Washington University in St. Louis Washington University Open Scholarship All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) 1-1-2010 Culture and Exchange: The ewJ s of Königsberg, 1700-1820 Jill Storm Washington University in St. Louis Follow this and additional works at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/etd Part of the European History Commons Recommended Citation Storm, Jill, "Culture and Exchange: The eJ ws of Königsberg, 1700-1820" (2010). All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs). 335. https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/etd/335 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by Washington University Open Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) by an authorized administrator of Washington University Open Scholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS Department of History Dissertation Examination Committee: Hillel Kieval, Chair Matthew Erlin Martin Jacobs Christine Johnson Corinna Treitel CULTURE AND EXCHANGE: THE JEWS OF KÖNIGSBERG, 1700-1820 by Jill Anita Storm A dissertation presented to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2010 Saint Louis, Missouri Contents Acknowledgments ii Introduction 1 Part One: Politics and Economics 1 The Founding of the Community 18 2 “A Watchful Eye”: Synagogue Surveillance 45 3 “Corner Synagogues” and State Control 81 4 Jewish Commercial Life 115 5 Cross-Cultural Exchange 145 Part Two: Culture 6 “A Learned Siberia”: Königsberg’s Place in Historiography 186 7 Ha-Measef and the Königsberg Haskalah 209 8 Maskil vs. Rabbi: Jewish Education and Communal Conflict 232 9 The Edict of 1812 272 Conclusion 293 Bibliography 302 Acknowledgments Many people and organizations have supported me during this dissertation. I would like to thank the Spencer T. Olin Fellowship for Women at Washington University and the Monticello College Foundation, not only for their generous financial support but also for the numerous dinners and conferences they hosted over the years. I enjoyed these events immensely. Thanks to Nancy Pope as well for her attention. I would also like to acknowledge the support of the American Academy of Jewish Research. Their Graduate Student Seminar in San Diego provided me with valuable feedback at the beginning of this process. I am also grateful to the Center for German- Jewish Studies at Sussex University for organizing the Max and Hilde Kochmann Summer School in Oxford where I received input at the end of my writing. I must extend special thanks to Lois Dubin and Shmuel Feiner, both of whom took the time to discuss my project with me and gave me helpful advice. I am especially indebted to my advisor, Hillel Kieval, who has challenged me in my thinking and my writing over the years. Working with him has made me a better historian. I also would like to thank the rest of my defense committee – Matt Erlin, Martin Jacobs, Christine Johnson, and Corinna Treitel – for their willingness to read and comment on my work. Lastly, I want to thank my parents who have always been so supportive of me, and my husband Ian for his love and encouragement. I dedicate this dissertation to my young son Elliot. ii iii Introduction On December 27, 1856, the Jewish community in Königsberg, East Prussia, celebrated the centennial of the consecration of the first official synagogue in the city. Joseph Levin Saalschütz (1801-1863), former “preacher and teacher” of the Königsberg Jewish community and current Hebrew lecturer at the city’s university, addressed the congregation. Saalschütz was the son of the former head rabbi of the Königsberg Jewish community and the first Jew to receive a Doctorate in Philosophy from the Albertus University in Königsberg.1 A model of Jewish success and integration, Saalschütz was a proper choice to speak to the reform-minded Jewish congregation on such a memorable and historic day. He spoke with pride of the Jewish community’s accomplishments in the last century. Saalschütz voiced the optimism and sense of belonging in German society of those Jews present: “There is no Prussian who does not believe in God. There is no Prussian who is not loyal to his King and the law. There is no Prussian who does not love his Fatherland.”2 Such confidence to declare Jews not just culturally German but politically Prussian could only have come after the Edict of 1812, which gave the Jews of Prussia partial citizenship, and after Jews served as soldiers for the first time during the Napoleonic Wars. 1 “Preacher and teacher” was the title of a communal educational position that the Königsberg Jewish community created in 1820. For more on this, see Chapter Eight. For more on Saalschütz, see Manfred Komorowski, "Jüdische Studenten, Doktoren und Professoren der Königsberger Universität im 19. Jahrhundert," in Zur Geschichte und Kultur der Juden in Ost- und Westpreussen, ed. M. Brocke, M. Heitmann, and H. Lordick (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2000), p. 429. Monika Richarz, Der Eintritt der Juden in die Akademischen Berufe (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1974), p. 108. 