Pub Date : 2019-07-03DOI: 10.1080/14790963.2019.1718452
J. Gierowska-Kałłaur
ABSTRACT The Ober-Ost administration instated in 1915 covered a fragment of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania; a territory contested by Germany and Russia, inhabited by a nationally and religiously diverse society, with the Polish-Jewish city of Wilno as its central point. The German policies exploited the national aspirations of both the Lithuanians and the Belarusian leaders to dissolve the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Contrary to the Belarusian leaders focused on short-term benefits, the Lithuanian politicians proved more resourceful in using the seemingly pro-Lithuanian and pro-Belarusian policies towards obtaining their own nation state. The Germans discriminated the Lithuanian Poles in terms of rights to political activity, even when conducted without subsidies from the occupier. The disunity with the local society progressed and benefited the supporters of Polish national policies, however few in Wilno in 1915. The German authorities successfully pushed the Lithuanian Poles, so far seeking consensus with other local communities, towards merging with the post-war Polish state announced by the Act of 5th November 1916. The Germans backed the creation of small, interdependent Lithuanian and Belarusian states. The Lithuanians however issued a second declaration of independence (16.02.1918), thus becoming the only ones to benefit from Germany's military defeat.
{"title":"Death-Agony and Birth Pangs: Inheritors of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania under German Occupation 1915–1918","authors":"J. Gierowska-Kałłaur","doi":"10.1080/14790963.2019.1718452","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14790963.2019.1718452","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The Ober-Ost administration instated in 1915 covered a fragment of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania; a territory contested by Germany and Russia, inhabited by a nationally and religiously diverse society, with the Polish-Jewish city of Wilno as its central point. The German policies exploited the national aspirations of both the Lithuanians and the Belarusian leaders to dissolve the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Contrary to the Belarusian leaders focused on short-term benefits, the Lithuanian politicians proved more resourceful in using the seemingly pro-Lithuanian and pro-Belarusian policies towards obtaining their own nation state. The Germans discriminated the Lithuanian Poles in terms of rights to political activity, even when conducted without subsidies from the occupier. The disunity with the local society progressed and benefited the supporters of Polish national policies, however few in Wilno in 1915. The German authorities successfully pushed the Lithuanian Poles, so far seeking consensus with other local communities, towards merging with the post-war Polish state announced by the Act of 5th November 1916. The Germans backed the creation of small, interdependent Lithuanian and Belarusian states. The Lithuanians however issued a second declaration of independence (16.02.1918), thus becoming the only ones to benefit from Germany's military defeat.","PeriodicalId":41396,"journal":{"name":"Central Europe","volume":"1 1","pages":"110 - 125"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74997387","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-07-03DOI: 10.1080/14790963.2019.1709019
K. Zechenter
ABSTRACT Using Jeffrey C. Alexander’s theory of cultural trauma, this article focuses on the three major types of narratives of suffering which appeared in Polish fiction, after Poland regained political independence in 1918, outside the strong myth-creating narrative of the Polish Legions’ role in the war for independence. It argues that Polish post-1918 fiction developed these three major paths in the face of suffering inflicted on Polish lands, during WWI and Polish-Soviet War. These paths were to: 1) continue the narrative of Polish suffering within the framework of heroic, and selfless, sacrifice for Poland that has been well established since Romanticism; 2) present suffering as the universal fate of humanity outside the notion of national identity, due to the monstrosity of modern bureaucratic systems wherein human beings are treated as objects; and 3) present suffering as the result of modern warfare, but told outside of “patriotic phraseology” – thus suggesting a growing need as to finding a solution to national conflicts outside narrowly defined identities.
