Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Jews, ‘Gypsies’ and the Volk: Wandering Minorities in the Folk-Narratives and German Mythology of Brothers Grimm and Ludwig Bechstein
This dissertation examines how images of Jews and Roma (referred to in the historical sources as “Gypsies”) were represented in German folklore during the first half of the nineteenth century, focusing on the collections of the Brothers Grimm and Ludwig Bechstein. It explores how these narratives reflected and shaped attitudes toward outsiders, while contributing to debates about continuity and change between medieval, religious traditions and modern, secular national identities.
The study argues that folklore served as a bridge between past and present, preserving older myths, legends, and prejudices while adapting them to new political and cultural contexts. Through textual analysis of folktales, legends, manuscripts, travel accounts, and scholarly writings, the author investigates how Jews and Roma were portrayed symbolically as wandering outsiders in contrast to settled German society. Particular attention is given to recurring themes of mobility, hospitality, taboo, and social exclusion.
2020: PhD from the Department of History and the Graduate Program in Folklore and Folk Culture Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
2014: MA from the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University. MA thesis titled “Nomadism and Modernity: the Anti-Semitic Discourse regarding the Figure of the ‘Wandering Jew’ at the turn of the Nineteenth-Twentieth
Century in Germany and Austria.”
2006: BA from the Department of Jewish History, Hebrew University.