Fanny von Arnstein: Daughter of the Enlightenment

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Publisher : New Vessel Press
ISBN 13 : 1939931029
Total Pages : 650 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (399 download)

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Book Synopsis Fanny von Arnstein: Daughter of the Enlightenment by : Hilde Spiel

Download or read book Fanny von Arnstein: Daughter of the Enlightenment written by Hilde Spiel and published by New Vessel Press. This book was released on 2013-09-15 with total page 650 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Berlin-born Fanny von Arnstein married a financier to the Austro-Hungarian imperial court, and in 1798 her husband became the first unconverted Jew in Austria to be granted the title of baron. Soon Fanny hosted an ever more splendid salon which attracted the leading figures of her day, including Madame de Staël and Arthur Schopenhauer. Hilde Spiel's biography provides a vivid portrait of a brave and passionate woman, illuminating a central era in European cultural and social history. "Von Arnstein represents one of the most fascinating and paradoxical eras in modern Jewish history ... For an American Jewish reader, Fanny von Arnstein is fascinating above all as a cautionary tale — and a reminder of our luck at having avoided the excruciating choices that Fanny, and so many Jews like her, had to face." - Adam Kirsch, Tablet Magazine “This book is indispensable for those interested in the history of culture, the role of women, and the transition of the Jewish community out of the ghetto toward the center of European life.” - Leon Botstein, President of Bard College, author of Judentum und Modernität and co-editor of Vienna: Jews and the City of Music “In capturing the fascination of Fanny von Arnstein and her times, Hilde Spiel provides both a finely drawn portrait of a defining figure of her era, but also of the times themselves.” - John Kornblum, former U.S. Ambassador to Germany

Fanny Von Arnstein

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (833 download)

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Book Synopsis Fanny Von Arnstein by : Hilde Spiel

Download or read book Fanny Von Arnstein written by Hilde Spiel and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Killing the Second Dog

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Publisher : New Vessel Press
ISBN 13 : 193993110X
Total Pages : 157 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (399 download)

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Book Synopsis Killing the Second Dog by : Marek Hlasko

Download or read book Killing the Second Dog written by Marek Hlasko and published by New Vessel Press. This book was released on 2014-03-02 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Hlasko's story comes off the page at you like a pit bull."—The Washington Post “His writing is taut and psychologically nuanced like that of the great dime-store novelist Georges Simenon, his novelistic world as profane as Isaac Babel's.”—Wall Street Journal "Spokesman for those who were angry and beat . . . turbulent, temperamental, and tortured."—The New York Times "A must-read . . . piercing and compelling."—Kirkus Reviews "A self-taught writer with an uncanny gift for narrative and dialogue."—Roman Polanski “Marek Hlasko … lived through what he wrote and died of an overdose of solitude and not enough love.”— Jerzy Kosinski, author of The Painted Bird and Being There "A glittering black comedy ... that is equally entertaining and wrenching." — Publishers Weekly "The idol of Poland's young generation in 1956." — Czeslaw Milosz, 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature Robert and Jacob are down-and-out Polish con men living in Israel in the 1960s. They're planning to run a scam on an American widow visiting the country. Robert, who masterminds the scheme, and Jacob, who acts it out, are tough, desperate men, adrift in the nasty underworld of Tel Aviv. Robert arranges for Jacob to run into the woman, whose heart is open; the men are hoping her wallet is too. What follows is a story of love, deception, cruelty, and shame, as Jacob pretends to fall in love with her. It's not just Jacob who's performing a role; nearly all the characters are actors in an ugly story, complete with parts for murder and suicide. Marek Hlasko's writing combines brutal realism with smoky, hardboiled dialogue in a bleak world where violence is the norm and love is often only an act. Marek Hlasko, known as the James Dean of Eastern Europe, was exiled from Communist Poland and spent his life wandering the globe. He died in 1969 of an overdose of alcohol and sleeping pills in Wiesbaden, Germany.

The 6:41 to Paris

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Publisher : New Vessel Press
ISBN 13 : 1939931266
Total Pages : 153 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (399 download)

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Book Synopsis The 6:41 to Paris by : Jean-Philippe Blondel

Download or read book The 6:41 to Paris written by Jean-Philippe Blondel and published by New Vessel Press. This book was released on 2015-11-10 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brilliant psychological thriller constructed like an intensely intimate theater performance, a high-wire act of emotions on rails.

