Documets on Jewish History in Austria, vol. 4

A remarkably high number of medieval sources on the history of Jews can be found in Austria. To make this material accessible, the Institute for Jewish History in Austria has engaged in preparatory work to publish this source material. Charters as well as historiographic and literary sources containing references to both Jews and Austria were collected and processed according to scientific criteria; particularly from the mid-fourteenth century onwards, this material includes a considerable number of texts which have not been published at all or treated with regard to the Jewish aspect yet. In the course of the FWF-projects P 15638, P 18453-G08, P 21236-G18, and P 21237-G18, the first three volumes of these sources (up to the year 1386) were published by Eveline Brugger and Birgit Wiedl. In the course of the follow-up projects P 24404-G18 and P 24405- G18 ("Documents on Jewish History in Eastern Austria / Southern and Western Austria 1387-1404"), research for volume four was completed and the volume prepared for publication. The documents that were collected in archives and libraries in Austria and abroad are being presented in the form of a chronological series of 466 summaries. The scientific apparatus that is added to each document includes information about the form the text was preserved in, former publications in printing and/or online as well as already existing academic literature relevant to the respective document. By means of an extensive index and a scientific commentary, the source texts were made accessible to the reader. Given the volume`s topic, the Jews mentioned in the source texts were the main focus of these commentaries. The sources presented in the fourth volume cover a period of time for the Austrian Jews that has not yet been researched in detail. While the Jewish population of the Habsburg territories was still protected by the dukes in order to collect high taxes from them, the murder and expulsion of the Jews of the archbishopric of Salzburg in 1404 marks the first pogrom that was initiated by a territorial ruler. Beyond matters of policy, the source material also provides insights into the general social and economic situation of the Austrian Jews during this period; it allows for analyses of the circumstances of daily life and of the manifold interactions between Jews and Christians that included business associations and conflicts that were brought before court as well as neighbourly contacts.

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