{"title":"The Impact of the First World War and the Polish-Soviet War on the ‘Culture of Suffering’ in Post-1914 Polish Fiction","authors":"K. Zechenter","doi":"10.1080/14790963.2019.1709019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14790963.2019.1709019","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Using Jeffrey C. Alexander’s theory of cultural trauma, this article focuses on the three major types of narratives of suffering which appeared in Polish fiction, after Poland regained political independence in 1918, outside the strong myth-creating narrative of the Polish Legions’ role in the war for independence. It argues that Polish post-1918 fiction developed these three major paths in the face of suffering inflicted on Polish lands, during WWI and Polish-Soviet War. These paths were to: 1) continue the narrative of Polish suffering within the framework of heroic, and selfless, sacrifice for Poland that has been well established since Romanticism; 2) present suffering as the universal fate of humanity outside the notion of national identity, due to the monstrosity of modern bureaucratic systems wherein human beings are treated as objects; and 3) present suffering as the result of modern warfare, but told outside of “patriotic phraseology” – thus suggesting a growing need as to finding a solution to national conflicts outside narrowly defined identities.","PeriodicalId":41396,"journal":{"name":"Central Europe","volume":"17 1","pages":"109 - 93"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81869273","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-07-03DOI: 10.1080/14790963.2019.1709020
Andrzej Suchcitz
ABSTRACT With the regaining of independence by Poland in November 1918 it was essential to create a unified homogenous army, the more so that Poland was faced by conflict from its neighbours at a time when the borders of Poland were by no means formed let alone finalised. There were at least four seperate Polish armies and a plethora of local formations springing up all over the country. From these four formations: the Polish Military Organisation, the Polnische Wermacht, the Greater Poland Army and the Polish “Blue” Army in France. Moreover, the officer and NCO corps came from four distinct traditions. Those of the wartime Legions (Polish tradition) and of the three partitioning powers. All had different military traditions and training. An important factor was also that many of the them had only a rudimentary knowledge of the Polish language having served in garrisons far from the Polish lands. Faced with wars with the Ukrainians for Lwów and the south eastern lands, with the Germans over the Province of Greater Poland, Pomerania and Silesia, with the Czechs over Teschen and above all with Bolshevik russia in the east it was essential that the Polish Army unified as quickly as possible. That this was done within the year and eventually resulted in Poland winning the Polish-Bolshevik War of 1919-1920 and securing its borders and independence was in no small measure a result of the rapid unification and creation of an homogenous Polish Army with a single command structure and organisation. The binding glue was the deep rooted sense of national pride and desire to live and work in a free Poland.
{"title":"The Forging of the Polish Army, 1918-1919","authors":"Andrzej Suchcitz","doi":"10.1080/14790963.2019.1709020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14790963.2019.1709020","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT With the regaining of independence by Poland in November 1918 it was essential to create a unified homogenous army, the more so that Poland was faced by conflict from its neighbours at a time when the borders of Poland were by no means formed let alone finalised. There were at least four seperate Polish armies and a plethora of local formations springing up all over the country. From these four formations: the Polish Military Organisation, the Polnische Wermacht, the Greater Poland Army and the Polish “Blue” Army in France. Moreover, the officer and NCO corps came from four distinct traditions. Those of the wartime Legions (Polish tradition) and of the three partitioning powers. All had different military traditions and training. An important factor was also that many of the them had only a rudimentary knowledge of the Polish language having served in garrisons far from the Polish lands. Faced with wars with the Ukrainians for Lwów and the south eastern lands, with the Germans over the Province of Greater Poland, Pomerania and Silesia, with the Czechs over Teschen and above all with Bolshevik russia in the east it was essential that the Polish Army unified as quickly as possible. That this was done within the year and eventually resulted in Poland winning the Polish-Bolshevik War of 1919-1920 and securing its borders and independence was in no small measure a result of the rapid unification and creation of an homogenous Polish Army with a single command structure and organisation. The binding glue was the deep rooted sense of national pride and desire to live and work in a free Poland.","PeriodicalId":41396,"journal":{"name":"Central Europe","volume":"63 1","pages":"72 - 78"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89770882","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-07-03DOI: 10.1080/14790963.2019.1718449
R. Butterwick
