Language:
English
Year of publication:
2019
Titel der Quelle:
Journal of Modern Jewish Studies
Angaben zur Quelle:
18,4 (2019) 424-442
Keywords:
Kompert, Leopold, Criticism and interpretation
;
Jewish property
;
Country life
;
Jewish way of life
;
Country homes
Abstract:
Bohemian-born Jewish author Leopold Kompert (1822–1886) is best known for Aus dem Ghetto (1848), his popular tales of provincial Jewish life featuring pious men and women who eke out a living and try to maintain religious traditions amid the temptations of modernity. However, at the same time he also wrote a number of newspaper articles, among them a biography of Jewish tobacco and wax merchant and financier Israel Hönig von Hönigsberg (1724–1808). Considered together, Kompert’s fiction and non-fiction suggest that owning property played a significant – if at times conflicted – role for Jews in the decades preceding emancipation. Analyzing these texts helps show how property, both literal and symbolic, could be used to clarify and critique Jews’ experiences of acculturation, migration, and secularization in the middle of the nineteenth century.
DOI:
10.1080/14725886.2019.1656378
URL:
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