The Jewess of Toledo (novel)
The Jewess of Toledo is a historical novel by Lion Feuchtwanger , which was also published in Germany under the title Spanish Ballad . Feuchtwanger describes the fate of the Jewish merchant Jehuda Ibn Esra and his beautiful daughter Raquel in Spain in the 12th century, when King Alfonso VIII of Castile fought against the Moors , which at that time still ruled large parts of the Iberian Peninsula south of the Tagus .
action
Many Jews of Andalusia had to adopt the Muslim faith in the 12th century if they did not want to emigrate; so did Ibrahim, a wealthy merchant from Seville . When he finally had the opportunity to return to the old faith at the age of 55, he left his secure position as advisor to the emir , broke all bridges behind him and entered the service of the Castilian king under the name of his fathers as Yehuda Ibn Esra Alfonso, who is forced to an armistice by treaties , but is still preparing the war against the emir.
Jehuda believes that, as a fundraiser and privy councilor, he can have a dampening effect on Alfonso's lust for war. He acquires the dilapidated Castillo of his ancestors in Toledo , which the influential knights de Castro had seized years ago. Alfonso drove them out of Toledo, but they keep pushing forward to Castile because they think they are safe under the protection of the neighboring kingdom of Aragon . One of the two Castro brothers is killed in a skirmish ; the war against the related Aragon can only be prevented with great difficulty.
In the meantime, the economy of the country, which had been depressed since Alfonso's last defeat by the Emir of Seville, is flourishing again thanks to Yehuda's prudent conduct. Alfonso has his Galiana summer residence restored in the Moorish style. During the final inspection with Jehuda, he orders that Raquel, Jehuda's extremely beautiful daughter, should live there as his concubine. Yehuda is faced with the choice of either complying with the king's request or fleeing with his family. Raquel confirms his decision to stay.
In the time that followed, King Alfonso was completely enchanted by the Jewish woman who was popularly known as Fermosa, the beautiful. He lives with her in seclusion in the Galiana and forgets his wife Eleanor over this love affair. She, a daughter of King Henry II of England , would rather see her husband in the field so that he might forget the Jewess. She promises the young King Pedro of Aragon a military alliance with Castile and suggests that some kind of penance for the killed Castro would be conceivable, perhaps even in the form of a return of the Castillo to his bereaved brother.
Shortly after Raquel gave his son Alfonsus his life, news of the sudden death of Henry II arrives, through whose clever policy a campaign has hitherto been prevented. When his son Richard sets out with an army of crusaders, the Hispanic princes will no longer have any pretext to keep quiet against the Moors. Alfonso rushes to Burgos to prepare for war with Aragon and Yehuda has to swear to him that Alfonso's son will not be circumcised in any case during his absence. In the closed in Burgos contracts Alfonso obliged to wait with acts of war against the Muslims until he is called of Aragon to help because he can not break his truce with the emir, not the army of the mighty Caliph Jakub Almansur on the plan to call.
While the king is absent, Jehuda and Raquel have a friend secretly take the boy out of the Galiana and take him to safety. This does not break the oath, but a Christian baptism, as Alfonso wanted, but impossible. Alfonso is furious on his return, he leaves Raquel in anger and has the Muslim ambassadors in Toledo, who still want to mediate peacefully, roughly dealt with. He exuberantly challenges the caliph, who sets off from Fez with a huge army for Seville. In the battle of Alarcos the Christian knights succumb to the Muslim army. Toledo is inundated with refugees. Rumors soon spread that the Jews had betrayed Christian war plans to the Muslims. Yehuda now lives with Raquel in the Galiana; they believe they are safer from persecutors in the king's castle. The anger of the mob is initially directed against Jehudas Castillo, which is completely devastated. Castro receives the task of protecting the Jews from the crafty Queen Eleanor, but he should rather abandon some than endanger everyone. Castro interprets this as a request to take action against Jehuda, penetrates with his people in the Galiana and kills Jehuda. Raquel is also murdered.
