German Jews and Capitalist Markets in the Long Nineteenth Century

Catalog description

This course focuses on the commercial lives of German Jews, 1789-1918. While the classic historiographical debates surrounding assimilation, emancipation, and anti-Semitism will not be ignored, our spotlight will remain on capitalist markets, where Germans and Jews most often encountered one another. Our study will begin and end in the Franco-German borderlands, with revolution and warfare. In between, we will traverse the German landscape, meeting, among others, bankers in Frankfurt, wine merchants in the Rhineland, and department store magnates in Berlin, all in an attempt to understand the complexities of cross-cultural (dis)integration. Readings and instruction in English.