The many people gathered in this lecture theatre hold some very different convictions about the past, present and future. We cannot ignore the all too evident fact that the Polish, British and American nations today are all divided, polarized, riven . . . Riven to an extent I do not remember in half a century. We can no longer assume that it is normal to discuss the problems of pursuing the common good within shared human values. Institutions, communities, families and friends have been riven by the demagogues’ claims that whoever is not with us is against us; whoever thinks differently from ‘us’ serves the enemy; therefore ‘they’ must be barbarians, fanatics, criminals, or traitors. Politicians and journalists routinely sling historical terms such as ‘targowica’ as cheap insults. Historians are not immune from such pressures, especially when the politics of history and memory are an ideological fault-line. No doubt next year’s anniversary events will be especially difficult. For the moment, we are marking the centenary of 1918. Is it possible to discuss not only the facts, but also their significance, without party political point-scoring? I hope so. Polish historians and historians of Poland – the two are not the same, although there is a large overlap – are about as politically divided as any other professional group. They have, however, repeatedly shown themselves capable of calm and reasoned debate over emotive questions of the recent and not so recent past. Historians’ professional ethic obliges them to weigh up evidence carefully, and to subject narratives to sceptical criticism. It is impossible to lock the past in the past. The answer to the political manipulation of history is not less history, but better history. We can, I expect, look forward to some profound disagreements and lively polemics today. But I also trust that, both among our invited speakers and among the audience, that all arguments will be made ad rem, never ad personam. The subtitle of the conference is ‘one hundred years on’. Not all that long ago, only just beyond the limits of adult memory. A very few people can still remember those events from their childhood. Many more can remember the reminiscences of their parents or grandparents.
{"title":"Poland Restored, Reborn, Regained: One Hundred Years On","authors":"R. Butterwick","doi":"10.1080/14790963.2019.1718449","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14790963.2019.1718449","url":null,"abstract":"The many people gathered in this lecture theatre hold some very different convictions about the past, present and future. We cannot ignore the all too evident fact that the Polish, British and American nations today are all divided, polarized, riven . . . Riven to an extent I do not remember in half a century. We can no longer assume that it is normal to discuss the problems of pursuing the common good within shared human values. Institutions, communities, families and friends have been riven by the demagogues’ claims that whoever is not with us is against us; whoever thinks differently from ‘us’ serves the enemy; therefore ‘they’ must be barbarians, fanatics, criminals, or traitors. Politicians and journalists routinely sling historical terms such as ‘targowica’ as cheap insults. Historians are not immune from such pressures, especially when the politics of history and memory are an ideological fault-line. No doubt next year’s anniversary events will be especially difficult. For the moment, we are marking the centenary of 1918. Is it possible to discuss not only the facts, but also their significance, without party political point-scoring? I hope so. Polish historians and historians of Poland – the two are not the same, although there is a large overlap – are about as politically divided as any other professional group. They have, however, repeatedly shown themselves capable of calm and reasoned debate over emotive questions of the recent and not so recent past. Historians’ professional ethic obliges them to weigh up evidence carefully, and to subject narratives to sceptical criticism. It is impossible to lock the past in the past. The answer to the political manipulation of history is not less history, but better history. We can, I expect, look forward to some profound disagreements and lively polemics today. But I also trust that, both among our invited speakers and among the audience, that all arguments will be made ad rem, never ad personam. The subtitle of the conference is ‘one hundred years on’. Not all that long ago, only just beyond the limits of adult memory. A very few people can still remember those events from their childhood. Many more can remember the reminiscences of their parents or grandparents.","PeriodicalId":41396,"journal":{"name":"Central Europe","volume":"13 1","pages":"68 - 70"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84911811","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-07-03DOI: 10.1080/14790963.2020.1718451
Hubert Zawadzki
ABSTRACT This article examines how two generations of a large Polish landed family from the Grodno governorate in the Russian Empire were affected by the political and social upheavals brought about by World War One, the Russian Revolution, the threat of Bolshevism, and the rebirth of a Polish state. The Protassewiczes, like other landed noble families in the region, despite their Polish- Lithuanian identity, enjoyed a privileged social status in tsarist Russia. Marriage and work took many of the family’s members to Wilno (Vilnius) and Siberia, while a younger member studied in Austrian Galicia where he joined Piłsudski’s organisation. The article describes the evacuation to Taganrog in 1915 of the senior Protassewicz and his subsequent return to Borki in 1918 to face the ensuing Polish-Soviet War. Two members of the family who were engaged in railway building in Siberia met a tragic end. The younger generation participated in Polish military efforts in the east in 1919–21 and adapted successfully to life in restored Poland. Attention is paid to issues of national identity raised by rival Polish and Lithuanian claims to Wilno in the context of the fall of empires and the emergence of new national states.