On the Run with Mary

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Publisher : New Vessel Press
ISBN 13 : 1939931282
Total Pages : 131 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (399 download)

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Book Synopsis On the Run with Mary by : Jonathan Barrow

Download or read book On the Run with Mary written by Jonathan Barrow and published by New Vessel Press. This book was released on 2015-11-02 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “One of the most extraordinary, original—and funniest—books I have ever read. Subversive, satirical, like a farcical, erotic, animal-human animated film” (Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, author of Kinsey: Sex the Measure of All Things). Shining moments of tender beauty punctuate this story of a youth on the run after escaping from an elite English boarding school. At London’s Euston Station, the narrator meets a talking dachshund named Mary and together they’re off on escapades through posh Mayfair streets and jaunts in a Rolls-Royce. But the youth soon realizes the seemingly sweet dog is a handful; an alcoholic, nymphomaniac, drug-addicted mess who can’t stay out of pubs or off the dance floor. In a world of abusive headmasters and other predators, the sexually omnivorous youth discovers that true friends are never needed more than on the mean streets of 1960s London, as he tries to save his beloved Mary from herself. On the Run with Mary mirrors the horrors and the joys of the terrible twentieth century. Jonathan Barrow’s original drawings accompany the text. “A masterpiece by a young genius, fated to die shortly after he had completed it.” —A. N. Wilson, author of Prince Albert: The Man Who Saved the Monarchy “A unique masterpiece from a bizarre mind. To say it’s Lewis Carroll meets Jean Genet . . . would be to belittle its farcically-filthy originality.” —Nicholas Haslam, author of Redeeming Features “Dementedly cheerful . . . A rollicking catalogue of sex, violence, and acts of cartoonish cruelty, Barrow’s novel is a schoolboy’s happy nightmare writ large; readers may find it impossible to look away.” —Publishers Weekly

Who Is Martha?

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Publisher : New Vessel Press
ISBN 13 : 1939931177
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (399 download)

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Book Synopsis Who Is Martha? by : Marjana Gaponenko

Download or read book Who Is Martha? written by Marjana Gaponenko and published by New Vessel Press. This book was released on 2014-09-15 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Vividly drawn characters, history, music, birds, love, loneliness, and wisdom . . . A brilliant book, rich and satisfying as a Viennese torte” (Sy Montgomery, author of Birdology). In this poignant yet rollicking novel, ninety-six-year-old ornithologist Luka Levadski forgoes treatment for lung cancer and moves from Ukraine to Vienna to make a grand exit in a luxury suite at the Hotel Imperial. He reflects on his past while indulging in Viennese cakes and savoring music in a gilded concert hall. Levadski was born in 1914, the same year that Martha—the last of the now-extinct passenger pigeons—died. Levadski too has an acute sense of being the last of a species. He may have devoted much of his existence to studying birds, but now he befriends a hotel butler and another elderly guest, who also doesn’t have much time left, to share in the lively escapades of his final days. This gloriously written tale is “a book like a fantastic party, as unshakeable as a child’s faith [that] astonishes to the very end” (Neue Zürcher Zeitung).

A Very Russian Christmas

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Publisher : New Vessel Press
ISBN 13 : 1939931444
Total Pages : 211 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (399 download)

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Book Synopsis A Very Russian Christmas by : Mikhail Zoshchenko

Download or read book A Very Russian Christmas written by Mikhail Zoshchenko and published by New Vessel Press. This book was released on 2016-09-26 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of short Christmas stories by some of Russia’s greatest nineteenth and twentieth century authors—several appearing in English for the first time. Running the gamut from sweet and reverent to twisted and uproarious, this collection offers a holiday feast of Russian fiction. Dostoevsky brings stories of poverty and tragedy; Tolstoy inspires with his fable-like tales; Chekhov’s unmatchable skills are on full display in his story of a female factory owner and her wretched workers; Klaudia Lukashevitch delights with a sweet and surprising tale of a childhood in White Russia; and Mikhail Zoshchenko recounts madcap anecdotes of Christmas trees and Christmas thieves in the Soviet Era—a time when it was illegal to celebrate the holiday in Russia. There is no shortage of imagination, wit, or vodka on display in this collection that proves, with its wonderful variety and remarkable human touch, that nobody does Christmas like the Russians.