2 Joseph L. Saalschütz, Das Jahrhundert eines Gotteshauses: in der Königsberger Synagoge, bei der Feier ihres Hundertjährigen Bestehens, am 30. Kislew 5617 (27. Dezember 1856) (Königsberg: Rautenberg, 1857), p. 10. 1 Throughout its history, Königsberg served as both a commercial and intellectual bridge between Western and Eastern Europe. Merchants and travelers exchanged resources both material and abstract at the city’s fairs and markets. Just as Königsberg was a transitional point between east and west for various goods and materials, for numerous Jewish students and intellectuals, Königsberg was also a stopping point between their home towns or cities in Eastern Europe and Western European capitals like Berlin. Salomon Maimon stayed in Königsberg for a time in the late 1770s before he settled in Berlin. Several prominent Jewish Enlighteners (maskilim) such as Isaac Euchel from Denmark and Breslau native Mendel Breslau lived in Königsberg for a longer period. Many important Prussian Jews also spent their formative years in Königsberg. Jewish writer Fanny Lewald (neé Markus) was born in Königsberg in 1811, as was 1848 revolutionary Johann Jacoby in 1805. This dissertation covers some of the key aspects of Jewish life in Königsberg in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It begins at the age of the Court Jew and ends after the Prussian Emancipation Edict of 1812, tracing the Jewish community from its founding to the early stages of Jewish embourgeoisement and their cultural and political integration.3 An in-depth case study of one Jewish community allows the historian an opportunity to dig deeply into a specific context and thereby to reveal the texture of life in a certain place. Moreover, case studies of local Jewish communities are 3 Jonathan Israel puts the age of the Court Jew between 1650-1713. Werner Mosse divides the history of German Jewish emancipation into three stages: 1781-1815, 1815-1847, and 1848-1871. The scope of my work falls into the first stage which includes the peak of the haskalah, Napoleonic occupation and later defeat. See Jonathan Israel, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism, 1550-1750 (Portland: Littmann Library of Jewish Civilization, 1998), p. 101, Werner E. Mosse, "From "Schutzjuden" To "Deutsche Staatsbürger Jüdischen Glaubens": The Long and Bumpy Road of Jewish Emancipation in Germany," in Paths of Emancipation: Jews, States, and Citizenship, ed. P. Birnbaum and I. Katznelson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 60. 2 crucial to the historiography of European Jewry as a whole.4 By illuminating a local environment and the ways in which Jews related to the state, the city and to each other, we can develop a more robust picture of European Jewish life. My research incorporates newer trends in Jewish history, including the increasing focus among historians on the East Central European borderlands.5 The process of “remapping” European Jewish history began in the 1990s and has continued even into the present focus on the borderlands.6 The field of Jewish history has benefited from the breakdown of the traditional boundaries between east and west and between German Jew and Polish Jew. Königsberg does not entirely fit into current borderlands research, since East Prussia did not have the shifting borders of its Polish and Habsburg neighbors, nor was it a multiethnic or multinational region in which Germans had to share space with 4 In his work on the Jews of Breslau, Till van Rahden writes of his attempt to “mediate between macro- and micro-history, between the history of society and that of daily life.” Till van Rahden, Jews and Other Germans: Civil Society, Religious Diversity, and Urban Politics in Breslau, 1860-1925 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008), p. 16. In his portrait of Berlin, Steven Lowenstein prefers to use the term “collective biography” over communal history or micro-history. Steven Lowenstein, The Berlin Jewish Community: Enlightenment, Family, and Crisis, 1770-1830 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 7-9. 5 See for example, Tara Zahra, "Looking East: East Central European "Borderlands" in German History and Historiography," History Compass 3 (2005). Examples of borderlands research in Jewish history are Adam Teller and Magda Teter, "Introduction: Borders and Boundaries in the Historiography of the Jews in the Poland-Lithuanian Commonwealth," Polin 22 (2010): pp. 3-46. Moshe Rosman, "Jewish History across Borders," in Rethinking European Jewish History, ed. J. Cohen and M. Rosman (Oxford: Littman Library, 2009). Annamaria Orla-Bukowska, "Maintaining Borders, Crossing Borders : Social Relationships in the Shtetl," Polin 17 (2004). Nancy Sinkoff, Out of the Shtetl : Making Jews Modern in the Polish Borderlands (Providence: Brown Judaic Studies, 2004). Antony Polonsky, ed., Focusing on Jews in the Polish Borderlands (Portland: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2001).