Open Access
The significance of religion for the development of modern racist antisemitism... more Open Access
The significance of religion for the development of modern racist antisemitism is a much debated topic in the study of Jewish-Christian relations. This book, the first study on antisemitism in nineteenth-century Sweden, provides new insights into the debate from the specific case of a country in which religious homogeneity was the considered ideal long into the modern era.
Between 1800 and 1900, approximately 150 books and pamphlets were printed in Sweden on the subject of Judaism and Jews. About one third comprised of translations mostly from German, but to a lesser extent also from French and English. Two thirds were Swedish originals, covering all genres and topics, but with a majority on religious topics: conversion, supersessionism, and accusations of deicide and bloodlust. The latter stem from the vastly popular medieval legends of Ahasverus, Pilate, and Judas which were printed in only slightly adapted forms and accompanied by medieval texts connecting these apocryphal figures to contemporary Jews, ascribing them a physical, essential, and biological coherence and continuity – a specific Jewish temporality shaped in medieval passion piety, which remained functional and intelligible in the modern period.
Relying on medieval models and their combination of religious and racist imagery, nineteenth-century debates were informed by a comprehensive and mostly negative "knowledge" about Jews.
Antisemitism in the North History and State of Research, 2020
Titelbild von: Antisemitism in the North
Antisemitism in the North
History and State of Research... more Titelbild von: Antisemitism in the North Antisemitism in the North History and State of Research Reihe: Religious Minorities in the North, 1 Herausgegeben von: Jonathan Adams und Cordelia Heß
Is research on antisemitism even necessary in countries with a relatively small Jewish population? Absolutely, as this volume shows. Compared to other countries, research on antisemitism in the Nordic countries (Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden) is marginalized at an institutional and staffing level, especially as far as antisemitism beyond German fascism, the Second World War, and the Holocaust is concerned. Furthermore, compared to scholarship on other prejudices and minority groups, issues concerning Jews and anti-Jewish stereotypes remain relatively underresearched in Scandinavia – even though antisemitic stereotypes have been present and flourishing in the North ever since the arrival of Christianity, and long before the arrival of the first Jewish communities. This volume aims to help bring the study of antisemitism to the fore, from the medieval period to the present day. Contributors from all the Nordic countries describe the status of as well as the challenges and desiderata for the study of antisemitism in their respective countries.
This book presents a fresh approach to the question of the historical continuities and discontinu... more This book presents a fresh approach to the question of the historical continuities and discontinuities of Jew-hatred, juxtaposing chapters dealing with the same phenomenon – one in the pre-modern, one in the modern period. How do the circumstances of interreligious violence differ in pre-Reformation Europe, the modern Muslim world, and the modern Western world? In addition to the diachronic comparison, most chapters deal with the significance of religion for the formation of anti-Jewish stereotypes. The direct dialogue of small-scale studies bridging the chronological gap brings out important nuances: anti-Zionist texts appropriating medieval ritual murder accusations; modern-day pogroms triggered by contemporary events but fuelled by medieval prejudices; and contemporary stickers drawing upon long-inherited knowledge about what a "Jew" looks like. These interconnections, however, differ from the often-assumed straightforward continuities between medieval and modern anti-Jewish hatred. The book brings together many of the most distinguished scholars of this field, creating a unique dialogue between historical periods and academic disciplines.
For nearly a century, it has been a commonplace of Central European history that there were no J... more For nearly a century, it has been a commonplace of Central European history that there were no Jews in medieval Prussia—the result, supposedly, of the ruling Teutonic Order’s attempts to create a purely Christian crusader’s state. In this groundbreaking historical investigation, however, medievalist Cordelia Hess demonstrates the very weak foundations upon which that assumption rests. In exacting detail, she traces this narrative to the work of a single, minor Nazi-era historian, revealing it to be ideologically compromised work that badly mishandles its evidence. By combining new medieval scholarship with a biographical and historiographical exploration grounded in the 20th century, The Absent Jews spans remote eras while offering a fascinating account of the construction of historical knowledge.
Prior to the high Middle Ages, the Baltic Rim was largely terra incognita-but by the late Middle ... more Prior to the high Middle Ages, the Baltic Rim was largely terra incognita-but by the late Middle Ages, it was home to diverse small and large communities. But the Baltic Rim was not simply the place those people lived-it was also an imagined space through which they defined themselves and their identities. This book traces the transformation of the Baltic Rim in this period through a focus on the self-image of a number of communities: urban and regional, cultic, missionary, legal, and political. Contributors look at the ways these communities defined themselves in relationship to other groups, how they constructed their identities and customs, and what held them together or tore them apart.
THE BOOK IS OPEN ACCESS, AVAILABLE through JSTOR services.
Due to the scarcity of sources regarding actual Jewish and Muslim communities and settlements, th... more Due to the scarcity of sources regarding actual Jewish and Muslim communities and settlements, there has until now been little work on either the perception of or encounters with Muslims and Jews in medieval Scandinavia and the Baltic Region. The volume provides the reader with the possibility to appreciate and understand the complexity of Jewish?Christian?Muslim relations in the medieval North. The contributions cover topics such as cultural and economic exchange between Christians and members of other religions; evidence of actual Jews and Muslims in the Baltic Rim; images and stereotypes of the Other.
The volume thus presents a previously neglected field of research that will help nuance the overall picture of interreligious relations in medieval Europe.
Social imagery during the Late Middle Ages was typically considered to be dominated by the three ... more Social imagery during the Late Middle Ages was typically considered to be dominated by the three orders oratores, bellatores, laboratores as the most common way of describing social order, along with body metaphors and comprehensive lists of professions as known from the Danse macabre tradition. None of these actually dominates within the vast genre of lay didactical literature.
This book comprises the first systematic investigation of social imagery from a specific late medieval linguistic context. It methodically catalogues images of the social that were used in a particular cultural/literary sphere, and it separates late medieval efforts at catechization in print from the social and religious ruptures that are conventionally thought to have occurred after 1517. The investigation thus compliments recent scholarship on late medieval vernacular literature in Germany, most of which has concentrated on southern urban centres of production. The author fills a major lacuna in this field by concentrating for the first time on the entire extant corpus of vernacular print production in the northern region dominated by the Hanseatic cities and the Middle Low German dialect.
