Die Jüdische Gemeinde von Frankfurt/Main in der frühen Neuzeit: Familien, Netzwerke und Konflikte eines jüdischen Zentrums (review)

Including more than 250 pages of data drawn from a wide range of archival materials, as well as an extensive index, Cilli Kasper-Holtkotte's impressive volume is a very welcome and extremely useful tool for scholars interested in the history of the Jews in Frankfurt am Main in the early modern period. While the Jewish community in early modern Frankfurt was one of the largest and most important in Germany and all of central Europe and while it has received a significant amount of attention in the scholarly literature—with particular focus on the ghetto, regional economic development, and anti-Judaism—this book adds a level of detail and engages numerous sources in a way that has been infrequent for Frankfurt or most other early modern Jewish communities. Treating the themes of families, social and economic networks, and internal conflict within the Jewish community, and written by a leading and productive scholar of German Jewish history, this volume promises to be of value for anyone involved with early modern Judaism or early modern German history, but also social history more broadly.

The primary focus of the book is the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with long and extensive discussion of the period around the Fettmilch uprising and the 1670s and 80s. The end point for coverage is 1711, when a fire in the Jewish quarter arguably transformed the social and political conditions of that community. After a brief introduction to the scope and theme of the study, Kasper-Holtkotte offers a general orientation to the history of the Jews in Frankfurt, focusing on the Jewish quarter, communal organization, legal responsibilities, and privileges, as well as various taxes and financial obligations. In these pages she provides detailed background information about the size of the Jewish population and the number of Jewish houses from the end of the fifteenth through the early eighteenth century. She also provides intricate details about various taxes and financial conditions within the community and in relation to the city and the empire. The discussion of communal organization itself, however, is quite brief and a bit disappointing, given the extent of previous studies and the importance of this issue for later discussions.

Building upon this general foundation, Kasper-Holtkotte next digs deeper into the economic and financial world of the Jews in early modern Frankfurt, starting with the rapid increase in Jewish financial activity in the city after the middle of the sixteenth century, with the Frankfurt fair as an important launching pad for Jews. Most Jewish moneylenders in Frankfurt did not have a very expansive geographical operation. As Michael Toch has previously demonstrated, the scope of most of this moneylending was also not particularly large. Just after mid century, women comprised approximately 16 percent of the creditors. Thirty-nine percent of the money loaned was by the fourteen most active (male) lenders. By the seventeenth century, the extent and volume of Jewish money business and trade of goods increased rapidly. Kasper-Holtkotte reviews the leading Jewish lenders and provides illuminating detail, based on a wide range of sources, including legal suits. These are among the richest pages of the volume, offering as they do significant insights into communal social and political structures and family organization (including marriage strategies) and networks. Placing Jewish economic activities within a broader regional perspective as well, Kasper-Holtkotte devotes an important analysis to the role of Jews in minting and currency changing. In this section, Kasper-Holtkotte again focuses on the leading families in this economic activity as well as the potential for anti-Jewish legislation and sentiment that such activity could arouse. Finally, she quickly reviews Jewish involvement in the trade in textiles and precious metals and stones.

Arguably the heart of the book is Chapter Three, which covers nearly 250 pages and examines conflicts and their resolutions...