{"title":"The Experiences of a Polish Family from the Eastern Borderlands (1914–1921): The Protassewiczes of Borki","authors":"Hubert Zawadzki","doi":"10.1080/14790963.2020.1718451","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14790963.2020.1718451","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article examines how two generations of a large Polish landed family from the Grodno governorate in the Russian Empire were affected by the political and social upheavals brought about by World War One, the Russian Revolution, the threat of Bolshevism, and the rebirth of a Polish state. The Protassewiczes, like other landed noble families in the region, despite their Polish- Lithuanian identity, enjoyed a privileged social status in tsarist Russia. Marriage and work took many of the family’s members to Wilno (Vilnius) and Siberia, while a younger member studied in Austrian Galicia where he joined Piłsudski’s organisation. The article describes the evacuation to Taganrog in 1915 of the senior Protassewicz and his subsequent return to Borki in 1918 to face the ensuing Polish-Soviet War. Two members of the family who were engaged in railway building in Siberia met a tragic end. The younger generation participated in Polish military efforts in the east in 1919–21 and adapted successfully to life in restored Poland. Attention is paid to issues of national identity raised by rival Polish and Lithuanian claims to Wilno in the context of the fall of empires and the emergence of new national states.","PeriodicalId":41396,"journal":{"name":"Central Europe","volume":"71 1","pages":"126 - 140"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85893799","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-07-03DOI: 10.1080/14790963.2019.1709017
James Bjork
ABSTRACT Roman Catholicism is most often imagined as an element of continuity in Poland’s turbulent history: even when a Polish state was absent from the map of Europe from the late eighteenth through early twentieth centuries, a recognizably ‘Polish’ church has been presumed to provide a robust institutional anchor for the Polish nation. This article, however, argues that the creation of a ‘Polish’ Roman Catholic church was a belated and protracted process, one that was only getting started in the years following the achievement of Polish independence in 1918. The church’s ‘Polonization’ was only partially a matter of emancipation from imperial-era restrictions. It often also involved the defence and attempted extrapolation of laws, practices and institutions that had developed under the auspices of the German, Austrian or Russian states and that the Catholic hierarchy viewed as healthy and desirable building blocks for a future Polish church. These imperial precedents continued to provide crucial points of reference in ongoing debates about what ‘Polish’ Catholicism was and what it should become.
{"title":"From Empires to Nation-State: Remaking the Roman Catholic Church in an Independent Poland","authors":"James Bjork","doi":"10.1080/14790963.2019.1709017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14790963.2019.1709017","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Roman Catholicism is most often imagined as an element of continuity in Poland’s turbulent history: even when a Polish state was absent from the map of Europe from the late eighteenth through early twentieth centuries, a recognizably ‘Polish’ church has been presumed to provide a robust institutional anchor for the Polish nation. This article, however, argues that the creation of a ‘Polish’ Roman Catholic church was a belated and protracted process, one that was only getting started in the years following the achievement of Polish independence in 1918. The church’s ‘Polonization’ was only partially a matter of emancipation from imperial-era restrictions. It often also involved the defence and attempted extrapolation of laws, practices and institutions that had developed under the auspices of the German, Austrian or Russian states and that the Catholic hierarchy viewed as healthy and desirable building blocks for a future Polish church. These imperial precedents continued to provide crucial points of reference in ongoing debates about what ‘Polish’ Catholicism was and what it should become.","PeriodicalId":41396,"journal":{"name":"Central Europe","volume":"352 1","pages":"79 - 92"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82596872","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-07-03DOI: 10.1080/14790963.2019.1718450
{"title":"Map of the Rebirth of the Polish State, 1918-1923","authors":"","doi":"10.1080/14790963.2019.1718450","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14790963.2019.1718450","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41396,"journal":{"name":"Central Europe","volume":"32 1","pages":"71 - 71"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78498637","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-01-02DOI: 10.1080/14790963.2019.1684794
Kathrin Wittler
ABSTRACT In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the transformation of the German Jews’ appearance was often defined in terms of Europeanization and modernization, whereas the so-called Polish Jews were reproached for clinging to their outdated ‘Oriental’ caftans, beards, and head coverings. Inner-Jewish differences were moulded in the terms of a simultaneity of the non-simultaneous, as Polish Jews were stylized into anachronistic, semi-Oriental figures by their German peers. The paper retraces the genesis of this pattern of thought and analyses its functions. Bringing together a disparate range of textual and pictorial evidence, it asks how and why the spatial-temporal divide of West/Present and East/Past came to be established in late-eighteenth-century debates about Jewish Emancipation and in what ways it helped Christians and Jews alike to stylize the European Enlightenment into a civilizing mission which had to be enforced by means of a ‘Western’ body regime. In sum, it argues that the body politics which helped organize the sociocultural changes of Jewish life around 1800 were premised on modern Orientalism and on modern concepts of history, including emphatic notions of progress and perfectibility.