The lack of a local Jewish community did not prevent medieval Swedish clerics and lay people from... more The lack of a local Jewish community did not prevent medieval Swedish clerics and lay people from being interested in Jews and Jewish questions. They bought, translated, read and preached from most of the available textual sources and thus spread the widely available views of the hermeneutical Jew: a cruel, stubborn and ugly person and at the same time a cipher for the entire Jewish people both in biblical times and today. This article gives an overview of the Latin and vernacular manuscripts with anti-Jewish motifs and texts and shows that the main and most common textual models and motifs were available in Swedish libraries and collections, from legends via apocryphal texts to fake disputations – adding up to a relatively complete ‘hermeneutical Jew’. A focus was, as in the rest of Europe, on Passion-related piety, which was the most common form of piety in the late Middle Ages – and usually connected with distinct anti-Jewish features. The fact that we can establish direct and indirect textual and narrative lines of tradition between the medieval codices and modern printed booklets of the nineteenth century proves the long-lasting intelligibility of anti-Jewish stereotypes in Sweden – developed and spread completely independently from the Jewish minority. The medieval perspective thus adds a much-needed nuance to the debate about antisemitism in the North: it did not need any actual Jews; it simply made up its own, based on the general Christian tradition.
Die enge Verbindung von Mission und Kolonisierung ist für die europäische Expansion in der Frühen... more Die enge Verbindung von Mission und Kolonisierung ist für die europäische Expansion in der Frühen Neuzeit umfassend erforscht worden, und das hieraus resultierende gewaltsame Erbe prägt weiterhin die christliche Auseinandersetzung mit dem Missionsauftrag. 1 Auch im Mittelalter wurde die "Heidenmission" (conversio infidelium) teils als separate, teils als integrale Begründung für territoriale Expansion benutzt, und im Zusammenhang damit wurden auch essentialistische Konstruktionen des "Anderen" entwickelt, die als Wurzeln des modernen Rassismus gelten können. Diese Prozesse wurden bisher primär in Bezug auf die Kreuzzüge, im Spätmittelalter vor allem die im Ostseeraum, diskutiert. 2 Die Bezüge zwischen mittelalterlichen Kolonisierungen und gegenwärtigen postkolonialen Kämpfen indigener Bevölkerungen werden erst zögerlich in der Mediävistik thematisiert. 3 Kaum beach
1838 versuchte König Karl XIV. Johan, die bürgerliche Gleichstellung der schwedischen Juden und J... more 1838 versuchte König Karl XIV. Johan, die bürgerliche Gleichstellung der schwedischen Juden und Jüdinnen per Dekret einzuführen, musste dieses jedoch nach einer monatelangen medialen Kampagne wieder zurücknehmen. Auf dem Höhepunkt dieser Kampagne wurden zwei Wochen lang die Häuser jüdischer Personen in Stockholm attackiert, die ersten konzertierten physischen Angriffe gegen die jüdische Minderheit in Schweden.
Das Ostprogramm der preußischen Archivverwaltung wurde von etwa 1931 bis 1945 implementiert. Es p... more Das Ostprogramm der preußischen Archivverwaltung wurde von etwa 1931 bis 1945 implementiert. Es plante die wissenschaftlichen Aktivitäten der preußischen Archivare im Rahmen der →Ostforschung und steuerte sie bis zu einem gewissen Grade auch. Der erste Entwurf von →Albert Brackmann baute auf früheren wissenschaftlichen Programmen der Archivverwaltung auf, suchte aber vor allem die deutsche Ostforschung in den Institutionen der preußischen Archivverwaltung zu bündeln und unter ihrem Dach zu vereinen. Durch die gleichzeitige Gründung der Nord-und Ostdeutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft (NOFG), der →Publikationsstelle Dahlem (PuSte) und der Zentralstelle für Nachkriegsgeschichte entstand jedoch eine Kon-kurrenz um Ressourcen, vor allem die Arbeitskraft und Einbindung der Archivare, zwischen den Archiven und den Volksdeutschen Forschungsgemeinschaften. Ernst Zipfel suchte diese durch spätere Formulierungen des Ostprogramms zu beheben. In der Vielzahl von Forschungsplänen und-institutionen, die seit den 1920er Jahren wissenschaftlich die deutschen Ansprüche auf polnisches Gebiet und die Revision des Versailler Vertrages untermauerten, sind die Bemühungen der preußi-schen Archivverwaltung aber klar zu erkennen. Sie decken sich mit den älteren Ziel-setzungen etwa der Historischen Kommission für ost-und westpreußische Landes-forschung, die bereits seit den 1920er Jahren die " deutsche Leistung im Nordosten " erforschte. Forschungsarbeiten der preußischen Archivare waren seit dem 19. Jahr-hundert in der Reihe " Publikationen aus den preußischen Staatsarchiven " zusam-mengefasst, die auf Betreiben Otto von Bismarcks von Heinrich von Sybel begründet wurden, von den folgenden Direktoren der Archivverwaltung jedoch unterschied-lich konzeptionell gefüllt wurden. Paul Fridolin Kehr (Generaldirektor der Preußi-schen Staatsarchive 1915–1929) plante in der Reihe auf lange Sicht eine quellennahe Verwaltungsgeschichte Preußens zu veröffentlichen; seine Konzeption konnte je-doch wegen des Ersten Weltkriegs nicht umgesetzt werden. Kehrs Nachfolger Albert Brackmann trieb die antipolnische Zuspitzung des Forschungsplans voran und de-klarierte die Publikationsserie zu einer Reihe über die deutsche Geschichte im Os-ten, bei gleichzeitiger Ausrichtung der Archivausbildung auf den wissenschaftli-chen revisionistischen Kampf. 1 In diesem Sinne stellt das Ostprogramm (gemeinsam mit dem Westprogramm) eine regional und politisch bedingte Verengung der frühe-ren wissenschaftlichen Pläne der Archivverwaltung dar. 1931 wurde dies von Brackmann und →Johannes Papritz in Konkurrenz zu →Erich Keyser und dessen Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Historischen Kommissionen for-muliert, die eine Einmischung der Archivverwaltung in die Ostforschung zu Recht fürchtete. Brackmann schuf gleichzeitig mit der PuSte eine Zentralstelle für die Kartierung polnischer Archivbenutzung und Veröffentlichungen sowie mehrere zentrale Forschungseinrichtungen, was zu wiederholten Reibereien und Konflikten mit der Archivverwaltung und Brackmanns Nachfolger Ernst Zipfel führte. Dieser versuchte 1939 eine Wiederbelebung des Konzepts für die " Publikationen aus den
Revealing the Secrets of the Jews: Johannes Pfefferkorn and Christian Writings about Jewish Life ... more Revealing the Secrets of the Jews: Johannes Pfefferkorn and Christian Writings about Jewish Life and Literature in Early Modern Europe / [ed] Jonathan Adams & Cordelia Heß (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2017), pp. 3-24.
