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Monograph Awarded the Arno Lustiger Prize 2019 Jews Before the Frankfurt Penal Court, 1780-1814: Non-Unity in Jewish History At the crossroads of modern German history, Jewish studies, and gender studies, this book is based on the author’s PhD thesis in history. It explores both the treatment of Jews by the Christian authoritarian criminal jurisdiction at the turn of the 19th century and Jewish agency within the criminal justice system. This study is the first of its kind to discuss this issue systematically and praxeologically through qualitative analysis. It looks at the criminalization of Jews between 1780 and 1814 within penal and regulatory law, as well as within specific legislation pertaining to Jews and judicial praxis. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative analyses of selected cases of theft, brawl, and violence makes it possible to trace the ambivalent status of Jews in the law within judicial praxis. This contribution to the history of Jewish deviance around 1800, as well as to the history of Jewish daily and cultural life and Jewish gender relations, addresses Jewish history as a multi-perspective narrative of interwoven relations, analyzing both intra-Jewish encounters and those between Jews and Gentiles. The author elaborates on how Jewish women and men came before the court, how they acted there, and along which lines lawyers and judges made their cases and assessed penalties, respectively. Drawing on intersectional analyses of selected cases, she illuminates “Jewish maleness(es), honor, and violence” and “gender, menial relations, and Jewish households” as areas of conflict. By doing so, she demonstrates the interplay between penal law and juridical factors on one side and the respective offenders’ social and legal status on the other, revealing the impact interlocking categories of difference, such as Jewishness, resident status, social status, gender, and reputation, had on the treatment and the agency of Jews in court. The book comprises five chapters: an introduction providing detailed considerations on the study’s methodological and conceptual framework (Chapter 1), three main chapters (Chapters 2-4), and a summary (Chapter 5). The second chapter deals with the initial structural configuration. It analyzes the basic social and legal conditions Jews lived with in the imperial City of Frankfurt and during the Dalberg period, as well as Frankfurt criminal jurisdiction during the era of the Holy Roman Empire, under Dalberg, and during the era of the Grand Duchy of Frankfurt. It outlines the respective institutions, procedures, actors, and criminal-law norms of the times, as well as the changes in legal policy under Dalberg for Frankfurt’s Jews and in the area of criminal justice. The second part of this chapter deals with the prosecution of Jewish delinquency before the Frankfurt Criminal Court by presenting the relevant areas of crime, locating them quantitatively, and using case examples from the period under investigation (1780-1814). In the first section, the author presents her findings on officially registered Jewish property delinquency. The next section deals with physical violence. Finally, the author discusses both the results of this overview and its limitations for answering the questions at the heart of her analysis. The third chapter focuses on the field of conflict: “Jewish masculinity, honor, and physical violence in pre-emancipatory Ashkenaz.” Its first section, entitled “Horizons of interpretation,” successively develops the three key categories – honor, masculinity, and violence – while also highlighting their specific manifestations within the Jewish community as historically descriptive and analytical categories. By doing so, the book focuses on the legal and normative regulation of offenses relevant to this area of conflict, as well as their 2 criminal prosecution. After discussing conceptual reflections on Jewish and non-Jewish honor as a “fundamental principle of the entire estate-based society” (van Dülmen), the author provides methodological-theoretical reflections on Connell’s model of “hegemonic masculinity.” Against this backdrop, she outlines the question of male honor en general and the honor of Jewish men in particular, and subsequently profiles “violence” as an analytical category. The study then investigates the standardization and sanctioning of fights, assaults, and violent conflicts of honor in Frankfurt during the Early Modern period and the “Saddle period” (1750-1850). This leads to an overview of physical conflicts and brawls before the Interrogation Office with regard to gender, religion, and foreign status. On this basis, the author analyzes two criminal trials concerning fights in detail. Finally, the investigation of both the historical construction of the offense of rape and the prosecution’s intensity in targeting such offenses in Frankfurt, supported by a microanalysis of the Windmühl case (1808), initiates a detailed reflection on the field of sexualized violence. Three case studies were chosen to examine the field of conflict “Jewish masculinity, honor, and physical violence”: two inner-Jewish conflicts and one perpetrator/victim constellation involving both Jews and Gentiles. The first two cases were physical conflicts between Jewish men that took place in the late 18th century. In the pub fight, several Jewish servants with foreign status fought each other outside the Judengasse, while the street fight took place inside the Judengasse and resulted