Juden im Aufbruch: Zur Sozialgeschichte einer Minderheit im Saar-Mosel-Raum um 1800 (review)

Abstract

Book Reviews 143 Juden im Autbruch: Zur Sozialgeschichte einer Minderheit im Saar-Mosel-Raum um 1800, by Cilli Kasper-Holtkottes. Hannover: Verlag Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1996 (Forsehungen zur Gesehiehte der Juden, volume 3, eds. Helmut Castritius, Alfred Haverkamp, Franz Irsigler, and Stefi Jersch-Wenzel) XIV. 494 pp. DM 96. The present philosophical dissertation prompted and directed by Wolfgang Schieder at Cologne enters new academic territory in numerous respects. It occupies itselfon the one hand with the history of the Jews in a geographical region that was exposed to a double political and societal influence because of its physical location between German and French cultural regions. On the other hand, it is concerned with an epoch-ending period that encompassed the Ancien Regime as well as the first decades ofthe Bourgeois Age. The appearances of crisis and upheaval are equally addressed by the topic. The expansive approach allows the author to preserve the normal lines of demarcation between urban and rural Jewry, in order to project better the tapestry of Jewish life within the framework of an environment controlled by Gentiles. This book is about the preconditions, background, side effects, and consequences of Emancipation for the Jews in the area examined, particularly the shifts in mentality as well as the changes in social and economic living conditions. It is known that the Ashkenazic Jews in the Saar-Mosel region, as in most other central European areas, were subject to concrete territorial authority as dependents in a relation ofprotection; despite the initial discussion of the Enlightenment, the Jews were able to secure legal and economic equality in only a few cases. This changed after 1789 with the French Revolution; the Emancipation Decree of the French National Assembly was very soon supported by the revolutionary groups in the western regions of the Old Empire (1801 in the Saar-Mosel region). At least by 1806 (before the Napoleonic Deeret Infame came into effect) a formal legal equality with Christian state citizens was achieved. The author illustrates this development from the outset through a careful and broadly conceived historical method, intensively oriented toward original sources. She provides information about the Enlightenment discussion of the eighteenth century, about the demographic rates and legal conditions ofthe time, about the living conditions ofthe Jews in Kurtrier, in the principality ofNassau-Saarbriicken and in other smaller dominions of the region. Cattle market and commercial business are represented in detail, just as the "Judenpolitik" of the princes and lords is also explained. Through an investigation of exact statistical values-from tax loads to protection money and Leibzollen-the author is able to create a reliable foundation that admits evidence for the altogether depressed situation ofthe rural and urban Jews. An abundance of details is offered, so that the reader who is not dependent on commentary may form his/her own picture; several drawn conclusions, for example, that "the protection money was not highly disproportionate" (p. 98), are not problematic in this regard. 144 SHOFAR Summer 1998 Vol. 16, No.4 The new conditions under French authority since 1794 are also described by the author in detail. She discusses the problems oflegal, economic and social restructuring ofthe Jewish population ofthe Saar departements and in particular detail the actual end of the Emancipation of the Jews under Napoleonic rule: in particular, the practice of awarding trade licenses to Jews, the integration in a new consistory constitution, the advancement ofthe idea ofeducating the Jews to be "better" people, and also the hatred of the Jews by the non-Jewish population that was already present before Napoleonic rule, so that the idea of an equal status ofstate citizenship for Jews and Christians could not be carried through. Still, however, the French laws brought about a change of thinking for the Jews. The equality of the French Revolution legislation which lasted only a few years made an indelible impression on the Jews; it recognizably strengthened their self-consciousness and prompted them to self-conscious behavior. Despite this, however, their living condition, in social and economic terms, changed only insignificantly. Legal emancipation mobilized wide and open opposition from a large part ofthe non-Jewish population, so that in the end social integration and the hoped-for equality...