in: Revealing the Secrets of the Jews. Johannes Pfefferkorn and Christian Writings about Jewish L... more in: Revealing the Secrets of the Jews. Johannes Pfefferkorn and Christian Writings about Jewish Life and Literature in Early Modern Europe. Edited by Adams, Jonathan / Heß, Cordelia Berlin: De Gruyter 2017, 121–134
Open Access
The significance of religion for the development of modern racist antisemitism... more Open Access
The significance of religion for the development of modern racist antisemitism is a much debated topic in the study of Jewish-Christian relations. This book, the first study on antisemitism in nineteenth-century Sweden, provides new insights into the debate from the specific case of a country in which religious homogeneity was the considered ideal long into the modern era.
Between 1800 and 1900, approximately 150 books and pamphlets were printed in Sweden on the subject of Judaism and Jews. About one third comprised of translations mostly from German, but to a lesser extent also from French and English. Two thirds were Swedish originals, covering all genres and topics, but with a majority on religious topics: conversion, supersessionism, and accusations of deicide and bloodlust. The latter stem from the vastly popular medieval legends of Ahasverus, Pilate, and Judas which were printed in only slightly adapted forms and accompanied by medieval texts connecting these apocryphal figures to contemporary Jews, ascribing them a physical, essential, and biological coherence and continuity – a specific Jewish temporality shaped in medieval passion piety, which remained functional and intelligible in the modern period.
Relying on medieval models and their combination of religious and racist imagery, nineteenth-century debates were informed by a comprehensive and mostly negative "knowledge" about Jews.
Antisemitism in the North History and State of Research, 2020
Titelbild von: Antisemitism in the North
Antisemitism in the North
History and State of Research... more Titelbild von: Antisemitism in the North Antisemitism in the North History and State of Research Reihe: Religious Minorities in the North, 1 Herausgegeben von: Jonathan Adams und Cordelia Heß
Is research on antisemitism even necessary in countries with a relatively small Jewish population? Absolutely, as this volume shows. Compared to other countries, research on antisemitism in the Nordic countries (Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden) is marginalized at an institutional and staffing level, especially as far as antisemitism beyond German fascism, the Second World War, and the Holocaust is concerned. Furthermore, compared to scholarship on other prejudices and minority groups, issues concerning Jews and anti-Jewish stereotypes remain relatively underresearched in Scandinavia – even though antisemitic stereotypes have been present and flourishing in the North ever since the arrival of Christianity, and long before the arrival of the first Jewish communities. This volume aims to help bring the study of antisemitism to the fore, from the medieval period to the present day. Contributors from all the Nordic countries describe the status of as well as the challenges and desiderata for the study of antisemitism in their respective countries.
This book presents a fresh approach to the question of the historical continuities and discontinu... more This book presents a fresh approach to the question of the historical continuities and discontinuities of Jew-hatred, juxtaposing chapters dealing with the same phenomenon – one in the pre-modern, one in the modern period. How do the circumstances of interreligious violence differ in pre-Reformation Europe, the modern Muslim world, and the modern Western world? In addition to the diachronic comparison, most chapters deal with the significance of religion for the formation of anti-Jewish stereotypes. The direct dialogue of small-scale studies bridging the chronological gap brings out important nuances: anti-Zionist texts appropriating medieval ritual murder accusations; modern-day pogroms triggered by contemporary events but fuelled by medieval prejudices; and contemporary stickers drawing upon long-inherited knowledge about what a "Jew" looks like. These interconnections, however, differ from the often-assumed straightforward continuities between medieval and modern anti-Jewish hatred. The book brings together many of the most distinguished scholars of this field, creating a unique dialogue between historical periods and academic disciplines.
For nearly a century, it has been a commonplace of Central European history that there were no J... more For nearly a century, it has been a commonplace of Central European history that there were no Jews in medieval Prussia—the result, supposedly, of the ruling Teutonic Order’s attempts to create a purely Christian crusader’s state. In this groundbreaking historical investigation, however, medievalist Cordelia Hess demonstrates the very weak foundations upon which that assumption rests. In exacting detail, she traces this narrative to the work of a single, minor Nazi-era historian, revealing it to be ideologically compromised work that badly mishandles its evidence. By combining new medieval scholarship with a biographical and historiographical exploration grounded in the 20th century, The Absent Jews spans remote eras while offering a fascinating account of the construction of historical knowledge.
Prior to the high Middle Ages, the Baltic Rim was largely terra incognita-but by the late Middle ... more Prior to the high Middle Ages, the Baltic Rim was largely terra incognita-but by the late Middle Ages, it was home to diverse small and large communities. But the Baltic Rim was not simply the place those people lived-it was also an imagined space through which they defined themselves and their identities. This book traces the transformation of the Baltic Rim in this period through a focus on the self-image of a number of communities: urban and regional, cultic, missionary, legal, and political. Contributors look at the ways these communities defined themselves in relationship to other groups, how they constructed their identities and customs, and what held them together or tore them apart.
THE BOOK IS OPEN ACCESS, AVAILABLE through JSTOR services.
Due to the scarcity of sources regarding actual Jewish and Muslim communities and settlements, th... more Due to the scarcity of sources regarding actual Jewish and Muslim communities and settlements, there has until now been little work on either the perception of or encounters with Muslims and Jews in medieval Scandinavia and the Baltic Region. The volume provides the reader with the possibility to appreciate and understand the complexity of Jewish?Christian?Muslim relations in the medieval North. The contributions cover topics such as cultural and economic exchange between Christians and members of other religions; evidence of actual Jews and Muslims in the Baltic Rim; images and stereotypes of the Other.
The volume thus presents a previously neglected field of research that will help nuance the overall picture of interreligious relations in medieval Europe.
Social imagery during the Late Middle Ages was typically considered to be dominated by the three ... more Social imagery during the Late Middle Ages was typically considered to be dominated by the three orders oratores, bellatores, laboratores as the most common way of describing social order, along with body metaphors and comprehensive lists of professions as known from the Danse macabre tradition. None of these actually dominates within the vast genre of lay didactical literature.