from violent conflicts between local “protected Jews” (“Schutzjuden”) and their sons. In both cases, male honor plays a central role, first, as the honor of a Jewish man, and second, as the honor of a family and a business. An overview of the social profile of Jewish servants in Frankfurt’s criminal records in terms of activities, age, origin, years of service, socio-economic status, offenses and punishments serves as the basis for the case study on Jewish servants, while the case analysis on protected Jews follows a qualitative analysis of further criminal acts involving violent conflicts. The third case seems to fall out of the system in relation to the offense and the perpetrator/victim constellation because it involves Heyum Windmühl, a young Jewish man on trial for sexualized violence against a Christian bourgeois girl child. Nevertheless, the Windmühl case (1808) is an integral part of this chapter, as honor played a significant role with the Jewish delinquent, as well as with the girl, due to the specific crime construction and perpetrator/victim constellation. Moreover, the accusation of having raped a “Christian virgin” relates to one of the most powerful motifs in the history of hostility toward Jews: the Jud Süß motif. In the Windmühl case, the defendant was a protected Jew’s son who – compared with servants – was less marginalized within the community’s hierarchy. However, since his disability and poverty intersected with his relatively secure residence status, he can be considered another example of marginalized masculinity. Finally, the case provides critical insight into the criminal practice of the “primatial state” (“Primatialstaat”). Thematically focusing on the Jewish house as a field of conflict, the fourth chapter explores the relationship between gender and servant relationships, and analyzes conflict situations involving maids. At the heart of this chapter are maidservants and (to a lesser extent) widows of traders because their stories epitomize Jewish women’s lives and their interactions with the justice system, mentioned in Frankfurt’s criminal records during the period examined. In comparison, wives and daughters of protected Jews only witnessed and reported crimes. For the most part, these case studies comprised property offenses, although one of the cases, the Sarche case (1809), was prompted based on suspicion of “abortion.” Like the previous chapter, this one starts with a (re-)construction of the horizons of interpretation. On the basis of her reflections on the house, the household, and the model of the open house, the author can determine whether and to what extent Jewish houses differed from non-Jewish ones. Outlining the particular relevance of house and family in Judaism, she suggests that during the studied period, the “Jewish house” simultaneously was more open 3 and more closed than the non-Jewish one. Further differences with non-Jewish houses resulted from the difficulty in distinguishing between relatives and (regular) house residents unquestionably and from the co-presence of the paterfamilias who, on average, was less present in the house than their non-Jewish counterpart due to Jews’ higher mobility. The author then describes central elements of Jewish gender arrangements in early modern and pre-emancipatory Ashkenaz. This is the starting point for exposing the ambivalent positions of Jewish housemothers and reflecting on the position of women in (rabbinical) Judaism at that time. Furthermore, by analyzing an exemplary conflict from her sample, the author also can explore the religious function held by maidservants. The question of women’s social positions in the house and their tasks for taking care of the household can be answered by examining several conflicts involving Jewish trading women, also found in Frankfurt’s criminal records. With the main focus on the working and living conditions of servants, the study discloses the legal and normative restrictions imposed by the “legislation on servants” (“Gesinderecht”) in early modern Frankfurt and during the Dalberg period. Arguing that the labels “servant” and “maid,” used in Frankfurt’s criminal records and in other legal sources, were used as a legal category to describe an extremely heterogeneous social group, the author presents an overview of the social profiles of Jewish maidservants in Frankfurt’s criminal records in terms of origin, field of activity, age, marital status, children, years of service, fields of crime represented and sentences imposed on them. Finally, she analyzes the construction of crimes and the prosecution’s intensity in targeting “house theft,” which manifested the complexity of servants’ lives and working conditions in the most obvious way and, therefore, was the characteristic offense that these servants committed. This reconstruction of contexts allows the author to carry on three microanalyses of trials against Jewish maidservants charged with illegitimate enrichment. The criminal trials selected as case studies concern intra-Jewish conflicts, as well as a crime committed jointly by two Jewish maidservants and a former Christian servant. They make it possible to examine the three historical periods covered in this study: the time of the imperial city based on the treatment of intra-Jewish house theft before the Interrogation Office (1779/1780), the time of the “primatial state” based on a case involving Jewish maidservants on the handling of “abortion of children” and “betray for money” (1809), and the time of the Grand Duchy, based on the sentence handed down