{"title":"Orientalist Body Politics. Intermedia Encounters between German and Polish Jews around 1800","authors":"Kathrin Wittler","doi":"10.1080/14790963.2019.1684794","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14790963.2019.1684794","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the transformation of the German Jews’ appearance was often defined in terms of Europeanization and modernization, whereas the so-called Polish Jews were reproached for clinging to their outdated ‘Oriental’ caftans, beards, and head coverings. Inner-Jewish differences were moulded in the terms of a simultaneity of the non-simultaneous, as Polish Jews were stylized into anachronistic, semi-Oriental figures by their German peers. The paper retraces the genesis of this pattern of thought and analyses its functions. Bringing together a disparate range of textual and pictorial evidence, it asks how and why the spatial-temporal divide of West/Present and East/Past came to be established in late-eighteenth-century debates about Jewish Emancipation and in what ways it helped Christians and Jews alike to stylize the European Enlightenment into a civilizing mission which had to be enforced by means of a ‘Western’ body regime. In sum, it argues that the body politics which helped organize the sociocultural changes of Jewish life around 1800 were premised on modern Orientalism and on modern concepts of history, including emphatic notions of progress and perfectibility.","PeriodicalId":41396,"journal":{"name":"Central Europe","volume":"26 3 1","pages":"34 - 53"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83424570","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-01-02DOI: 10.1080/14790963.2019.1684781
Cornelia Aust
The Jewish body has long caught the interest of historians and anthropologists. For both Jews and non-Jews, the body of the Jew had features which distinguished it essentially from a non-Jewish body, similar to the way a male body is conceived of as essentially different from a female body. Often, these bodily features were imagined as unchangeable. The following set of articles aims to contribute to scholarship compiled since the 1980s on the history of the body, according to which the body is not understood as a biological and invariable constant but rather as a social construction, formed through discourse, and changing over time. The perception of the body depends on both the one who inhabits the body and the outside observer, who sees and perceives the body of the other according to his/her own ideas and perceptions. Thus, we look at an imagined body, which we only get to know through descriptions that are deeply influenced by the observer’s cultural concepts and ideas. The ways contemporaries wrote, spoke, or thought about the body – their own and that of the other – formed and altered this very body. The articles in this volume aim at deconstructing the discourses which contributed to shaping the Jewish body. The following example illustrates how central the question of the body and its features could be. The early modern Frankfurt ‘ethnographer’ of the Jews, Johann Jacob Schudt (1664–1722) had no doubt that ‘one could identify a Jew immediately among many thousands of people.’He argued that it was easy to recognize a Jew, even when he tried to hide his identity. Outward signs ‘partly physical, partly in relation to his mind, partly in his lifestyle’ could easily reveal his Jewishness. Moreover, he claimed that distinguishing features of the Jew included the nose, lips, eyes and ‘the whole body-posture’. Jews and non-Jews had a long tradition of discussing and ruminating about such an imagined Jewish body, and they also marked the Jewish body to make it recognizable. The question of distinguishability and the markers of difference were among the core issues in JewishChristian relations and were often directly related to the (Jewish) body and included the question whether a conversion could turn a Jew into a Christian or some inherent and