Opera in the Viennese Home from Mozart to Rossini

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1009409808
Total Pages : 267 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (94 download)

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Book Synopsis Opera in the Viennese Home from Mozart to Rossini by : Nancy November

Download or read book Opera in the Viennese Home from Mozart to Rossini written by Nancy November and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-01-18 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique window on the world of nineteenth-century amateur music-making provided by the study of domestic musical arrangements of opera.

The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe

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Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812201892
Total Pages : 347 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe by : Shmuel Feiner

Download or read book The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe written by Shmuel Feiner and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-06-06 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the eighteenth century, an ever-sharper distinction emerged between Jews of the old order and those who were self-consciously of a new world. As aspirations for liberation clashed with adherence to tradition, as national, ethnic, cultural, and other alternatives emerged and a long, circuitous search for identity began, it was no longer evident that the definition of Jewishness would be based on the beliefs and practices surrounding the study of the Torah. In The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe Shmuel Feiner reconstructs this evolution by listening to the voices of those who participated in the process and by deciphering its cultural codes and meanings. On the one hand, a great majority of observant Jews still accepted the authority of the Talmud and the leadership of the rabbis; on the other, there was a gradually more conspicuous minority of "Epicureans" and "freethinkers." As the ground shifted, each individual was marked according to his or her place on the path between faith and heresy, between devoutness and permissiveness or indifference. Building on his award-winning Jewish Enlightenment, Feiner unfolds the story of critics of religion, mostly Ashkenazic Jews, who did not take active part in the secular intellectual revival known as the Haskalah. In open or concealed rebellion, Feiner's subjects lived primarily in the cities of western and central Europe—Altona-Hamburg, Amsterdam, London, Berlin, Breslau, and Prague. They participated as "fashionable" Jews adopting the habits and clothing of the surrounding Gentile society. Several also adopted the deist worldview of Enlightenment Europe, rejecting faith in revelation, the authority of Scripture, and the obligation to observe the commandments. Peering into the synagogue, observing individuals in the coffeehouse or strolling the boulevards, and peeking into the bedroom, Feiner recovers forgotten critics of religion from both the margins and the center of Jewish discourse. His is a pioneering work on the origins of one of the most significant transformations of modern Jewish history.

Jews and Urban Life

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Publisher : Purdue University Press
ISBN 13 : 1612499031
Total Pages : 190 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (124 download)

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Book Synopsis Jews and Urban Life by : Leonard J. Greenspoon

Download or read book Jews and Urban Life written by Leonard J. Greenspoon and published by Purdue University Press. This book was released on 2023-12-15 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jews and Urban Life recognizes that throughout their long history, Jews have often inhabited cities. The reality of this urban experience ranged from ghetto restrictions to robust participation in a range of civic and social activities. Essays in this collection present relevant examples from within the Jewish community itself, moving historically from the biblical period to the modern-day State of Israel. Taking a comparative approach while recognizing the particulars of individual instances, authors examine these phenomena from a wide variety of approaches, genres, and media. Interdisciplinary and accessibly written, the articles display a multitude of instances throughout history showing the range of Jewish life in urban settings.

Contemporary Jewish Writing in Austria

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Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
ISBN 13 : 9780803229235
Total Pages : 406 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (292 download)

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Book Synopsis Contemporary Jewish Writing in Austria by : Dagmar C. G. Lorenz

Download or read book Contemporary Jewish Writing in Austria written by Dagmar C. G. Lorenz and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Devoted to collecting the finest Jewish writing from around the world, the Jewish Writing in the Contemporary World series consists of anthologies, by country, that are designed to present to the English-speaking world authors and works deserving international consideration. As a series, the books permit a broad examination of the international crosscurrents in Jewish thought and culture.øContemporary Jewish Writing in Austria presents a gathering of writers from several generations who have published a remarkable range of works in recent decades. The result is a diverse portrait of Jewish experience in Austria since the Second World War. Dagmar C. G. Lorenz has assembled an extraordinary roster of literary talents, ranging from authors born in the early decades of this century to writers born after the Shoah. The volume maps a complex tradition of Jewish discourse marked by a profound awareness of the literary past, by the failure of a long-anticipated Austrian-Jewish symbiosis, and by the unparalleled tragedy of the Shoah. It is a modern tradition that has made an essential contribution to Austria?s literary history while remaining, in Lorenz?s words, "distinct and unassimilated."

