Die Sprache der Auricher Juden: Zur Rekonstruktion westjiddischer Sprachreste in Ostfriesland. (Jüdische Kultur, 16) by Gertrud Reershemius

Abstract

MLR, 104.2, 2009 585 counter-argument much further than has hitherto been thought necessary. She ar gues that,farfrombeing a tool of the regime, the comedia of the corrales had proved, well before Lope's death, impossible to eliminate or even to control. Campbell goes so faras to suggest thatTirso could actually count himself unlucky tobe exiled by the Juntade Reformacion, while even thispowerful body failed to alter thenature or tra jectory of the comedia. Ultimately, it was simply too popular, and thispopularity, as Campbell so ably demonstrates, iswhat won itboth itspower and its independence. Indeed, popularity is the notion that structures this study, forCampbell has de liberately sought out those authors of the second generation of comedia dramatists, those of the so-called age of Calderon, whose popularity is confirmed by the sheer weight of publication theirplays enjoyed once initial runs in the theatreswere over. By this criterion, itwould appear that the four playwrights most appreciated in the second half of the seventeenth centurywere Calderon himself, Rojas Zorrilla, Matos Fragoso, and Diamante. Lope's philosophy, sketched in theArte nuevo, was to give thepublic what it wanted, and of course honour was a safebet: it would always excite interestand get the audience into the corrales and initiallyon your side. IfCampbell is right,hemight well have gone on to say thatkingship had a similar effect.Camp bell merely comments, judiciously, that the plays of her four playwrights seemed calculated to satisfya thematic demand in the Spanish capital between roughly 1630 and 1680. The narrative of the struggle between the regime and the comedia is as amusing as it is absorbing; and once it is disposed of,Campbell proceeds to study kingship inher chosen dramatists, demonstrating with impressive scholarship that, with the fall ofOlivares, the comedia could and did go on to present an even more directly critical view of kings. In the second half of her book Campbell is in a posi tion toblow away the time-honoured notion of the comedia as supporting absolutist monarchy. She does this in a series of analyses of plays written by her four drama tists,beginning with Calderon's Saber del mal y del bien (1636) and ending with Diamante's Irpor el riesgo a la dicha (1674). Finally, she demonstrates how themati cally sensitivewere her chosen dramatists to thehard realities of political change, so that it isno surprise, forexample, todiscover after thedeath of Philip IV a pervading concern with the issue of royal succession early in the age ofCharles theBewitched. University of Birmingham R. j. Oakley Die Sprache der Auricher Juden: Zur Rekonstruktion westjiddischer Sprachreste in Ostfriesland. By Gertrud Reershemius. (Judische Kultur, 16)Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. 2007. 247 pp. 68. ISBN 978-3-447-05617-5. With this book, Gertrud Reershemius makes a welcome contribution to the dis covery ofWestern Yiddish remnants and the study of German Landjuden in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Investigating the language and history of Jews in the East Frisian town of Aurich, which was home to a Jewish community from themid-seventeenth century until declared 'judenrein' inApril 1940, she sets out fourmain claims. First, historical multilingualism inEast Frisia comprised not only Dutch, Frisian, Low German and Standard German but also Yiddish. Second, the 586 Reviews Yiddish variety spoken inAurich was a form ofNorthwestern Yiddish, as suggested by the phonological and lexical correspondences with Dutch Yiddish. Third, the use of Yiddish in Aurich persisted well into the twentieth century; thus Aurich Yiddish resisted longer the obsolescence process which engulfedWestern Yiddish in thenineteenth century.Yiddish language maintenance and loyalty among Aurich Jewswas probably due to the rural character and social fabric of the community, which was dominated by small merchants living 'das Leben des Kleinen Mannes' (p- 79)> as well as the structural distance between Yiddish, cognate to East Central German and Bavarian, and Low German as the surrounding non-Jewish and domi nant spoken language inAurich. Fourth, in its linguistic development theYiddish variety inAurich underwent a gradual shiftfrom a Jewish from the peasantry) were seldom allowed tomarry and thereforepresented amajor unsettling factor to sexual stability in European society.His solution was to allow marriages but to require the state to provide for the offspring, in particular to prepare...