STUDY QUESTIONS

Amos Elon, Founder: A Portrait of the First Rothschild and His Time (New York, 1997), 19-48 (chapt. 1)

1) What were some of the restrictions imposed on Jews by the city of Frankfurt in the Early Modern period?

2) In your opinion, might there have been any non-economic reasons (psychological, religious, demographic) for further humiliating a group which had already been largely isolated from the general population? What measures might have been imposed for these other purposes? What measures were predominantly economic?

3) Why might Frankfurt's treatment of the Jews have been more severe than in other German cities, as the author suggested?

4) Why might Christian peasants have been even "worse off" than the Jews in the region?

5) Do you agree or disagree with Elon's intimation of a historical connection between the banning of Jews from the city gardens of Frankfurt in the Early Modern period to a similar ban some "two hundred years later under the Nazis?"

6) "In the pale and pasty complexion of the Jews they [the Christians] would see proof of divine guilt and just punishment for the denial and murder, long ago, of Jesus Christ." What historical evidence might Elon have offered the reader to buttress the credibility of his description of Christians' attitudes towards the Jews at this time?

7) Elon states that Charles V "mortgaged his Frankfurt Jews" to the city Senate, thus turning them into "serfs." What is the definition of a serf? (You may need to look this up.) What new or altered tasks, responsibilities, or restrictions did Jewish serfdom imply? Why would a "massacre" have occurred shortly after the Jews became the city's "property" (thereby causing "property" loss)? Does Elon suggest a reason?

8) To what extent does the author's graphic and impassioned mode of expression strengthen his history? To what extent, if any, does it detract?

Terms, Concepts, Names, and Dates

Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation

Charles V

Hanseatic League

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Heinrich Heine

Moses Mendelssohn

Judenstattigkeit

Schutzjuden

1806