interesting questions, and details the clashing of anxieties that took place within Early Modern German communities, both in economic and religious justification. Some central questions posed by myself is proposed below.
Works Cited: http://members.ll.net/ken/hunter3.html Ozment, Steven. The Burgermeister's Daughter: Scandal in a Sixteenth –Century German Town. New York: Harper Perennial, 1996. Print.
Unlike today, the church had a close relationship with the State. There was practically no division between secular and state affairs. The secular law that existed during the Middle Ages in Europe stated that all crimes that were committed we...
Beginning with the economic level of analysis, Smith points out how accusations regarding the Jews concerning the murder of Ernst Winter generally had a common trait in that several of the accusers had either “worked for the Jews they accused or had been in close business relationships with them” (Smith 2002, 139). Smith goes on to note that these accusers often came from low-class or low-middle class citizens and consisted of “unskilled workers, day laborers, masons and a civil servant, a prison guard and a night watchman, a poor farmer and his family, a handful of apprentices, and a large number of servant girls” (Smith 2002, 139). Unsurprisingly, Smith explains that the result of such noticeable differences in the possession of wealth between Konitz citizens led to poorer Christians seeking to place blame on Jews of middle-class status; thereby creating a “rudimentary form of economic or class protest” (Smith 2002, 140). However, Helmut Walser Smith is quick to indicate that this form of analysis cannot solely provide an answer to the rise of anti-Semitic sentiment in Imperial Germany. This explanation, Smith says, is rather simple; although it is true that Christians were perhaps motivated to falsely accuse their Jewish neighbors due to their social and economic trials, not all Konitz-residing Christians were disadvantaged and not all Konitz Jews
Oxtoby, Willard Gurdon. "Jewish Traditions." World religions: western traditions. 1996. Reprint. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2011. 127-157. Print.
Hagen W (2012). ‘German History in Modern Times: Four Lives of the Nation’. Published by Cambridge University Press (13 Feb 2012)
Rajak, Tessa. "The Hasmoneans and the uses of Hellenism" in A Tribute to Geza Vermes: Essays on Jewish And Christian Literature and History, Ed. Pr. Davies, R.T White, JSOTS 1990.
Peter Pulzer, The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in Germany & Austria (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1964), 5-8.
4 "The Jewish Peril," "Not a Single Jew," and "Law for the Protection of German Blood
With many of the authors who write on the Jews of fin-de-siecle Vienna depicting a golden age and of a homogenous Jewish culture with a shared common identity. Yet Ernst Gombrich recently controversially asserted, whilst giving a lecture on the topic of, "Fin de siecle Vienna and its Jewish Cultural influences", "I am of the opinion that the notion of Jewish Culture was, and is, an invention of Hitler and his forerunners and after-runners. (5) There is then a controversy centered around Jewishness which likewise examines the individual and their level of faith, secularisation or assimilation. 6. For what at this time did it mean to be a Jew?
Main Events in the history of Jerusalem. (n.d.). Retrieved May 8, 2011, from Century One Educational Bookstore: http://www.centuryone.com/hstjrslm.html
The Jews were different from the general population of the countries where they were. They had different customs, had a different religion and dressed different. Because they were grouped in the ghettos these differences were increased. However, when Germany became a nation in 1871, there was a halt in anti-Semitic laws. In 1900, Jews could buy houses, and while they were subject to restrictions, they were more comfortable under Ge...
Fulbrook, Mary. A Concise History of Germany. 2nd ed. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Print.
Beginning in 1920 in the form of propaganda on the side of typical consumer items and lasting all the way until mid-1945, Nazi anti-Semitism had been a prominent characteristic of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers’ Party). Nazi anti-Semitism has often been considered an anomaly from the anti-Semitism that Europe had traditionally practiced, because of its deliberate execution of the Jewish Question and the horrific cruelty that took place during the Holocaust. It is no question that Nazi anti-Semitism was remembered for its unmatched hatred of the Jews; however, the influence from European anti-Semitism in the medieval times was heavy. The Nazis’ adoption of the “Jew badge” and psychological and racial grounds for justification of anti-Semitism are only a small percentage of the techniques employed by Nazis’ that were inspired by the traditional European actions against Jews. This essay will discuss whether the Nazis simply continued the strands of European anti-Semitism that were already in place or whether they initiated a revolutionary materialization of a sinister phenomenon.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969. Kitchen, Martin. A History of Modern Germany: 1800-2000. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. Sprout, Otto.