Due to the painful defeat that brought his country to the brink of the abyss and the loss of his beloved, King Alfonso changed and, in old age, led his country to new prosperity in the spirit of Jehudah. The reconquest of the southern Iberian Peninsula remains his goal.
background
Feuchtwanger places his novel in the context of the Reconquista , the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula, whereby the historical background is on the whole correctly reproduced (for the title character, cf. Rahel la Fermosa ). The sometimes highly complicated and opaque family and military relationships between the Iberian royal families are understandably generously dealt with by him. So are z. For example, some scenes concerning the young "King Pedro of Aragon" can be clearly attributed to the son and heir of Ferdinand II of Leon, Alfonso IX.
The material has already been treated in literary terms in the past: The most important examples here would be Franz Grillparzer's historical stage play Die Jüdin von Toledo (1855) and Lope de Vegas Las paces de los Reyos y Judía de Toledo (1617), on which Grillparzer's play is based, as well as Luis de Ulloa's poem Raquel (1650).
review
The Jewess of Toledo was Feuchtwanger's penultimate novel and brought it back thematically to the eventful history of Judaism, the most recent events of which he had experienced firsthand as a German Jew . There are numerous parallels between the figures of Raquel, Fermosa , but above all their father, the merchant Jehuda Ibn Esra, and the figure of Joseph Suss Oppenheimer from Feuchtwanger's novel Jud Suss . There are also intersections with the figure of Flavius Josephus , the protagonist of Feuchtwanger's Josephus trilogy .
What these figures have in common is that they walk the tightrope between religious tradition and cosmopolitan awakening, as well as their Jewish culture in the diaspora and a latently or openly anti-Jewish society that surrounds them. In addition, the protagonists are concerned with the philosophical question of how humans should behave in the world: actively acting or contemplatively renouncing.
The resulting conflicts are carried out on different levels. On the one hand, the inner conflicts of the protagonists, who are in constant conflict and always critically assess their actions and work. On the other hand, the conflicts with friends, enemies and friend-enemies. And finally, the external, uninfluenceable processes that contribute significantly to the rise and fall of the protagonists.
As a Jewish merchant, Jehuda Ibn Esra becomes the treasurer of the Christian Castilian king Alfonso, although he is aware that the Jews are both religiously and politically ostracized in Christian Spain. He is also aware that as a target of anti-Jewish Christians he is also endangering his family. As ambivalent and yet interwoven as Alfonso's respect and dislike for the enterprising Ibn Esra are, so are Yehuda's motives that seem to contradict one another and yet are inseparable from one another. His thirst for action, his thirst for fame and his selfless, every danger defying help for fellow believers are equally what drives him. The awareness of an approaching catastrophe makes Jehuda doubt again and again, but in the end he decides to act. He goes the way to the foreseen end.
The love affair between Raquel and Alfonso is of a similar character. Torn back and forth between burning love and strangeness, affection and rejection, the lovers go again and again the way of the denied and the not tolerated, and thus with a seeing eye into ruin. As in Feuchtwanger's other comparable novels, the protagonists, Jehuda and Raquel, sum up their work and actions before their end without the conviction that they have done everything right, but also without remorse. The question of the correctness of their actions takes a back seat, the contradictory is accepted as human.
Adaptations
In 2008, a ballet adaptation of the piece by Youri Vàmos was performed at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein . The music for this was composed by Irmin Schmidt .
A theater adaptation of Kristo Šagor 's novel was premiered at the Landesbühne Niedersachsen Nord in 2012 . The director was Alexander Schilling .
expenditure
- Spanish ballad. Novel. Rowohlt, Hamburg 1955.
- The Jewess of Toledo. Construction, Berlin 1955.
- Construction paperback: 11th edition 2008, ISBN 978-3-7466-5638-0
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Review by Jens Fischer (May 7, 2012): Jugendliches Mittelalterstück. In: The German Stage ( http://www.die-deutsche-buehne.de/Kurzkritiken/Schauspiel/Sagor+Juedin+von+Toledo/Jugendliches+Mittelalterstueck )