for the theft of a considerable sum of money (1812). As in the previous chapter, the first two cases took place in the Judengasse, whereas the third case happened outside the Judengasse, in a Jewish house on the Zeil, after the ghetto was torn down. The first and third cases show clear parallels with regard to the construction of the offense (theft from an employer) and the scene (Jewish houses). Their microanalyses show very clearly that criminal trials for house theft offer many instructive insights into the house. Both cases exemplify the connection between gender, servant status, marital status, and property delinquency. In addition, the Sarle case of domestic theft (1779) demonstrates significant efforts to self-regulate intra-Jewish conflicts and attempts at “infrajustice”. On the other hand, the Sarche case (1809) shows interactions between the Jewish community and the authorities concerning conflict management. The detailed analysis of this case also sheds light on the characteristic difficulties, conflicts, and practices of Jewish “protected relatives” (“Schutzverwandte”) in the areas of sexuality and illegitimate pregnancies, and makes it possible to interpret the treatment of these conflicts by Christian and Jewish authorities against the backdrop of the institutional changes taking place during the Dalberg period. Finally, the microanalysis of the trial against Helena and Sophie (1812-1815) exemplifies a criminal trial from the 700 days of legal equality for Frankfurt’s Jews. This case makes it possible to discuss the simultaneity of the old and the new, not only from a criminal and institutional perspective, but also on a level that reveals to what extent working and living conditions had evolved in a particularly well-off bourgeois Jewish household of the early 19th 4 century. The trial file is an exceptional find, as it contains personal letters from a Christian servant and his family to their Jewish cook Helena. These sources unveil the close relationship between a Jewish woman and a Christian family. The book concludes with an overall summary (Chapter 5) that provides a synthesis of reflections on the questions elicited in this study and their possible answers. Overall, the book shows that focusing on differences among Jews prevents researchers from neglecting or, conversely, overestimating the discrimination, repression, and persecution that they experienced. It also provides a better estimation of their modes of conflict regulation and and their “uses of justice” (“Justiznutzung”). Thus, an intersectional approach makes it possible to revisit narratives of progress and linear modernization. The study reevaluates a common narrative that saw overall improvement in living conditions among Frankfurt’s Jews in the Napoleonic era after the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. According to this narrative, the status of Jews had improved slowly, but steadily, finally resulting in “full equality.” However, the author emphasizes that only “protected Jews” became Frankfurt citizens in 1811 and 1812, and that no matter how acculturated they might have been, the domestic servants of “protected Jews” remained excluded from emancipation. In 1806, Frankfurt imposed even more restrictions on the right to marry and settle down for Jewish servants with immigration status. “Equal citizen rights” for all Jews in Frankfurt did not exist at this time, even though the use of legal labels applicable to Jews changed. The court abandoned anti-Jewish collective labels in favor of more individualized labels that defined Jewishness as a religious attribute, e.g., replacing the label “trading Jew” (“Handelsjude”) with the formulation “tradesman of Jewish religion.” However, depending on gender and social status, these collective labels remained in use in conflict fields coded as anti-Jewish, even during the Grand Duchy era. From the perspective of the Jewish minority, the transition period between the last years of the imperial city and the Napoleonic era as a whole was extremely ambivalent. This perspective provides a new answer to the “old question” of whether Napoleon’s establishment of the Rhenish Confederation constituted a continuation of, or a break with, the Holy Roman Empire. A detailed intersectional historical analysis of Jewish experiences with penal justice supports the continuity thesis that becomes even more obvious in the case of Jewish servants with immigration status. While Jewish people, in fact, have a history as Jews, there was and still is no unity in Jewish history. Table of contents I. Introduction 1. Topic, initial problem, fundamental questions 2. Historical output configuration 3. Periodization and area of investigation 3.1 Starting and finishing points of the study 3.2 Frankfurt am Main as an area of study 4. State of research 5. Frankfurt criminal records as sources 6. Methodological approach and objectives of the study 6.1 The agency problem: theoretical approach and practical findings 6.2 Everyday history from the inside: approach and concept of everyday history 6.3 Gender relations, gender, and Jewishness as analytical categories: intersectionality as conceptual metaphor 5 7. Methods and selection of microanalyses 8. Procedure II. Starting points 1. Structural output configuration 1.1 The ambivalent legal status of Jews as a religious minority in the Holy Roman Empire and the imperial City of Frankfurt 1.2 Between subjects, discrimination, and criminalization: the standardization of Jewish existence in Frankfurt’s Judenstättigkeit of 1616 and Frankfurt’s