Rural Jewry
Rural Judges were corporate Jewish self-governing organizations in the territories of the Holy Roman Empire during the early modern period .
development
One reason for the emergence of rural Jews was the expulsion of the Jews from the cities and their scattered settlement in the countryside. Regular communities could usually not exist there. External pressure forced associations to maintain the Jewish identity. In a way, they continued the irregular meetings of rabbis and representatives of the communities in the Middle Ages .
The first beginnings go back to the middle of the 15th century in the Rhineland and Franconia. Some of these disappeared again as a result of migration movements. Its spread throughout the empire was in the second half of the 16th and first half of the 17th centuries. Jewish self-organization became even more territorial after Reich-wide approaches failed, for example in connection with the so-called Frankfurt rabbinical conspiracy.
The aim was to maintain a certain autonomy vis-à-vis the sovereigns but also vis-à-vis other Jewish groups outside their own territory. Especially in smaller territories, Judaism was often congruent with the religious rural community. It was therefore important to raise the money for common facilities such as a cemetery or the rabbis' salaries.
The sovereigns had an interest in the formation of rural Jews. Their tight organization gave the princes an effective instrument for controlling the Jews in their area. The main purpose of the Jews was to collect the taxes from the sovereigns. The sovereigns or their court chambers informed the Jews of the total amount of the taxes. The corporations had to divide up the sum and collect it. Various functionaries such as the appraisers, who were responsible for assigning the Jews to the individual tax brackets, or the collectors who collected the taxes, were responsible for this. Out of self-interest, the princes also contributed to the fact that the Jews developed into compulsory corporations of all Jews in an area. Between 1661 and 1821 there were rural Jews in about thirty areas of the empire.
construction
The protective Jews recognized by the respective authorities in the territories had to belong to such a corporation. The individuals belonged to Judaism directly and not indirectly through the local communities. Exceptions were Jews who lived in the area of aristocratic subordinates. Larger Jewish communities were often outside the rural Jewish community. Others like Mannheim or Fürth developed a special position in these.
In religious terms, the regional rabbis or comparable religious leaders were at the forefront. Depending on their size, they could have other rabbis among them. In addition, there were cult personnel in the broadest sense, from cantors to slaughterers . The non-religious head of the corporation were the Jewish chiefs, Jewish predecessors, or chief chiefs or chief predecessors. These often had a very far-reaching influence and were able to regulate religious, social and economic life.
Oppositional movements occurred on various occasions, for example when there was abuse of office. The ruler was able to suppress this usually with the consent of the sovereign and the regional rabbi by imposing fines or banning. Since the middle of the 18th century, the opposition succeeded more frequently in limiting the power of the chiefs. The rulers, however, also carried a great risk. With their wealth they were liable for the tax payments of all Jews.
Often the head of rural Jews was the court Jew appointed by the sovereign . He was mostly also an advocate for the Jews at court. In some cases, the position of head of the family remained in the hands of one family for generations. The elders and assessors stood by the rulers. There were also various functionaries such as appraisers, land clerks, country messengers and similar people. State rabbis, land clerks and land messengers were paid.
Diets
In a certain way, the institution of rural Jews was influenced by the model of the estates . The highest body was the state parliaments. The heads of the Jewish families were represented in the state parliaments. Among them were the widows in the Duchy of Cleves . These assemblies met at different intervals, sometimes depending on changes in the tax demands of the sovereigns, about every three or five years. The right to vote in Prussia and elsewhere was linked to income as a three-class right to vote .
At the provincial parliaments, the rulers' summary tax demands were passed on to the individual Jews. The appraisers' assessment was not infrequently heatedly debated. There was also resentment among poor Jews that the wealthy did not really have to contribute to taxes according to their productivity. In addition, the state parliaments also dealt with organizational questions, clarifying legal problems or religious questions. The meetings adopted statutes and issued ordinances. They elected the land rabbis for a fixed period of time. The rabbis took the opportunity to examine the slaughterers and meat inspectors. The state parliaments also appointed the heads of the Jews.
In larger territories, small councils were sometimes elected for the time between the state parliaments. These consisted of the regional rabbi, the chief, the elders and assessors. The rural Jews were internally autonomous. In religious and civil law disputes between Jews, the Jews had their own jurisdiction. However, this was increasingly restricted in the 18th century. Even before that, elections and resolutions of the state parliaments or the small councils had to be recognized by the governments.
The End
With the dissolution of the Old Reich ( Reichsdeputationshauptschluss ) in the course of the French era , the rural Jews were also dissolved. However, some such as those in the Duchy of Westphalia and Mecklenburg-Schwerin (founded in 1764) continued to exist until the middle of the 19th century. In a renewed statute of 1839, Mecklenburg-Schwerin was reconstituted as the Jewish State Community of Mecklenburg-Schwerin in 1764.
Most of the architectural evidence of rural Jews was destroyed in the Reichspogromnacht .
The old synagogue Einbeck and the synagogue in Göttingen are among the few preserved monuments . The Humberghaus in the southern Westmünsterland had been a residential and commercial building for pious rural Jews for one hundred and thirty years until its last resident was driven out in 1941 and, due to its remote location, had its own mikveh , which has been preserved. It is now a publicly accessible memorial that displays many original items in the historic rooms.
literature
- Mordechai Breuer / Michael Graetz: German-Jewish history of the modern age. Vol. 1 Munich 1996, pp. 187-195
- Arno Herzig : Jewish History in Germany. From the beginning to the present. Munich 2002, p. 102f.
- Fritz Baer: The history of rural Jews in the Duchy of Kleve. Berlin 1922 digitized
- L. Munk: The Jewish Diet in Hessen-Kassel. In: In memory of the inauguration of the synagogue in Marburg. Marburg 1897 digitized
- Monika Richarz : Country Jews. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 3: He-Lu. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02503-6 , pp. 478-483.
- Daniel Y. Kohen (ed.) For the Israel Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen: The rural Jews in Germany as organs of Jewish self-government from the early modern period to the nineteenth century: a collection of sources , Göttingen, Wallstein-Verlag 1996-2003 , 3 volumes (parallel in Hebrew), ISBN 965-208-127-2 , series: Fontes ad res Judaicas spectantes
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Cf. Statute for the general church conditions of Israelite subjects in the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin , Schwerin: Hofbuchdruckerei, 1839.
- ↑ Frederick the Pious confirmed the statutes adopted by the Landtag in Schwaan to the rural Jews through the rules and statutes for the protective Jews living in the ducal Mecklenburg lands , cf. Collection of laws for the Mecklenburg-Schwerin'schen Lande : 6 vol., Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Raabe (Ed.), Hinstorff, Wismar 1844-1859, '4. Volume: Church stuff. Teaching and educational institutions. Statutory matters' (1852), No. 3231, p. 183 sqq.
- ↑ The state community joined the Prussian state association of Jewish communities in 1938 and in 1946 Jews in Mecklenburg and Western Pomerania re-established it as the Jewish state community of Mecklenburg. See Axel Seitz, Tolerated and forgotten: The Jüdische Landesgemeinde Mecklenburg between 1948 and 1990 , Bremen: Edition Temmen, 2001 ISBN 978-3-86108-773-1 p. 11
- ↑ Renate Penßel: Jewish religious communities as public corporations: 1800-1919 , Böhlau, Cologne 2014 (= research on canon law history and canon law, 33) ISBN 3-412-22231-3 p 355, 372 .; zugl. Erlangen-Nürnberg, Friedrich-Alexander-Univ., Diss., 2012 udT: Jewish religious communities as corporations under public law. A legal historical investigation from the beginning of the 19th century until the Weimar Constitution came into force .