Beyond the Gymnasium

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Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 9780739120903
Total Pages : 310 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (29 download)

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Book Synopsis Beyond the Gymnasium by : Heikki Lempa

Download or read book Beyond the Gymnasium written by Heikki Lempa and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2007 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beyond the Gymnasium is the first systematic effort to examine the history of the body in modern Germany. By looking into medical dietetics, walking, dancing, gymnastics, cholera, and classrooms, Heikki Lempa reconstructs the ways the middle-class body became a source of political and social autonomy and a medium of social interaction. During the first two decades of the nineteenth century, German physicians defined the middle class body as qualitatively different from the lower class body. This belief was supported by a contemporary science known as dietetics. Lempa provides a comprehensive history and analysis of this science. Beyond the Gymnasium also analyzes the social implications of court dancing and gymnastics. In the eighteenth century, the French court dances set the standards of upper and middle class conduct. In the 1810s, the gymnastics movement challenged this tradition by propagating vigorous physical exercise and egalitarian social interaction. In 1819, the ban on gymnastics contributed to the rapid spread of dancing clubs, ballrooms, public promenades, and spas; the old forms of bodily interaction underwent a renaissance. These two trends--the quest for bodily autonomy and the continuity of traditional bodily conduct--played an important role in the status of the German middle class in the nineteenth century. In social interaction, it continued to cultivate those forms that had endowed the Old Regime with its specific character and flair. To explain this, the book explores the forms of social recognition in dancing, greeting, and walking and discovers that the German middle class displayed an aptitude for social recognition of asymmetrical relationships.

The Charmed Circle

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Publisher : Purdue University Press
ISBN 13 : 161249370X
Total Pages : 380 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (124 download)

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Book Synopsis The Charmed Circle by : Rebecca Gates-Coon

Download or read book The Charmed Circle written by Rebecca Gates-Coon and published by Purdue University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-15 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In late eighteenth-century Vienna a remarkable coterie of five aristocratic women, popularly known as the "five princesses," achieved social preeminence and acclaim as close associates of the reforming Habsburg Emperor Joseph II. They were Princess Maria Josepha Clary (1728-1801); Princess Maria Sidonia Kinsky (1729-1815); Princess Maria Leopoldine Liechtenstein (1733-1809); Countess, subsequently Princess, Maria Leopoldine Kaunitz (1741-1795); and Princess Maria Eleonore Liechtenstein (1745-1812). The group assumed a stable form by 1772, by which time Joseph II and two of his closest male associates, Field Marshal Franz Moritz Lacy and Count Franz Xavier Orsini-Rosenberg, had become accepted members of the circle as well. During the Viennese social season, members of the group made their way several times each week to the inner city palace of one of the "Dames," as members of the group called themselves. During the summer months, when the women dispersed to visit country estates in Bohemia and Moravia or to travel, group members corresponded regularly. These were exciting, restless years in the Habsburg monarchy, as reforms were implemented to help the monarchy withstand threats to its stability and international stature from without and within. With assured access to the emperor and his closest advisors, the Dames enjoyed both a unique view of events and a chance to participate in public affairs (albeit informally and discreetly) as steadfast, acknowledged friends of the emperor. Through analysis of the correspondence of these women and of the published and unpublished commentaries of their contemporaries, this study scrutinizes the activities of this select group of women during the co-regency period (1765-1780) when Joseph shared responsibility with his mother, Maria Theresia, and during Joseph's decade as sole ruler (1780-1790) after Maria Theresia's death-years during which the women enjoyed their special position.

Herminie and Fanny Pereire

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Publisher : Manchester University Press
ISBN 13 : 1526177641
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (261 download)

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Book Synopsis Herminie and Fanny Pereire by : Helen M. Davies

Download or read book Herminie and Fanny Pereire written by Helen M. Davies and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2024-06-25 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Herminie and Fanny Pereire were sisters-in-law, married to the eminent Jewish bankers and Saint-Simonian socialists Emile and Isaac. They were also mother and daughter. This book, a companion to the author's acclaimed Emile and Isaac Pereire (2015), sheds new light on elite Jewish families in nineteenth-century France. Drawing on the family archives, it traces the Pereires across a century of major social and political change, from the Napoleonic period to the cusp of the First World War, revealing the active role they played as bourgeois women both within and outside the family. It offers insights into Jewish assimilation, embourgeoisement and gender relations, through the lens of one of the most fascinating families of the century.

