Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Reflecting on German-Jewish History
- Part I The Legacy of the Middle Ages: Jewish Cultural Identity and the Price of Exclusiveness
- Part II The Social and Economic Structure of German Jewry from the Fifteenth through the Eighteenth Centuries
- Part III Jewish-Gentile Contacts and Relations in the Pre-Emancipation Period
- Part IV Representations of German Jewry Images, Prejudices, and Ideas
- Part V The Pattern of Authority and the Limits of Toleration: The Case of German Jewry
- 15 German Territorial Princes and the Jews
- 16 Jews in Ecclesiastical Territories of the Holy Roman Empire
- 17 Jews in the Imperial Cities: A Political Perspective
- 18 Germans with a Difference? The Jews of the Holy Roman Empire during the Early Modern Era - A Comment
- Part VI Through the Looking Glass: Four Perspectives on German-Jewish History
- Index
17 - Jews in the Imperial Cities: A Political Perspective
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2013
- Frontmatter
- Reflecting on German-Jewish History
- Part I The Legacy of the Middle Ages: Jewish Cultural Identity and the Price of Exclusiveness
- Part II The Social and Economic Structure of German Jewry from the Fifteenth through the Eighteenth Centuries
- Part III Jewish-Gentile Contacts and Relations in the Pre-Emancipation Period
- Part IV Representations of German Jewry Images, Prejudices, and Ideas
- Part V The Pattern of Authority and the Limits of Toleration: The Case of German Jewry
- 15 German Territorial Princes and the Jews
- 16 Jews in Ecclesiastical Territories of the Holy Roman Empire
- 17 Jews in the Imperial Cities: A Political Perspective
- 18 Germans with a Difference? The Jews of the Holy Roman Empire during the Early Modern Era - A Comment
- Part VI Through the Looking Glass: Four Perspectives on German-Jewish History
- Index
Summary
The two hundred years from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century represented in some ways the nadir of Jewish life in the imperial cities of Germany. The great Jewish communities that had existed in so many of these cities in the Middle Ages had mostly disappeared. By 1550, the Jews had long since been expelled from Augsburg, Colmar, Cologne, Heilbronn, Lindau, Nördlingen, Nuremberg, Ravensburg, Regensburg, Rothenburg, Strasbourg, Ulm, and a host of smaller imperial cities. Nor was the wave of successful expulsions over by then: the Jews were expelled from Dortmund in 1596 and from Aachen in 1629. Increasingly, as is well known, Jewish life in Germany was centered in towns or villages of the territorial states.
But Jewish life was not entirely extinguished in the imperial cities. Major Jewish communities survived, during the early modern period, in Frankfurt, Worms, and Friedberg. A significant Jewish community - or rather, Jewish communities - emerged in Hamburg in the course of the seventeenth century. Smaller Jewish communities survived in Goslar, Speyer, and Wetzlar. By the seventeenth century, Jews began to return to some of the imperial cities from which they had been expelled, notably Regensburg. In many other cities, Jews were familiar as day visitors or temporary inhabitants in time of war.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- In and out of the GhettoJewish-Gentile Relations in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany, pp. 275 - 288Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995
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