This book comprises the first systematic investigation of social imagery from a specific late medieval linguistic context. It methodically catalogues images of the social that were used in a particular cultural/literary sphere, and it separates late medieval efforts at catechization in print from the social and religious ruptures that are conventionally thought to have occurred after 1517. The investigation thus compliments recent scholarship on late medieval vernacular literature in Germany, most of which has concentrated on southern urban centres of production. The author fills a major lacuna in this field by concentrating for the first time on the entire extant corpus of vernacular print production in the northern region dominated by the Hanseatic cities and the Middle Low German dialect.
The lack of a local Jewish community did not prevent medieval Swedish clerics and lay people from... more The lack of a local Jewish community did not prevent medieval Swedish clerics and lay people from being interested in Jews and Jewish questions. They bought, translated, read and preached from most of the available textual sources and thus spread the widely available views of the hermeneutical Jew: a cruel, stubborn and ugly person and at the same time a cipher for the entire Jewish people both in biblical times and today. This article gives an overview of the Latin and vernacular manuscripts with anti-Jewish motifs and texts and shows that the main and most common textual models and motifs were available in Swedish libraries and collections, from legends via apocryphal texts to fake disputations – adding up to a relatively complete ‘hermeneutical Jew’. A focus was, as in the rest of Europe, on Passion-related piety, which was the most common form of piety in the late Middle Ages – and usually connected with distinct anti-Jewish features. The fact that we can establish direct and indirect textual and narrative lines of tradition between the medieval codices and modern printed booklets of the nineteenth century proves the long-lasting intelligibility of anti-Jewish stereotypes in Sweden – developed and spread completely independently from the Jewish minority. The medieval perspective thus adds a much-needed nuance to the debate about antisemitism in the North: it did not need any actual Jews; it simply made up its own, based on the general Christian tradition.
Die enge Verbindung von Mission und Kolonisierung ist für die europäische Expansion in der Frühen... more Die enge Verbindung von Mission und Kolonisierung ist für die europäische Expansion in der Frühen Neuzeit umfassend erforscht worden, und das hieraus resultierende gewaltsame Erbe prägt weiterhin die christliche Auseinandersetzung mit dem Missionsauftrag. 1 Auch im Mittelalter wurde die "Heidenmission" (conversio infidelium) teils als separate, teils als integrale Begründung für territoriale Expansion benutzt, und im Zusammenhang damit wurden auch essentialistische Konstruktionen des "Anderen" entwickelt, die als Wurzeln des modernen Rassismus gelten können. Diese Prozesse wurden bisher primär in Bezug auf die Kreuzzüge, im Spätmittelalter vor allem die im Ostseeraum, diskutiert. 2 Die Bezüge zwischen mittelalterlichen Kolonisierungen und gegenwärtigen postkolonialen Kämpfen indigener Bevölkerungen werden erst zögerlich in der Mediävistik thematisiert. 3 Kaum beach
1838 versuchte König Karl XIV. Johan, die bürgerliche Gleichstellung der schwedischen Juden und J... more 1838 versuchte König Karl XIV. Johan, die bürgerliche Gleichstellung der schwedischen Juden und Jüdinnen per Dekret einzuführen, musste dieses jedoch nach einer monatelangen medialen Kampagne wieder zurücknehmen. Auf dem Höhepunkt dieser Kampagne wurden zwei Wochen lang die Häuser jüdischer Personen in Stockholm attackiert, die ersten konzertierten physischen Angriffe gegen die jüdische Minderheit in Schweden.
Das Ostprogramm der preußischen Archivverwaltung wurde von etwa 1931 bis 1945 implementiert. Es p... more Das Ostprogramm der preußischen Archivverwaltung wurde von etwa 1931 bis 1945 implementiert. Es plante die wissenschaftlichen Aktivitäten der preußischen Archivare im Rahmen der →Ostforschung und steuerte sie bis zu einem gewissen Grade auch. Der erste Entwurf von →Albert Brackmann baute auf früheren wissenschaftlichen Programmen der Archivverwaltung auf, suchte aber vor allem die deutsche Ostforschung in den Institutionen der preußischen Archivverwaltung zu bündeln und unter ihrem Dach zu vereinen. Durch die gleichzeitige Gründung der Nord-und Ostdeutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft (NOFG), der →Publikationsstelle Dahlem (PuSte) und der Zentralstelle für Nachkriegsgeschichte entstand jedoch eine Kon-kurrenz um Ressourcen, vor allem die Arbeitskraft und Einbindung der Archivare, zwischen den Archiven und den Volksdeutschen Forschungsgemeinschaften. Ernst Zipfel suchte diese durch spätere Formulierungen des Ostprogramms zu beheben. In der Vielzahl von Forschungsplänen und-institutionen, die seit den 1920er Jahren wissenschaftlich die deutschen Ansprüche auf polnisches Gebiet und die Revision des Versailler Vertrages untermauerten, sind die Bemühungen der preußi-schen Archivverwaltung aber klar zu erkennen. Sie decken sich mit den älteren Ziel-setzungen etwa der Historischen Kommission für ost-und westpreußische Landes-forschung, die bereits seit den 1920er Jahren die " deutsche Leistung im Nordosten " erforschte. Forschungsarbeiten der preußischen Archivare waren seit dem 19. Jahr-hundert in der Reihe " Publikationen aus den preußischen Staatsarchiven " zusam-mengefasst, die auf Betreiben Otto von Bismarcks von Heinrich von Sybel begründet wurden, von den folgenden Direktoren der Archivverwaltung jedoch unterschied-lich konzeptionell gefüllt wurden. Paul Fridolin Kehr (Generaldirektor der Preußi-schen Staatsarchive 1915–1929) plante in der Reihe auf lange Sicht eine quellennahe Verwaltungsgeschichte Preußens zu veröffentlichen; seine Konzeption konnte je-doch wegen des Ersten Weltkriegs nicht umgesetzt werden. Kehrs Nachfolger Albert Brackmann trieb die antipolnische Zuspitzung des Forschungsplans voran und de-klarierte die Publikationsserie zu einer Reihe über die deutsche Geschichte im Os-ten, bei gleichzeitiger Ausrichtung der Archivausbildung auf den wissenschaftli-chen revisionistischen Kampf. 1 In diesem Sinne stellt das Ostprogramm (gemeinsam mit dem Westprogramm) eine regional und politisch bedingte Verengung der frühe-ren wissenschaftlichen Pläne der Archivverwaltung dar. 1931 wurde dies von Brackmann und →Johannes Papritz in Konkurrenz zu →Erich Keyser und dessen Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Historischen Kommissionen for-muliert, die eine Einmischung der Archivverwaltung in die Ostforschung zu Recht fürchtete. Brackmann schuf gleichzeitig mit der PuSte eine Zentralstelle für die Kartierung polnischer Archivbenutzung und Veröffentlichungen sowie mehrere zentrale Forschungseinrichtungen, was zu wiederholten Reibereien und Konflikten mit der Archivverwaltung und Brackmanns Nachfolger Ernst Zipfel führte. Dieser versuchte 1939 eine Wiederbelebung des Konzepts für die " Publikationen aus den
Revealing the Secrets of the Jews: Johannes Pfefferkorn and Christian Writings about Jewish Life ... more Revealing the Secrets of the Jews: Johannes Pfefferkorn and Christian Writings about Jewish Life and Literature in Early Modern Europe / [ed] Jonathan Adams & Cordelia Heß (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2017), pp. 3-24.