Vienna, 1814

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Publisher : Crown
ISBN 13 : 0307407365
Total Pages : 493 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis Vienna, 1814 by : David King

Download or read book Vienna, 1814 written by David King and published by Crown. This book was released on 2008-03-11 with total page 493 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Reads like a novel. A fast-paced page-turner, it has everything: sex, wit, humor, and adventures. But it is an impressively researched and important story.” —David Fromkin, author of Europe’s Last Summer Vienna, 1814 is an evocative and brilliantly researched account of the most audacious and extravagant peace conference in modern European history. With the feared Napoleon Bonaparte presumably defeated and exiled to the small island of Elba, heads of some 216 states gathered in Vienna to begin piecing together the ruins of his toppled empire. Major questions loomed: What would be done with France? How were the newly liberated territories to be divided? What type of restitution would be offered to families of the deceased? But this unprecedented gathering of kings, dignitaries, and diplomatic leaders unfurled a seemingly endless stream of personal vendettas, long-simmering feuds, and romantic entanglements that threatened to undermine the crucial work at hand, even as their hard-fought policy decisions shaped the destiny of Europe and led to the longest sustained peace the continent would ever see. Beyond the diplomatic wrangling, however, the Congress of Vienna served as a backdrop for the most spectacular Vanity Fair of its time. Highlighted by such celebrated figures as the elegant but incredibly vain Prince Metternich of Austria, the unflappable and devious Prince Talleyrand of France, and the volatile Tsar Alexander of Russia, as well as appearances by Ludwig van Beethoven and Emilia Bigottini, the sheer star power of the Vienna congress outshone nearly everything else in the public eye. An early incarnation of the cult of celebrity, the congress devolved into a series of debauched parties that continually delayed the progress of peace, until word arrived that Napoleon had escaped, abruptly halting the revelry and shrouding the continent in panic once again. Vienna, 1814 beautifully illuminates the intricate social and political intrigue of this history-defining congress–a glorified party that seemingly valued frivolity over substance but nonetheless managed to drastically reconfigure Europe’s balance of power and usher in the modern age.

The Jewish Eighteenth Century, Volume 2

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Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253065151
Total Pages : 646 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (53 download)

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Book Synopsis The Jewish Eighteenth Century, Volume 2 by : Shmuel Feiner

Download or read book The Jewish Eighteenth Century, Volume 2 written by Shmuel Feiner and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2023-04-04 with total page 646 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second volume of Shmuel Feiner's The Jewish Eighteenth Century covers the period from 1750 to 1800, a time of even greater upheavals, tensions, and challenges. The changes that began to emerge at the beginning of the eighteenth century matured in the second half. Feiner explores how political considerations of the Jewish minority throughout Europe began to expand. From the "Jew Bill" of 1753 in Britain, to the surprising series of decrees issued by Joseph II of Austria that expanded tolerance in Austria, to the debate over emancipation in revolutionary France, the lives of the Jews of Europe became ever more intertwined with the political, social, economic, and cultural fabric of the continent. The Jewish Eighteenth Century, Volume 2: A European Biography, 1750-1800 concludes Feiner's landmark study of the history of Jewish populations in the period. By combining an examination of the broad and profound processes that changed the familiar world from the ground up with personal experiences of those who lived through them, it allows for a unique explanation of these momentous events.

How Jews Became Germans

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Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300150032
Total Pages : 440 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (1 download)

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Book Synopsis How Jews Became Germans by : Deborah Hertz

Download or read book How Jews Became Germans written by Deborah Hertz and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “very readable” history of Jewish conversions to Christianity over two centuries that “tracks the many fascinating twists and turns to this story” (Library Journal). When the Nazis came to power and created a racial state in the 1930s, they considered it an urgent priority to identify Jews who had converted to Christianity over the preceding centuries. With the help of church officials, a vast system of conversion and intermarriage records was created in Berlin, the country’s premier Jewish city. Deborah Hertz’s discovery of these records, the Judenkartei, was the first step on a long research journey that led to this compelling book. Hertz begins the book in 1645, when the records begin, and traces generations of German Jewish families for the next two centuries. The book analyzes the statistics and explores letters, diaries, and other materials to understand in a far more nuanced way than ever before why Jews did or did not convert to Protestantism. Focusing on the stories of individual Jews in Berlin, particularly the charismatic salon woman Rahel Levin Varnhagen and her husband, Karl, a writer and diplomat, Hertz brings out the human stories behind the documents, sets them in the context of Berlin’s evolving society, and connects them to the broad sweep of European history.