TU Darmstadt and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) Paris
„Does Jewishness matter? Jews in Frankfurt Penal Justice 1780-1814“
In my PhD project, I analyze the treatment of Jewish women and men in the Christian-governmental authorities’ dispensation of penal justice at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century. I thereby look at the differences between Jewish people in terms of their agency (courses of action). I am also interested in possible changes in the treatment of Jewish men and women and changes in their own procedures in this period of accelerated political, social and cultural progress between 1779 and 1814.
My sources are records of criminal proceedings of the Peinliches Verhöramt which was the Christian-governmental authority for both prosecution and sentencing in minor cases in Frankfurt. My research project is based on 354 cases of criminal proceedings that involve Jews as delinquents, accused, victims, witnesses, relatives and investigators.By analyzing court records concerning Jews, I’d like to understand the significance of the category Jewish for the dispensation of penal justice. This implies the Christian perspective as well as the Jewish perspective. With regard to the perspective of the Christian authorities and the perspective of non-Jewish actors, this means to analyze Jewishness as a legal ‘label’ vs. social-cultural category. With regard to the perspective of Jewish actors, I consider Jewishness as basic condition and social-cultural form of existence for their treatment and agency in court.
With this study I pursue a double objective. The first is reconstructing Jewish everyday life and life conditions around 1800. From a conceptual point of view, I am interested, secondly, in (Re-) writing German-Jewish history as both a history of entanglements (in terms of Christian-Jewish relations and inner-Jewish relations) and a decentered history that is narrated from divers perspectives and implies a greater focus on the world of ordinary people. Therefore, I focus on interactions and exchange processes on both the level of actors and institutions and the level of law. My project is located at the intersection of Cultural history, Everyday history and Gender history as well as Social history, historical crime research and Criminal law history. This combination of different research perspectives and questions requires different levels of analysis. I therefore combine qualitative analysis, quantitative analysis and detailed micro-level analysis (that means case studies).
Vera Kallenberg is currently the Kurt David Brühl Visiting Professor for Jewish Studies at the Center for Jewish Studies, University of Graz, Austria, and is pursuing habilitation in contemporary history at Bielefeld University, Germany. While she previously taught at Bielefeld University and the University of Erfurt, she has also held visiting positions at Dartmouth College, Duke University, Harvard University, the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Vanderbilt University. Her research lies at the intersection of Jewish studies and gender studies, focusing on modern and contemporary European Jewish history, gender history, intellectual history, and the aftermath of the Holocaust, with particular emphasis on intersectional and transnational perspectives. Her monograph on the treatment and agency of Jews before the Frankfurt Penal Court, 1780 –1814 (Wallstein, 2018) was awarded the Arno Lustiger Prize. She has published articles in journals such as Jewish Social Studies, Aschkenas, and the Dubnow Institute Yearbook, alongside co-editing volumes on gender and intersectionality. Her current book project, Gerda Lerner and the Making of Dominance: A Trans-national Jewish Intellectual History, recently received the Edith Saurer Prize. It investigates the interconnection of Jewish experience and feminist thought in transatlantic historiography from the mid-twentieth century onward.
Photo copyright Vernon Dion Tyler.