Bird head Haggadah
The Bird's Head Haggadah is a medieval, illustrated manuscript of the traditional Passover Haggadah . It is one of the oldest surviving Haggadot (plural form, Heb. הגדות) from Germany. It is now in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
Its specialty, from which it owes its name, is the representation of Jews as beings with human bodies and bird heads.
Handwriting
The writing material for the manuscript is coarse calf parchment, the writing is of Ashkenazi origin and the illustrations are in Gothic style . The manuscript dates from the late 13th or early 14th century and is probably a work from the Würzburg area . Of her original 50 sheets, 47 are still available today.
The manuscript contains the traditional text for the Seder evening , as well as illustrations of what is described in the margin of the text. The formal structure of the manuscript, with representations of the text in the margin and the lack of full-page illustrations, follows the Askenasian tradition. Only on the first and last page are full-page pictures. However, the title page, which shows the family at the Seder table, is badly damaged by the lack of a triangular section of the parchment. In an earlier book repair, the individual layers were also cropped, with some of the illustrations being cropped.
The name of the writer and illustrator, מנחם = Menachem, is derived from the accentuation of the letters in the identical word מֻנָּחִים ( munahim = you are standing). The same scribe copied the manuscript of a prayer book ( Machsor ) known as Machsor Lipsiae .
Illustrations
The miniatures in the margin of the text illustrate what is described in the text: the sacrifice of Isaac , the exodus of the people of Israel from Egypt to the reception of the tablets of the Law on Mount Sinai and the preparation and implementation of the Passover festival . Stylistically, the form of representation corresponds to the contemporary miniatures in Christian books.
The illustrator of the handwriting avoided depicting the human face. The face of the angel at the sacrifice of Isaac is unrecognizable, the faces of the Pharaoh and his people are empty ovals, while the Jews (recognizable by the Jewish hat ) all have a beak instead of a nose and mouth . It is not certain what kind of bird it is. Probably the eagle is meant, which in Jewish literature is now and then associated with the Jewish people - based on Moses Lied in Deuteronomy ( Dtn 32.11 EU ).
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Various reasons are assumed in research for this form of presentation. According to the most widespread theory, the illustrator implemented the ban on images in Judaism. Similar representations can also be found in other Ashkenazi manuscripts such as the Worms Machsor from 1271 or the Machsor Lipsiae . Avoiding the depiction of human faces is a specialty of Ashkenazi illumination from the 13th / 14th centuries. Century in southern Germany.
Provenance
Nothing is known about the owners from before the 19th century. On the first page you can find the note: " 1864/13/6, by Wb [Wittib?] / Hern Maiern das / bought / Bendet Benedikt ". A descendant, Johanna Benedikt, brought the book with her when she married Ludwig Marum . After his murder by the National Socialists, the book came to Hermann Kahn from Adelsheim , who sold it to the Bezalel Museum in 1946. The manuscript is now in the collection of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, which includes the holdings of the Bezalel National Art Museum. The signature is now MS 180/57 (formerly: ms. 912-4-46).
In April 2016 it became known that the descendants of the married couple Johanna and Ludwig Marum still considered the book to be their property at that time. They found signs that the book was stolen from the Marum couple during the Nazi persecution of Jews . They had therefore long been of the opinion that Hermann Kahn had sold the book to the Israeli Museum in 1946 without legally owning it. But they had also agreed to leave the book in the Israeli museum. The museum has not clearly recognized this ownership claim. The US attorney E. Randol Schoenberg , who specializes in compensation matters in art theft, entered into negotiations with the museum on behalf of the family to determine ownership of the work and to negotiate compensation for the family.
Edition
In the 1960s, Moshe Spitzer's manuscript was published as a facsimile in a two-volume, annotated edition.
- Moshe Spitzer (ed.): The Bird's Head Haggada of the Bezalel National Art Museum in Jerusalem. Tarshish Books, Jerusalem 1965f. Volume 1: Facsimile of the manuscript (1965), Volume 2: Introduction (1967).
literature
- Hans Maaß: bird head and human face. Religious Images in Judaism. In: Peter Müller (ed.): World - Images - Worlds. Contributions to the dialogue between art and theology. Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2003, pp. 85-104. ISBN 3833403446
- Ursula Schubert: The Vogelkopf Haggadah. An artistic testimony to Jewish self-confidence at the end of the 13th century . In: Anzeiger des Germanisches Nationalmuseum . Nuremberg 1988, pp. 35-57.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Maaß (2003), p. 94
- ↑ Schubert (1988), p. 36.
- ^ Spitzer (1967), Vol. 2, p. 49
- ↑ a b Richard McBee: Leipzig Mahzor: A Vision from the Past . on jewishpress.com - November 4, 2009 (accessed March 5, 2019).
- ↑ Spitzer (1967), Vol. 2, pp. 17f.
- ↑ Malka Pollak: The Bird's Head Haggadah - An Unsolved Riddle
- ↑ Ingrid Kaufmann: Image and Image Prohibition in Jewish Art of the Middle Ages. Ashkenazi manuscripts from southern Germany
- ^ Spitzer (1967), Vol. 2, p. 22
- ↑ David D'Arcy: Is the Israel Museum's Birds' Head Haggadah Nazi-era loot? Art Newspaper, April 6, 2016, printed on the Lootedart.com homepage http://www.lootedart.com/RRV8RV293891 . Accessed April 11, 2016