Die Frankfurter jüdische Gemeinde am Reichshofrat

This book focuses on the activity of the Jewish community of Frankfurt at the Imperial Aulic Council (Reichshofrat, RHR), under the reign of Emperor Joseph II (1765-1790). It is based on the RHR`s seldom-explored archival holdings in Vienna. The first chapter of the book uses a socio-historical approach to analyze the significant increase of the Jewish presence in this imperial court in the 18th century. The author identifies almost 1,400 lawsuits with Jewish involvement during this period, and discusses them in their historical context. This number of lawsuits accounts for almost five percent of all lawsuits brought to this court. The frequent appeal by Jewish individuals, as well as by Jewish communities, to the RHR, casts doubts on a common assumption in research: that the influence of the Emperors upon Jewish life was in decline during this time period. In particular, the number of legal cases brought to the RHR by the Frankfurt Jewish community as a group as well as by individuals, is disproportionately high, accounting for about one-third of all cases brought before the court. Closer examination shows the level of their involvement, especially as claimants against estates and local authorities, but also against other Jews. The second chapter focuses on the council members of the RHR, with whom the Jewish community of Frankfurt had to deal. Using sources from the RHR`s archive and from a private family archive, this perspective opens up to a prosopographical, detailed view of the council during the reign of Joseph II. The analysis focuses on two council members in particular, a father and his son, who specialized in cases involving internal Jewish affairs. Within a general frame of research on network systems and Early Modern elites, the author takes a closer look at career paths and social issues, as well as professional positioning of this jurisdictional elite. In the two concrete cases, points of contact between the judges and the Jewish parties are identified and offer the rarely visible yet very common aspect of Early Modern legal proceedings: negotiations and agreements outside of court. In the third chapter of the book, which forms the centerpiece of the study, the author performs a comprehensive analysis of the formal procedures and argumentations of the approximately 30 lawsuits from 1765 to 1790 in which the Frankfurt Jewish community were involved. These lawsuits dealt with very charged internal Jewish conflicts that found their way to Vienna as appeals against local courts in Frankfurt on the one hand, and defined the outcome of conflicts between the Jewish community and the local city authorities concerning everyday life issues on the other. The strategies of action and argumentation of the Jewish party are especially interesting. These strategies use the legal and politically normative discourses of their environment in an extensive and dynamic way in order to benefit from and perpetuate their close relationship to the Emperor. By analyzing and highlighting these mechanisms, the author illustrates the many ways in which the Frankfurt Jewish community preserved its autonomy by constantly using its legal rights in an unequal society.