Documents on Jewish History in S- and W-Austria 1405-1418

The Institute for Jewish History in Austria (St. Pölten) has been engaged in documenting the vast number of charters and narrative sources on medieval Jewish history for several years. These sources are being published in the form of summaries of the legal content; this series (three volumes so far) is an essential basis for any research of Austrian Jewish history. In the course of several FWF-projects, the source material that concerns Jews from today`s Republic of Austria has been collected and processed up to the year 1404. The project that is being applied for plans to continue this work for the federal countries of Styria (including Lower Styria in today`s Slovenia), Carinthia, Salzburg, Tyrol and Vorarlberg up to the year 1418. These sources that contain references to Austrian Jews as well as those that mention edifices (e.g. synagogues, houses owned by Jews) or legal provisions concerning Jews will be collected and processed for academic use. The material includes many texts which have not been published at all, or have been treated with no regard to the Jewish aspect so far. Research will be conducted in archives in Austria and abroad; besides, material contained in earlier publications will be collected as well. The publication consists of a chronological series of document summaries. To facilitate the use of the collection for the reader, an extensive index as well as commentaries will be added to the respective documents. The history of the Jews in Southern and Western Austria has for the most part not been researched in detail for the time period covered by the project because the source material was difficult to access until now. In 1404, a persecution had taken place in the archbishopric of Salzburg; in the course of the project, the after-effects of this persecution will be looked into with regard to both the Jewish communities under the rule of the archbishop and to those with familial and/or business contacts to the affected communities. In the Habsburg territories, the first years of the project`s timeframe were characterised by a struggle for power among the several family branches; the effects this war-like situation had on the Jews will be looked into for the first time. In Styria and Carinthia, the prevailing duke, Ernst, implemented a series of political and economic measures, but whether these affected the Jews is yet unknown. An extensive overview over the source material is essential for any research on the legal, social and economic situation of the Jews and on the interaction of the Jews with their Christian environment. The planned project will provide researchers with the necessary basis for such endeavours.

The series "Regesten zur Geschichte der Juden in Österreich im Mittelalter" aims at providing a comprehensive collection of the vast source material on medieval Jewish history in Austria. Charters as well as contemporary historiographic and literary sources containing references to both Jews and Austria are being collected and processed. The publication consists of a chronological series of document summaries. Additionally, an extensive index and commentaries are added to the documents in order to make the source texts more easily accessible to the reader. Volumes 1-4 (published by Eveline Brugger and Birgit Wiedl as results of earlier FWF-sponsored projects) cover the time period up to the year 1404. In the course of the project "Documents on Jewish History in Southern and Western Austria 1405-1418", this work was continued for today's federal provinces of Styria (including Lower Styria/Štajerska), Carinthia, Tyrol, Salzburg, and Vorarlberg. Research was conducted in archives in Austria and abroad; besides, material contained in earlier publications was collected as well. The collected sources cover a time period in the history of Jews in the southern and western territories of today's Austria that has not been researched in detail yet. The Jews of these territories were under the rule of a number of different authorities, whose policies set the frame for the living conditions of their respective Jewish subjects. As the collected source material shows, rulers protected their Jewish subjects when it served their own financial interests. Territorial princes such as the Styrian Duke Ernst were interested in continuously high Jewish tax payments and thus in economically prosperous communities; therefore, Styrian communities such as Maribor and Graz managed to increase their importance. By contrast, the communities of the archbishopric of Salzburg suffered the long-term consequences of the 1404 pogrom: while Jewish presence was re-established in the residential city by initiative of the archbishop shortly after the pogrom, Jewish settlement in other towns was interrupted for decades (Ptuj) or had even been brought to an end (Friesach). The majority of the source material consists of documents which resulted from Jewish-Christian business transactions. Continuing a trend that had started in the last decades of the 14th century, the sources of this project's timeframe yields extensive information on Jewish presence in smaller settlements as well as on business activities of Jews of a lower social standing. The frequent appearance of women prove that the role of female moneylenders remained significant. The source collection provides an indispensable basis for detailed research on Austrian Jewish history, particularly in combination with the results of the project P28609-G28 ("Documents on Jewish History in Eastern Austria 1405-1418"), which will be published in volume 5 of the "Regesten zur Geschichte der Juden in Österreich im Mittelalter".