order legislation (“policey” regulations) 1.3 Frankfurt criminal justice during the imperial City period: institutions and actors, criminal-law norms, and procedures 1.4 Continuities and reforms of criminal justice and the “Legislation on Jews” during the Dalberg period and the Grand Duchy period (1806-1814) 2. The prosecution of Jewish delinquency before the Frankfurt Criminal Court (1779-1814): an overview of offenses, actors, and penalties 2.1 Overview of Jewish delinquency in Frankfurt’s criminal records (1779-1814) 2.2 Results and limits of the overview: What constitutes Jewish delinquency according to Frankfurt’s criminal records? III. Jewish masculinity, honor, and physical violence in pre-emancipatory Ashkenaz 1. Horizons of interpretation 1.1 What is the difference between Jewish and non-Jewish honor? Reflections on a “fundamental principle of the entire estate-based society” (Richard van Dülmen) 1.2 Male honor and the honor of Jewish men 1.3 Connell’s model of hegemonic masculinity and violence as an analytical category 1.4 The official standardization and sanctioning of brawl, assault, and other violent conflicts of honor in early modern Frankfurt 1.5 Physical insults and violent conflicts of honor before the Frankfurt Criminal Court along gender, religion, and alien-status lines 2. The social profile of Jewish servants in Frankfurt’s criminal records (1780-1814) 3. Honor as a Jew in the context of marginalized masculinity: the servants Lazarus, Michel, and Mayer against Gabriel and Solomon with regard to a pub brawl (1787/88) 3.1 Chronological overview 3.2 Everyday relationships and conflict constellations of Jewish servants 4. Violent conflicts of local “protected Jews” (“Schutzjuden”) and “protected relatives” (“Schutzverwandte”) 5. Family honor, business honor, and Jewish masculinity: the street-fight case Amschel v. Amschel (1780-83) 5.1 Chronological overview 5.2 The Jewish actors and their family-conflict constellation 5.3 Negotiating the law in everyday judicial life: interaction between Christian authorities and the legal initiatives of “protected Jews” 5.4 Conclusion 6 6. “Protected Jew’s son” (“Schutzjudensohn”) Heyum with regard to stupri violenti attentati (1808): Hostility toward Jews and/or sexualized violence against a 7-year-old girl? 6.1 Fornication, sodomy, Jewish fornication 6.2 Chronology of criminal proceedings 6.3 Non-Jewish actors 6.4 Jewish actors 6.5 Courts, lawyers, and doctors 6.6 Jewishness as a way of life and a category of knowledge 6.7 Simultaneities and changes in criminal practice 6.8 Conclusion IV. Jewish houses, life, and working conditions of servants, and the illegitimate enrichment of maidservants 1. Horizons of interpretation 1.1 Reflections on the concepts of “house,” “household,” and “open house” 1.2 How do Jewish houses differ from Christian houses? 1.3 “Same same but different”: gender arrangements and positions with regard to religious practice, age of marriage, matchmaking, marriage contracts, and divorce 1.4 From the ambivalent position of women in rabbinic Judaism to the importance of maidservants for religious practice and for the honor of the house in pre-emancipatory Ashkenaz 1.5 Conflicts and conflict constellations of Jewish widows of merchants in Frankfurt's criminal records: 1780-1814 1.6 “Law on servants” (“Gesinderecht”) in early modern Frankfurt and during the Dalberg period 1.7 One legal label for a heterogeneous social group: the status of Jewish servants and maids in pre-emancipatory continental Europe 1.8 The social profile of Jewish maidservants in Frankfurt’s criminal records (1780-1814) 1.9 House theft: construction of the offense and intensity of its prosecution 2. Failed marriage plans: interaction between intra-Jewish and Christian conflict regulation in the house theft trial of Maid Sarle (1779) 2.1 Chronological analysis of conflict and trial phases 2.2 Everyday working life and working conditions of a maid in the Judengasse in Frankfurt around 1780 2.3 Everyday history from within: Jewish and Christian conflict management 2.4 Conclusion 3. Everyday knowledge about female bodies and legal affairs: the maid Sara Abraham with regard to “abortion of children” and “betray for money” (“Geldprellerei”) (1809) 3.1 Abortion: construction of the crime, intensity of its prosecution, and problem constellations in Frankfurt 3.2 Chronology of criminal proceedings 3.3 Jewish actors 3.4 Non-Jewish actors 3.5 Conclusion 4. Relations between Christian and Jewish servants: Helena, Sophia, and Justus with regard to money theft (1812-1815) 4.1 Chronology of the criminal proceedings 7 4.2 Restrictive legislation on marriages between servants and the consequences of the marriage prohibition between Jews and Gentiles 4.3 Jewish living and everyday conditions during the Grand Duchy period 4.4 Contacts and relations between Jews and Gentiles 4.5 The treatment of Jewish actors by Christian authorities and Jewish agency in court 4.6 Conclusion V. Conclusion 1. Contribution to a history of deviant Jewish behavior that was labeled, prosecuted, and punished as criminal around 1800 2. Everyday, cultural, and gender history of Jews in Frankfurt around 1800 2.1 Everyday history from within 2.2 Everyday Jewish practices and relations beyond the courts 3. Levels of intersectionality: criminalization, labeling, criminal practices, use of justice and agency 4 Non-unity in Jewish history VI Appendices 1. Abbreviations 2. Archives and repertories 3. Printed sources, reprints, older reference works, and literature until 1933 4. Research literature