Cornelia Aust. The Jewish Economic Elite (Verena Kasper-Marienberg) (original) (raw)

Jewish Mobility in the Eighteenth Century: Familial Networks of Ashkenazic Merchants across Europe. European History Yearbook 16 (2015), 15-32.

The mobility of the Jewish population in the early modern and modern period is usually taken as a given, though much historical research is, nevertheless, done according to political boundaries. This article examines the possibilities to link biographical studies of members of the Jewish mercantile elite in eighteenth-century continental Europe with a transgeographical approach to mobility. Using examples of Ashkenazic merchant families from Amsterdam, Frankfurt (Oder) and Warsaw, the article looks at the creation of familial and commercial connections among merchants, the role of women in these networks, and the influence of this geographical mobility in the cultural realm. It argues that the study of transgeographical connections -familial, commercial and otherwise -of families or groups of merchants will allow for new insights into the strategies of network building and mobility beyond the highest strata of the Jewish population, like early modern Court Jews.

Yosef Kaplan, “An Alternative Path to Modernity: The Sephardi Jews of Amsterdam in Early Modern Times,” in James E. Force and David S. Katz, eds., Everything Connects: In Conference with Richard H. Popkin. Essays in His Honor (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 213-240

A read break with tradition is implied only when it is re-evaluated and no longer serves as the basis for justifying the changes that take place, but becomes the point of departure for reservations and criticism. In this sense, it can be said that the Jewish society preserved its traditional character until the second half of the eighteenth century. 1 While Katz restricted himself in this book and dealt only "with the region populated by Ashkenazi Jewry in its broader sense," 2 admitting that "in other countries. . . different factors and circumstances intervened," 3 in his Out of the Ghetto he expanded his geographical range and included the Jews of western Europe within the framework of his discussion, but without changing his basic pronouncement regarding the timing of the turning point in traditional Jewish society:

JEWISH GENEALOGY AND HISTORY FOR KRAKOW IN THE 18TH CENTURY

Jewish Genealogy and History for Krakow in the 18th Century, 2022

The information set out in the following pages relates to a century of turbulence for Poland, a century in which the country gradually lost its independence, and which saw the partitioning of the land between three empires. By the end of the century, the Jews of Kraków found themselves not as Polish citizens, but as Austrians in the province of Galicia. The following pages update and expand a chapter from a work that was published in association with the genealogical group Gesher Galicia in 2017. That work was entitled 'Kraków; A Guide to Jewish Genealogy and History'. What follows can be read in conjunction with my later book, 'Kraków; Sources of information for Jewish Genealogy and History'; JewishGen Press, 2022. Part one of that book covers the period from 1790 to 1918 whilst the second part is devoted to the interwar period. This 'paper' is divided into various sections, starting with a historical background, and followed by further sections which are set out in alphabetic order of subject matter. Not all readers will chose to read what follows from beginning to end and, therefore, there is some duplication between the various sections.

Family Network of an Emerging Jewish Intelligentsia (Cracow, 1850- 1918)

Journal of Historical Network Research 2 (2018) 53-75., 2018

Mass-genealogical research of the Jewish community in Cracow in 19 th and early 20 th century provides extraordinary opportunity to investigate the process of the emergence of a new social class: society of traditional merchants and peddlers produced modern attorneys and doctors. Now we are able to capture the dynamics of the process. For many reasons, the Jewish community in Cracow is an outstanding specimen. About 1900 there were about 25,000 Jews in Cracow (about 28% of city population). Almost whole family structure of the population has been revealed and analysed as a connected network. Over 1200 nodes of the network have been identified as the Jagiellonian University students between 1850 and 1918. We know what and when they were studying and often in which house they were born, what was their family social status etc. This data is used to model several key features of new emergent social class: what was the impact of parents' families on the choice of university education and the choice influence on a future marriage. Especially interesting are results about influence of family status on the completion of a doctoral qualification which, in turn, provided basis for discussion of best formula to describe how this influence is spreading.