in: Revealing the Secrets of the Jews. Johannes Pfefferkorn and Christian Writings about Jewish L... more in: Revealing the Secrets of the Jews. Johannes Pfefferkorn and Christian Writings about Jewish Life and Literature in Early Modern Europe. Edited by Adams, Jonathan / Heß, Cordelia Berlin: De Gruyter 2017, 121–134
An investigation of urban uprisings of the late fourteenth and fifteenth century in Lübeck, Osnab... more An investigation of urban uprisings of the late fourteenth and fifteenth century in Lübeck, Osnabrück, and Braunschweig provides insight into a very specific aspect of a text’s significance: the physical object it was written on. Members of the urban community who lacked formal representation and access to the institutions producing and preserving the texts fought not only over the content of a contract but also over access to the physical objects containing the legal document. This article interprets the urban conflicts centering around material objects as struggles for representation and control of public space, memory, and legislation, revealing differences in the conflicting groups’ understanding of how text and object were related.
Between 1411 and 1416, Gdansk was the scene for a complex conflict between town population, counci... more Between 1411 and 1416, Gdansk was the scene for a complex conflict between town population, council and landlord, eventually resultingin violent riots. The peculiar character of these riots becomes apparent whenthe Gdansk chronicles are compared to the historical accounts from other, better-known conflicts, particularly sources depicting the Lübeck Knochenhauer rebellion, the Hamburg brewer’s rebellion of 1481 and the 1449–53 Gentseopstand. A key difference is the extent to which chroniclers understood and portrayed the ritualized action that occurred in the urban uprisings. Comparingthe contemporary chronicles of the Gdansk events with the town’s urban historiography 100 years later also shows that this early conflict with the landlord later played a significant role in urban self-definition.
The use of the term anti-clericalism for a variety of structurally unrelated phenomena has, for t... more The use of the term anti-clericalism for a variety of structurally unrelated phenomena has, for the most part, been rejected by German medieval scholarship, while many English-speaking historians and literary scholars use it in order to denote continuities from the Late Middle Ages to the Reformation period. This article seeks to utilize the term anticlericalism, which is admittedly inadequate for the internal differentiation of movements and phenomena, to contextualize texts and groups criticizing the clergy, pointing to similarities between anticlerical and orthodox ideologies, specifically anti-Judaism and anti-feminism. This allows for both the points of rupture between the Catholic and anti-clerical movements and the importance of anti-clericalism as an indicator of the epochal break between the Middle Ages and the early modern period to be put into perspective.
The case illustrates the use of Nazi-related names and terminology as a point of reference in the... more The case illustrates the use of Nazi-related names and terminology as a point of reference in the context of leisure and sport activities: climbing routes named after leading Nazis, World War II (WWII) military equipment and other references to the Holocaust in Sweden. A debate arose around some of the Austrian alpine routes in connection to the cases in Sweden. Those names exhibit a different character than the ones in Sweden, due to the strong legal prohibition of words connected to National Socialism. No names of leading Nazis are to be found on the Austrian routes. Instead, the names reflect a common right-wing strategy which is used in order to get around the legal prohibition while still being able to refer to NS: they use specific cultural references with ambiguous possible interpretations. In this case, the assortment consists of names and titles of bands, violent video games and other cultural goods which relate to Germanic mythology, militaristic aesthetics or simply war and death. The Swedish and Austrian debates in the media and amongst climbers – mainly in the form anonymous online debate forums – and the different outcomes of the cases in both countries, illustrate the effects official language politics have on a political consciousness. Differences between the national historical narratives concerning a country’s role during WWII lead in turn to different conclusions about what is understood by “references to National Socialism” – and ultimately defines the “Grenzen des Sagbaren”, or the limits of what is utterable without being discredited or legally prosecuted in two similar subcultures.
In 1482, catharina arndes lifted up her skirts in front of the archbishop’s chaplain. She was a r... more In 1482, catharina arndes lifted up her skirts in front of the archbishop’s chaplain. She was a respectable townswoman from Hamburg, and her action was carried out in defense of the Cistercian monastery of Harvestehude which was close to the city and where several of Catharina’s nieces lived as nuns. The chaplain, sent by Archbishop Henry of Schwarzburg, had arrived with a delegation consisting of canons from Bremen and Hamburg in order to reform the monastery, but the delegation was unable to defend itself against this particular form of resistance: faced with Catharina’s lifted skirts, the delegation was forced to withdraw. The monastery remained unreformed. This skirt-lifting incident, perceived as an act of obscenity directed towards a man of the Church, occurred at the peak of a complex conflict in late medieval Hamburg. The rioting women in general, and the lifted skirts in particular, were, in the text composition of the lay chroniclers, a symbol of something larger: the insanity of the rioters, the distortion of the righteous (i.e., the traditional social order), and the impossibility of controlling the people’s madness when the leaders were in disagreement. For the nuns and the townspeople, the episode led to a successful claim to the self-governance of Harvestehude; for the chroniclers and the ecclesiastical rulers, female resistance, both clerical and lay, was the ultimate evidence of the rioters being in the wrong.
