Stewards of the City?

Abstract

This chapter uses Kraków as a case study. It examines Jewish participation in local government in the second half of the nineteenth century. Jews represented over 30 per cent of the town's inhabitants, and the community was overwhelmingly Orthodox. From the early nineteenth century there began to develop a progressive group, interested in modernising ritual and acculturation. By the mid-1860s these two forms of Jewish identity were in sharp conflict. The chapter first explores the legal basis for municipal self-government and its election procedures. It then reviews Jewish participation in municipal elections and changes in political mobilisation and the ideology of the Jews elected to the city council, followed by an analysis of their activities, distinguishing between interventions of general municipal concern and specifically Jewish ones. A point of interest is the presence of municipal officials in the Jewish district of Kazimierz. Finally, the chapter discusses antisemitism in the municipal arena.