Project Details
Projekt
Extra muros, intra muros – Access regulations towards Jews in the imperial and autonomous cities of the early modern period between norm and practice
Applicant
Professor Dr. Stephan Laux
Subject Area
Early Modern History
Public Law
Public Law
Term
since 2025
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 517713369
This project of the Research Group focuses on the living conditions of Jews at the interface between urban and suburban spaces. The phenomenology of these life-worlds cannot be adequately assessed by normative legal criteria. The project undertakes to verify prevailing assumptions about the impact of expulsion from towns and cities on the segregation between Jews and Christians by means of bans on entering the urban sphere. Looking predominantly at imperial towns and cities, it will reinterpret these relations on a broadened empirical basis and according to socio-historical categories. By expelling the Jews, it is claimed, the German imperial cities - from Strasbourg in 1390 to Regensburg in 1519 - became pioneers of exclusion. It is assumed that these events created clear-cut, enduring realities and that since then, Jews were categorically denied access to towns and cities previously open to them. This process is related to the emergence of 'entire villages of Jews' in the Burgau, Alsace, and Wetterau regions, in Franconia and elsewhere, and regarded as a structural watershed for Ashkenazi Jews, a significant shift away from the urban experience that had characterized their lives for centuries, despite all the disruptions. From then on, it is claimed, urban life and Jewish life were separate. However, 'ruralization' was not such a linear process as suggested in these narratives, whose formation was based partly on bias and partly on a lack of knowledge about opposing tendencies. What is more, the effects of expulsion cannot simply be extended to the living conditions of Jews in the numerous settlements situated in close proximity to the imperial cities and larger territorial towns. Most of these suburbs have long been incorporated (e.g., Stadtamhof and Sallern near Regensburg, Kriegshaber near Augsburg, Deutz near Cologne, Huckarde near Dortmund, Weisenau near Mainz, Moritzberg near Hildesheim, Neuwerk monastery near Halle, Heidingsfeld and Veitshöchheim near Würzburg, Zurlauben outside Trier), unless they were able to establish independent municipalities (e.g., Fürth near Nuremberg, Günzburg near Ulm, Euerbach near Schweinfurt, Burtscheid near Aachen). There is, however, no comprehensive knowledge about these conditions. As there is ample evidence that Jews were not entirely denied access to towns and cities but could obtain specific permits, the project will investigate the permeability of urban boundaries. It addresses a noted lack of systematic and comparative research on this matter and aims to obtain more a nuanced assessment of the extent and efficacy of exclusion. It thus raises fundamental questions concerning both the urban societies and, of course, the individuals affected. New findings will complement and enlarge existing knowledge, scattered in local research contexts. At the heart of this project lies a comparative exploration of the scope of action available to Jews at the intersections of urban and suburban existence.
DFG Programme
Research Units