Joint book launch:
Cordelia Heß, Social Imagery in Middle Low German: Didactical Literature an... more Joint book launch:
Cordelia Heß, Social Imagery in Middle Low German: Didactical Literature and Metaphorical Representation (1470–1517)
This book comprises the first systematic investigation of social imagery from a specific late medieval linguistic context. It methodically catalogues images of the social that were used in a particular cultural/literary sphere, and it separates late medieval efforts at catechization in print from the social and religious ruptures that are conventionally thought to have occurred after 1517.
http://www.brill.com
Jonathan Adams, Lessons in Contempt: Poul Ræff’s Translation and Publication in 1516 of Johannes Pfefferkorn’s The Confession of the Jews
This book includes an outline of how Jews were portrayed in medieval Danish vernacular literature; a description of Pfefferkorn's life and works; a discussion of Ræff's translation and publication; a presentation of the language and style of the Danish version, as well as an edition of the text together with the Latin original, an English translation and an extensive commentary.
http://www.universitypress.dk
Antifeminismus umfasst ein breites Feld von Kampffeldern, -begriffen und Argumentationen extrem r... more Antifeminismus umfasst ein breites Feld von Kampffeldern, -begriffen und Argumentationen extrem rechter, rechter und konservativer Akteur:innen. Grundlegend dafür ist der Fokus auf einer als natürlich angenommenen binären Geschlechterordnung mit jeweils spezifischen Charakteristika der Geschlechter sowie der heterosexuellen Familie als tragendes Element der Gesellschaft. Die Forschung teilt sich in zwei größere Bereiche auf: eine auch international vergleichende empirisch ausgerichtete Phänomenologie und, darauf aufbauend, die Frage nach einer Definition des Antifeminismus und nach präzisen Begrifflichkeiten. Angesichts des ambivalenten Verhältnisses der extremen Rechten zu feministischen Themen – zwischen Vereinnahmung und Abgrenzung – steht eine abschließende Antwort auf die eher theoretisch-semantische Fragestellung, ob Antifeminismus immer als Reaktion auf Feminismus geschieht und sich weiterentwickelt, noch aus.
in : Saints and Sainthood around the Baltic Sea: Identity, Literacy, and Communication in the Mid... more in : Saints and Sainthood around the Baltic Sea: Identity, Literacy, and Communication in the Middle Ages. Ed. by Carsten Selch Jensen, Kurt Villads Jensen, Tuomas M S Lehtonen, Nils Holger Petersen, Tracey Sands. Kalamazoo 2018.
Studier om rasism: Tvärvetenskapliga perspektiv på ras, vithet och diskriminering, 2018
Cordelia Heß och Jonathan Adams samförfattade kapitel tar sin utgångspunkt i en artikel som i aug... more Cordelia Heß och Jonathan Adams samförfattade kapitel tar sin utgångspunkt i en artikel som i augusti 2009 publicerades på kultursidan i Aftonbladet. I artikeln, som var författad av journalisten och fotografen Daniel Boström, hävdades att döda palestinier plundras på organ av den israeliska armén och i förlängningen av den israeliska staten. Vidare kopplades detta till illegal organhandel som bland annat amerikanska judar påstods vara inblandade i. Artikeln utlöste en intensiv debatt och resulterade även i en diplomatisk krissituation mellan Israel och Sverige. Tre år senare blossade debatten upp på nytt när Aftonbladets kulturchef Åsa Linderborg i en artikel hävdade att Boström hade rätt. Med utgångspunkt i och via en genomgång av den långa kristna traditionen av blodsmystik och ritualmordsanklagelser mot judar som går tillbaka till medeltiden och som kulminerade mellan åren 1870 och 1940 visar Heß och Adams hur klassiska antisemitiska stereotyper och föreställningar om både ritualmord och en judisk världsmakt överlevt in i vår tid, och hur dessa föreställningar ekade i Boströms artikel liksom i försvaret av denne som bland annat förestods av Linderborg och andra journalister.
Julie L. Mell, The Myth of the Medieval Jewish Moneylender. Volume I and II, Basingstoke, Hampshi... more Julie L. Mell, The Myth of the Medieval Jewish Moneylender. Volume I and II, Basingstoke, Hampshire (Palgrave Macmillan) 2017, XII–264 p.; XIX–336 p., 26 fig., 26 tabl. (Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History) ISBN 978-1-137-39778-2; 978-3-319-34186-6, EUR 93,59; EUR 88,39.
An investigation of urban uprisings of the late fourteenth and fifteenth century in Lübeck, Osnab... more An investigation of urban uprisings of the late fourteenth and fifteenth century in Lübeck, Osnabrück, and Braunschweig provides insight into a very specific aspect of a text’s significance: the physical object it was written on. Members of the urban community who lacked formal representation and access to the institutions producing and preserving the texts fought not only over the content of a contract but also over access to the physical objects containing the legal document. This article interprets the urban conflicts centering around material objects as struggles for representation and control of public space, memory, and legislation, revealing differences in the conflicting groups’ understanding of how text and object were related.
Pragmatische Schriftlichkeit in Preusen : die Schuldbucher des Deutschen Ordens, Grosschafferei K... more Pragmatische Schriftlichkeit in Preusen : die Schuldbucher des Deutschen Ordens, Grosschafferei Konigsberg
ABSTRACTBetween 1411 and 1416, Gdansk was the scene for a complex conflict between town populatio... more ABSTRACTBetween 1411 and 1416, Gdansk was the scene for a complex conflict between town population, council and landlord, eventually resulting in violent riots. The peculiar character of these riots becomes apparent when the Gdansk chronicles are compared to the historical accounts from other, better-known conflicts, particularly sources depicting the LübeckKnochenhauerrebellion, the Hamburg brewer's rebellion of 1481 and the 1449–53Gentse opstand. A key difference is the extent to which chroniclers understood and portrayed the ritualized action that occurred in the urban uprisings. Comparing the contemporary chronicles of the Gdansk events with the town's urban historiography 100 years later also shows that this early conflict with the landlord later played a significant role in urban self-definition.
Cordelia Heß och Jonathan Adams samförfattade kapitel tar sin utgångspunkt i en artikel som i aug... more Cordelia Heß och Jonathan Adams samförfattade kapitel tar sin utgångspunkt i en artikel som i augusti 2009 publicerades på kultursidan i Aftonbladet. I artikeln, som var författad av journalisten och fotografen Daniel Boström, hävdades att döda palestinier plundras på organ av den israeliska armén och i förlängningen av den israeliska staten. Vidare kopplades detta till illegal organhandel som bland annat amerikanska judar påstods vara inblandade i. Artikeln utlöste en intensiv debatt och resulterade även i en diplomatisk krissituation mellan Israel och Sverige. Tre år senare blossade debatten upp på nytt när Aftonbladets kulturchef Åsa Linderborg i en artikel hävdade att Boström hade rätt. Med utgångspunkt i och via en genomgång av den långa kristna traditionen av blodsmystik och ritualmordsanklagelser mot judar som går tillbaka till medeltiden och som kulminerade mellan åren 1870 och 1940 visar Heß och Adams hur klassiska antisemitiska stereotyper och föreställningar om både ritualmord och en judisk världsmakt överlevt in i vår tid, och hur dessa föreställningar ekade i Boströms artikel liksom i försvaret av denne som bland annat förestods av Linderborg och andra journalister.