{"title":"Introduction: The Jewish Body","authors":"Cornelia Aust","doi":"10.1080/14790963.2019.1684781","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14790963.2019.1684781","url":null,"abstract":"The Jewish body has long caught the interest of historians and anthropologists. For both Jews and non-Jews, the body of the Jew had features which distinguished it essentially from a non-Jewish body, similar to the way a male body is conceived of as essentially different from a female body. Often, these bodily features were imagined as unchangeable. The following set of articles aims to contribute to scholarship compiled since the 1980s on the history of the body, according to which the body is not understood as a biological and invariable constant but rather as a social construction, formed through discourse, and changing over time. The perception of the body depends on both the one who inhabits the body and the outside observer, who sees and perceives the body of the other according to his/her own ideas and perceptions. Thus, we look at an imagined body, which we only get to know through descriptions that are deeply influenced by the observer’s cultural concepts and ideas. The ways contemporaries wrote, spoke, or thought about the body – their own and that of the other – formed and altered this very body. The articles in this volume aim at deconstructing the discourses which contributed to shaping the Jewish body. The following example illustrates how central the question of the body and its features could be. The early modern Frankfurt ‘ethnographer’ of the Jews, Johann Jacob Schudt (1664–1722) had no doubt that ‘one could identify a Jew immediately among many thousands of people.’He argued that it was easy to recognize a Jew, even when he tried to hide his identity. Outward signs ‘partly physical, partly in relation to his mind, partly in his lifestyle’ could easily reveal his Jewishness. Moreover, he claimed that distinguishing features of the Jew included the nose, lips, eyes and ‘the whole body-posture’. Jews and non-Jews had a long tradition of discussing and ruminating about such an imagined Jewish body, and they also marked the Jewish body to make it recognizable. The question of distinguishability and the markers of difference were among the core issues in JewishChristian relations and were often directly related to the (Jewish) body and included the question whether a conversion could turn a Jew into a Christian or some inherent and","PeriodicalId":41396,"journal":{"name":"Central Europe","volume":"255 1","pages":"1 - 4"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78213317","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-01-02DOI: 10.1080/14790963.2019.1684782
Cornelia Aust
ABSTRACT Attempts to regulate, monitor, and sanction dress and outward appearance was a typical feature of the early modern period. Religious and secular authorities aimed at controlling its subjects’ spending as well as the upkeep of estate boundaries. This development did not leave untouched Jewish society in central and east-central Europe. Internal Jewish sumptuary laws from the late sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries as well as moral literature were an attempt of the communal lay and religious elites to exercise control over the communities. Increasingly, dress ordinances pertained to women and moral writings of rabbis scolded women for their haughtiness and too lavish and expensive dress, especially for adapting non-Jewish styles of dress. This article explores these developments; and how the regulation of dress aimed also at gaining control over the female Jewish body.
{"title":"Covering the Female Jewish Body. Dress and Dress Regulations in Early Modern Ashkenaz","authors":"Cornelia Aust","doi":"10.1080/14790963.2019.1684782","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14790963.2019.1684782","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Attempts to regulate, monitor, and sanction dress and outward appearance was a typical feature of the early modern period. Religious and secular authorities aimed at controlling its subjects’ spending as well as the upkeep of estate boundaries. This development did not leave untouched Jewish society in central and east-central Europe. Internal Jewish sumptuary laws from the late sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries as well as moral literature were an attempt of the communal lay and religious elites to exercise control over the communities. Increasingly, dress ordinances pertained to women and moral writings of rabbis scolded women for their haughtiness and too lavish and expensive dress, especially for adapting non-Jewish styles of dress. This article explores these developments; and how the regulation of dress aimed also at gaining control over the female Jewish body.","PeriodicalId":41396,"journal":{"name":"Central Europe","volume":"6 1","pages":"21 - 5"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81741918","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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