Publizistik im Dienste antijudischer Polemik: Spatmittelalterliche und fruhneuzeitliche Flugschriften und Flugblatter zu Hostienschandungen (review)

Originally a dissertation completed in 1997 at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München under the direction of Wolfgang Harms, this slender volume offers a new approach to a much trodden theme, namely the accusations of host desecration leveled against the Jews in late medieval and early modern Germany. Mittlmeier argues that illustrated pamphlets and leaflets played not a small role in the spread of anti-Jewish polemic, indeed in the very transference of host desecration accusations into the broader public. Noting that specific themes and contexts varied widely, she examines the historical and political contexts, publishers, authors, intended audiences (the levels of readers), and the possible functions of the publications of host desecration charges in Passau (1477), Sternberg (1492), and Knobloch (1510).

Throughout, Mittlmeier notes that the most important group addressed by the pamphlets was the urban middle class, and she stresses that the pamphlets had real ability to influence important political decisions and stir political debate. Mittlmeier argues that host desecration discourse and imagery could contemporize accusations of shaming and martyring Jesus and mobilize action and discourse against the Jews. Echoing the findings of recent scholars such as Hsia and Graus, she finds that often the anti-Jewish polemic of the host crime accusations played into larger power politics (i.e., anti-Jewish polemic could be a vehicle for the criticism of political leaders and institutions), particularly in contests between ecclesiastical and urban rulers and between the estates and the princes. She also asserts that charges of host desecration could serve efforts to strengthen internal Christian belief and create a broader internal Christian communal identity by positing the host as a representation of the Christian faith community, and, simultaneously, the Jews as the opponents of that collectivity. Such accusations, which tended to become removed from local contexts through publication and were molded into a sort of ethno-history that had a supra-regional and a-temporal meaning (referring to all Jews), could also serve as the basis for legitimizing the expulsion of Jews from cities or regions.

Among the common themes and images Mittlmeier finds in the cases she examines are the portrayal of the Jews as God-murderers, the stubbornness and blindness of the Jews (indeed not a new theme, but one of an apologetic nature), the Jews as the embodiment of evil, and the Jews as usurers.

The analysis utilizes some theoretical discussion of the pamphlets and the relation between texts and images, and suggests that in the fifteenth century there were local and regional differences in discourse and representation. One intriguing observation is that particularly since the fifteenth century there was an increase in the illustration of Jews in oriental clothing, suggesting, amidst the Turkish threat, the association and conspiracy of Jews and Turks.

Mittlmeier offers a very concise but useful overview of some of the secondary literature, especially regarding host desecration and the legal position of the Jews in the Middle Ages. Her methodology is well-thought out and consistently applied, but could have profitably been expanded to other cases and compared with other types of representation. Although the work adds few new observations to recent studies, it does reinforce some general conclusions, and it adds the possibility of new sources and modes of interpretation that may shed light on Jewish and Christian relations as well as general religious and political developments within Christian society in early modern Germany.