Revealing the Secrets of the Jews: Johannes Pfefferkorn and Christian Writings about Jewish Life ... more Revealing the Secrets of the Jews: Johannes Pfefferkorn and Christian Writings about Jewish Life and Literature in Early Modern Europe / [ed] Jonathan Adams & Cordelia Heß (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2017), pp. 3-24.
Workshop series - Hamburg, 29.4.2024, Frankfurt am Main 3.5.2024, Greifswald 24.6.2024 - virtual ... more Workshop series - Hamburg, 29.4.2024, Frankfurt am Main 3.5.2024, Greifswald 24.6.2024 - virtual participation possible
Doing Memory: Medieval Saints and Heroes and Their Afterlives in the Baltic Sea Region (19th-20th centuries), 2024
This anthology is about the representations and uses of medieval saints, heroes, and heroic event... more This anthology is about the representations and uses of medieval saints, heroes, and heroic events as elements of popular, local, and national culture during the 19th and 20th centuries in the Baltic Sea region: Scandinavia, Finland, Baltic countries, Northern Germany and NorthWestern Russia. Authors examine the processes of how medieval saints and heroes have been remembered, commemorated, interpreted, used, and refl ected during modernity, and by whom.
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Books by Cordelia Heß
The significance of religion for the development of modern racist antisemitism is a much debated topic in the study of Jewish-Christian relations. This book, the first study on antisemitism in nineteenth-century Sweden, provides new insights into the debate from the specific case of a country in which religious homogeneity was the considered ideal long into the modern era.
Between 1800 and 1900, approximately 150 books and pamphlets were printed in Sweden on the subject of Judaism and Jews. About one third comprised of translations mostly from German, but to a lesser extent also from French and English. Two thirds were Swedish originals, covering all genres and topics, but with a majority on religious topics: conversion, supersessionism, and accusations of deicide and bloodlust. The latter stem from the vastly popular medieval legends of Ahasverus, Pilate, and Judas which were printed in only slightly adapted forms and accompanied by medieval texts connecting these apocryphal figures to contemporary Jews, ascribing them a physical, essential, and biological coherence and continuity – a specific Jewish temporality shaped in medieval passion piety, which remained functional and intelligible in the modern period.
Relying on medieval models and their combination of religious and racist imagery, nineteenth-century debates were informed by a comprehensive and mostly negative "knowledge" about Jews.
Antisemitism in the North
History and State of Research
Reihe: Religious Minorities in the North, 1
Herausgegeben von: Jonathan Adams und Cordelia Heß
De Gruyter |
2020
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110634822 [Titel anhand dieser DOI in Citavi-Projekt übernehmen]
PDF
EPUB
Übersicht
Inhalt
Open Access
Is research on antisemitism even necessary in countries with a relatively small Jewish population? Absolutely, as this volume shows. Compared to other countries, research on antisemitism in the Nordic countries (Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden) is marginalized at an institutional and staffing level, especially as far as antisemitism beyond German fascism, the Second World War, and the Holocaust is concerned. Furthermore, compared to scholarship on other prejudices and minority groups, issues concerning Jews and anti-Jewish stereotypes remain relatively underresearched in Scandinavia – even though antisemitic stereotypes have been present and flourishing in the North ever since the arrival of Christianity, and long before the arrival of the first Jewish communities.
This volume aims to help bring the study of antisemitism to the fore, from the medieval period to the present day. Contributors from all the Nordic countries describe the status of as well as the challenges and desiderata for the study of antisemitism in their respective countries.
Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Contributors
A Note on Spelling and Referencing
Introduction
1 Jonathan Adams and Cordelia Heß: Jewish Life and Books under Scrutiny: Ethnography, Polemics, and Converts
I Life and campaigns
2 David H. Price: Johannes Pfefferkorn and Imperial Politics
3 Franz Posset: In Search of the Historical Pfefferkorn: The Missionary to the Jews, 1507–1508
4 Avner Shamir: Johannes Pfefferkorn and the Dual Form of the Confiscation Campaign
II Books and dissemination
5 Jan-Hendryk de Boer: Pfefferkorn’s Books or the Most Rational Man in the World
6 Naomi Feuchtwanger-Sarig: Synagoga Veritas? Johannes Pfefferkorn and his Synagogue Descriptions in the buchlijn der iuden beicht
7 Cordelia Heß: Jew-Hatred Sells? Anti-Jewish Print Production in the German Dialects
8 Jonathan Adams: “Thus shall Christian people know to punish them”: Translating Pfefferkorn into Danish
III Converts, ethnography, and polemics
9 Maria Diemling: Patronage, Representation, and Conversion: Victor von Carben (1423–1515) and his Social Networks
10 Stephen G. Burnett: Luther’s Chief Witness: Anthonius Margaritha’s Der gantz Jüdisch glaub (1530/1531)
11 Yaacov Deutsch: The Reception History of Ethnographic Literature about the Jews
12 Ryan W. Szpiech: From Convert to Convert: Two Opposed Trends in Late Medieval and Early Modern Anti-Jewish Polemic
13 Imanuel Clemens Schmidt: Revealing the Absurdity of Jewish Hopes: From Polemical Ethnography to Basnage’s L’Histoire des Juifs
14 Markéta Kabůrková: Tela Ignea Satanae: Christian Scholars and the Editing of Hebrew Polemical Literature
15 Avery Gosfield: Gratias post mensam in diebus festiuis cum cantico hebrayim: A New Look at an Early Sixteenth-Century Tzur Mishelo
Works Attributed to Johannes Pfefferkorn
Bibliography
Indices
THE BOOK IS OPEN ACCESS, AVAILABLE through JSTOR services.
The volume thus presents a previously neglected field of research that will help nuance the overall picture of interreligious relations in medieval Europe.
