Fractality and the Dynamics of Jewish Existence in the Southern Parts of the Holy Roman Empire during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
About the Project
Discription
Fractality and the Dynamics of Jewish Existence
In the early modern Holy Roman Empire, places with a pronounced concentration of Jewish settlement were often located in regions characterized by patchworks of small-scale territories with fluid legal boundaries. The project is based on the assumption that these particular structures were responsible for the existence of Jewish communities, and it investigates how Jewish actors used them. For this purpose, it draws on the concept of fractality, which the historians Christophe Duhamelle and Falk Bretschneider have recently proposed for the history of the early modern Empire. This concept relates the various political spheres of action to the actors‘ historical practices. The early modern Empire is thus conceived as a spatial structure with multiple overlapping identities and relationships without a unifying center of power. Instead, it was characterized by plural, contradictory and competing nodes of authority and power.
The project connects this concept with methods of network analysis in order to apply the concept of space to Jewish social history and arrive at a thorough description and explanation of the meaning and significance of Jewish settlement patterns. These complex political structures were especially beneficial for actors who were used to operate in multi-polar networks, as studies have demonstrated for large parts of the pre-modern Jewish population. Therefore it is to be expected that Jewish actors in fractal political spaces had particulary far-reaching opportunities to use these structures effectively, but were simultaneously bounded and restricted by them. The resulting dynamics of social action may also have evoked specific communicative, social and political practices on the part of Jews and may have promoted the shaping of networks. These processes are supposed to have resulted in a dynamic interrelationship between specific spatial structures and social practices.
Based on these hypotheses, the project investigates the usefulness of this conceptual metaphor for Jewish history in three case studies for the southern part of the Holy Roman Empire. In order to provide a broad empirical basis for the project regarding the Empire’s political and constitutional heterogeneity, three structurally different political spaces will be systematically compared: (1) the condominium of Fürth, a community jointly administered by three different rulers; (2) the tiny Franconian territory of Mitwitz, ruled by a family of imperial knights; and (3) the territories of the Order of Teutonic Knights in Franconia. These case studies represent a politically fractured urban community, a small-scale rural estate and an open territorial complex.
Organization
Mentoring Team and Funding
The project "Fractality and the Dynamics of Jewish Existence in the Southern Parts of the Holy Roman Empire during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries", which is funded by the DFG, is mentored by Prof. Dr. Sabine Ullmann (University of Eichstätt) and Prof. Dr. Michaela Schmölz-Häberlein (University of Eichstätt/University of Bamberg).
Research Partners
Dr. Rotraud Ries, Johanna Stahl Zentrum für jüdische Geschichte und Kultur – Würzburg
https://www.johanna-stahl-zentrum.de/aktuelles/index.html
Prof. Dr. Holger Zaunstöck, Stabstelle Forschung der Franckeschen Stiftungen – Halle an der Saale
https://www.francke-halle.de/de/forschung/
Prof. Dr. Andreas Kuczera, Technische Hochschule Mittelhessen, Fachbereich MNI, Gießen
www.thm.de/mni/andreas-kuczera
Prof. Dr. Christophe Duhamelle, École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS)
http://crh.ehess.fr/index.php?1095
Dr. Falk Bretschneider, Maître de conférences, École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS)
http://crh.ehess.fr/index.php?2563
Team
Maximilian Grimm
Protection of Jews as a Social, Political and Administrative Practice in the Territories of the Order of Teutonic Knights (1650–1809)
Like other territorial lords, the Order of Teutonic Knights granted Jews protection in its towns and villages since the Middle Ages. Due to the small scale and highly fragmented structures of the Teutonic Order’s conglomerate of possessions and legal rights, the Order developed a broad range of administrative practices which have resulted in exhaustive archival records. This study focuses on practical aspects of the protection of Jews (Judenschutz) in two territorial complexes, the Bailiwick of Franconia (Ballei Franken) and the Lordship of Mergentheim (Meistertum Mergentheim), which lay scattered across the northern parts of present-day Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg. Whereas previous research has merely considered individual Jewish settlements, this project focuses on the connecting threads within the Order’s administration, which formed the distinct group of protected Jews within these territories. The study is not merely confined to final outcomes, but also takes processes of negotiation, decision-making and knowledge gathering into account. Petitions as well as legal and administrative opinions enable us to analyze specific decisions in the context of Jews‘ individual circumstances and to reconstruct the experiences of the Teutonic Order’s Jewish subjects. Close analysis of repeated administrative processes provides us with insights into rhetorical strategies and sequences of action which gave shape and meaning to the protection of the Jews.
Christian Porzelt
Protection of Jews in the Franconian Territories of Imperial Knights: The case of Mitwitz (17th–18th centuries)
The market community of Mitwitz near the town of Kronach was among the numerous small-scale noble territories in Franconia in which imperial knights exercised the protection of Jews (Judenschutz) since the late 16th century. From the beginning of the 18th century, Mitwitz was also characterized by a complex territorial structure, with various lords competing for influence and legal authority. As a consequence of this complicated situation, the local community was not only composed of several religious groups, but was also made up of the subjects of several lords. The community’s public space was marked by the coexistence of these groups and by overlapping religious spheres. The commercial activities of Jewish traders transcended territorial boundaries and criss-crossed fractal political spaces governed by plural legal and religious norms. The project investigates this complex local situation, and it analyzes the spheres of action and social strategies of the Jewish inhabitants. The project’s main goals are an actor-centered reconstruction of local and inter-territoral networks as well as an interpretation of selected cases of conflict, negotiation and cooperation within their respective social, economic and cultural settings.
Franziska Strobel
Contacts, Conflicts and Local Coexistence between Jews and Christians: Fürth, 1648–1792
In demographic, economic, religious and cultural terms, the market community of Fürth was the major Jewish settlement in Franconia. It was by no means accidental, but can rather be seen as a typical structural feature of early modern German Jewry that such an important population center emerged in a place that was jointly ruled by three different authorities (the margravate of Brandenburg-Ansbach, the cathedral provost of Bamberg and the imperial city of Nuremberg). Although Fürth has been referred to as the „Franconian Jerusalem“, research on its early modern history is still sketchy. The projects aims at a social history of Fürth’s Jewish inhabitants, focusing on patterns of contact and conflict between Jews and Christians. A praxeological, actor-centered approach is employed to generate new insights into the conditions and manifestations of Jewish life. Particular attention is paid to individual actors, their social practices and their spheres of action. A micro-historical perspective, which draws on the concepts of fractality and boundaries/borderlines, attempts to elucidate processes of negotiation between local individuals and groups. The study proceeds in two stages: (1) A prosopography of Jewish families is compiled and Fürth’s social structure is analyzed in order to reconstruct the composition of the Jewish community. (2) Individual conflicts are explored within their respective socio-economic contexts and Jewish individuals‘ spheres of action in these conflicts are evaluated.
Contact
Project Team
How to contact us
Contact
Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt
Professur für Vergleichende Landesgeschichte und Geschichte der Frühen Neuzeit
Universitätsallee 1
85072 Eichstätt
Tel: +49 8421 93-21666
Sekretariat
hildegard.alberter(at)ku.de
Prof. Dr. Michaela Schmölz-Häberlein
michaela.schmoelz-haeberlein(at)ku.de
Prof. Dr. Sabine Ullmann
sabine.ullmann(at)ku.de
Team
Maximilian Grimm
Maximilian.Grimm(at)ku.de
Christian Porzelt
Christian.Porzelt(at)ku.de
Franziska Strobel
FStrobel(at)ku.de