This book comprises the first systematic investigation of social imagery from a specific late medieval linguistic context. It methodically catalogues images of the social that were used in a particular cultural/literary sphere, and it separates late medieval efforts at catechization in print from the social and religious ruptures that are conventionally thought to have occurred after 1517. The investigation thus compliments recent scholarship on late medieval vernacular literature in Germany, most of which has concentrated on southern urban centres of production. The author fills a major lacuna in this field by concentrating for the first time on the entire extant corpus of vernacular print production in the northern region dominated by the Hanseatic cities and the Middle Low German dialect.
Articles by Cordelia Heß
Berlin: De Gruyter 2017, 121–134
The significance of religion for the development of modern racist antisemitism is a much debated topic in the study of Jewish-Christian relations. This book, the first study on antisemitism in nineteenth-century Sweden, provides new insights into the debate from the specific case of a country in which religious homogeneity was the considered ideal long into the modern era.
Between 1800 and 1900, approximately 150 books and pamphlets were printed in Sweden on the subject of Judaism and Jews. About one third comprised of translations mostly from German, but to a lesser extent also from French and English. Two thirds were Swedish originals, covering all genres and topics, but with a majority on religious topics: conversion, supersessionism, and accusations of deicide and bloodlust. The latter stem from the vastly popular medieval legends of Ahasverus, Pilate, and Judas which were printed in only slightly adapted forms and accompanied by medieval texts connecting these apocryphal figures to contemporary Jews, ascribing them a physical, essential, and biological coherence and continuity – a specific Jewish temporality shaped in medieval passion piety, which remained functional and intelligible in the modern period.
Relying on medieval models and their combination of religious and racist imagery, nineteenth-century debates were informed by a comprehensive and mostly negative "knowledge" about Jews.
Antisemitism in the North
History and State of Research
Reihe: Religious Minorities in the North, 1
Herausgegeben von: Jonathan Adams und Cordelia Heß
De Gruyter |
2020
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110634822 [Titel anhand dieser DOI in Citavi-Projekt übernehmen]
PDF
EPUB
Übersicht
Inhalt
Open Access
Is research on antisemitism even necessary in countries with a relatively small Jewish population? Absolutely, as this volume shows. Compared to other countries, research on antisemitism in the Nordic countries (Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden) is marginalized at an institutional and staffing level, especially as far as antisemitism beyond German fascism, the Second World War, and the Holocaust is concerned. Furthermore, compared to scholarship on other prejudices and minority groups, issues concerning Jews and anti-Jewish stereotypes remain relatively underresearched in Scandinavia – even though antisemitic stereotypes have been present and flourishing in the North ever since the arrival of Christianity, and long before the arrival of the first Jewish communities.
This volume aims to help bring the study of antisemitism to the fore, from the medieval period to the present day. Contributors from all the Nordic countries describe the status of as well as the challenges and desiderata for the study of antisemitism in their respective countries.
Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Contributors
A Note on Spelling and Referencing
Introduction
1 Jonathan Adams and Cordelia Heß: Jewish Life and Books under Scrutiny: Ethnography, Polemics, and Converts
I Life and campaigns
2 David H. Price: Johannes Pfefferkorn and Imperial Politics
3 Franz Posset: In Search of the Historical Pfefferkorn: The Missionary to the Jews, 1507–1508
4 Avner Shamir: Johannes Pfefferkorn and the Dual Form of the Confiscation Campaign
II Books and dissemination
5 Jan-Hendryk de Boer: Pfefferkorn’s Books or the Most Rational Man in the World
6 Naomi Feuchtwanger-Sarig: Synagoga Veritas? Johannes Pfefferkorn and his Synagogue Descriptions in the buchlijn der iuden beicht
7 Cordelia Heß: Jew-Hatred Sells? Anti-Jewish Print Production in the German Dialects
8 Jonathan Adams: “Thus shall Christian people know to punish them”: Translating Pfefferkorn into Danish
III Converts, ethnography, and polemics
9 Maria Diemling: Patronage, Representation, and Conversion: Victor von Carben (1423–1515) and his Social Networks
10 Stephen G. Burnett: Luther’s Chief Witness: Anthonius Margaritha’s Der gantz Jüdisch glaub (1530/1531)
11 Yaacov Deutsch: The Reception History of Ethnographic Literature about the Jews
12 Ryan W. Szpiech: From Convert to Convert: Two Opposed Trends in Late Medieval and Early Modern Anti-Jewish Polemic
13 Imanuel Clemens Schmidt: Revealing the Absurdity of Jewish Hopes: From Polemical Ethnography to Basnage’s L’Histoire des Juifs
14 Markéta Kabůrková: Tela Ignea Satanae: Christian Scholars and the Editing of Hebrew Polemical Literature
15 Avery Gosfield: Gratias post mensam in diebus festiuis cum cantico hebrayim: A New Look at an Early Sixteenth-Century Tzur Mishelo
Works Attributed to Johannes Pfefferkorn
Bibliography
Indices
THE BOOK IS OPEN ACCESS, AVAILABLE through JSTOR services.
The volume thus presents a previously neglected field of research that will help nuance the overall picture of interreligious relations in medieval Europe.
This book comprises the first systematic investigation of social imagery from a specific late medieval linguistic context. It methodically catalogues images of the social that were used in a particular cultural/literary sphere, and it separates late medieval efforts at catechization in print from the social and religious ruptures that are conventionally thought to have occurred after 1517. The investigation thus compliments recent scholarship on late medieval vernacular literature in Germany, most of which has concentrated on southern urban centres of production. The author fills a major lacuna in this field by concentrating for the first time on the entire extant corpus of vernacular print production in the northern region dominated by the Hanseatic cities and the Middle Low German dialect.
Berlin: De Gruyter 2017, 121–134
Cordelia Heß, Social Imagery in Middle Low German: Didactical Literature and Metaphorical Representation (1470–1517)
This book comprises the first systematic investigation of social imagery from a specific late medieval linguistic context. It methodically catalogues images of the social that were used in a particular cultural/literary sphere, and it separates late medieval efforts at catechization in print from the social and religious ruptures that are conventionally thought to have occurred after 1517.
http://www.brill.com
Jonathan Adams, Lessons in Contempt: Poul Ræff’s Translation and Publication in 1516 of Johannes Pfefferkorn’s The Confession of the Jews
This book includes an outline of how Jews were portrayed in medieval Danish vernacular literature; a description of Pfefferkorn's life and works; a discussion of Ræff's translation and publication; a presentation of the language and style of the Danish version, as well as an edition of the text together with the Latin original, an English translation and an extensive commentary.
http://www.universitypress.dk