Court Jews, Printers, Book Publishing, and the Beginning of the Haskalah in the German Lands: The Life History of the Wulffian Printing Press as a Case-Study

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-55
Author(s):  
Gad Freudenthal

Abstract This article presents the history of a printing press that operated at several places near Berlin during the first half of the eighteenth century, culminating in the epoch-making reprinting of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed in 1742. The press was established in Dessau in 1694 by the court Jew Moses Wulff (1661–1729), and was run by several printers, notably the convert Israel b. Abraham (fl. 1715–1752). Using the trajectory of the Wulff press as a case study, I examine the relations between scholars, patrons of learning (especially court Jews), printers, and book publishing. The inquiry will highlight the considerable role that court Jews played in shaping the Jewish bookshelf, notably by choosing which books (reprints and original) would be funded. Surprisingly perhaps, although court Jews were in continuous contact with the environing culture, they did not usually favor the printing of non-traditional Jewish works that would favor a rapprochement.

Author(s):  
Odile Moreau

This chapter explores movement and circulation across the Mediterranean and seeks to contribute to a history of proto-nationalism in the Maghrib and the Middle East at a particular moment prior to World War I. The discussion is particularly concerned with the interface of two Mediterranean spaces: the Middle East (Egypt, Ottoman Empire) and North Africa (Morocco), where the latter is viewed as a case study where resistance movements sought external allies as a way of compensating for their internal weakness. Applying methods developed by Subaltern Studies, and linking macro-historical approaches, namely of a translocal movement in the Muslim Mediterranean, it explores how the Egypt-based society, al-Ittihad al-Maghribi, through its agent, Aref Taher, used the press as an instrument for political propaganda, promoting its Pan-Islamic programme and its goal of uniting North Africa.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Ella Sbaraini

Abstract Scholars have explored eighteenth-century suicide letters from a literary perspective, examining issues of performativity and reception. However, it is fruitful to see these letters as material as well as textual objects, which were utterly embedded in people's social lives. Using thirty manuscript letters, in conjunction with other sources, this article explores the contexts in which suicide letters were written and left for others. It looks at how authors used space and other materials to convey meaning, and argues that these letters were epistolary documents usually meant for specific, known persons, rather than the press. Generally written by members of the ‘lower orders’, these letters also provide insight into the emotional writing practices of the poor, and their experiences of emotional distress. Overall, this article proposes that these neglected documents should be used to investigate the emotional and material contexts for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century suicide. It also argues that, at a time when the history of emotions has reached considerable prominence, historians must be more attentive to the experiences of the suicidal.


1978 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 289-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eamon Duffy

Through the stormy and divided history of religion in seventeenth and early eighteenth-century England runs one constant and unvarying stream—hatred and fear of popery. That ‘gross and cruel superstition’ haunted the protestant imagination. The murderous paranoia of the popish plot was the last occasion on which catholic blood was spilled in the service of the national obsession, but the need to preserve ‘our Country from Papal Tyranny; our Laws, our Estates, our Liberties from Papal Invasion; our Lives from Papal Persecution; and our Souls from Papal Superstition . . .’ continued to exercise men of every shade of churchmanship, and of none. Throughout the early eighteenth century zealous churchmen sought to keep alive ‘the Spirit of Aversion to Popery whereby the Protestant Religion hath been chiefly supported among us’, and publications poured from the press reminding men of the barbarities of the papists, ancient and modern, the fires of Smithfield and the headman’s axe of Thorn. Catholicism was bloody, tyrannical, enslaving, and cant phrases rolled pat from tongue and pen—popery and arbitrary government, popery and wooden shoes. The tradition was universal, as integral a part of the nation’s self-awareness as beer and roast-beef, and equally above reason. There were, observed Daniel Defoe, ‘ten thousand stout fellows that would spend the last drop of their blood against Popery that do not know whether it be a man or a horse’.


Author(s):  
Andrea Carrasco ◽  
María E Díaz

Recent academic research highlights the role of leadership identity when thinking about the improvement of the educational field. Based on this research, this article aims to identify and analyze the elements that affect the development of leadership identity in female school principals within the Chilean context. This is achieved by working from a biographical-narrative approach, specifically from the life history technique. This analysis emerges from a considerate reflection on the teachings, and personal and professional milestones highlighted in the biogram. Both personally and professionally, a multiplicity of elements is observed in the life history of María Eliana, influencing the development of her leadership identity, particularly highlighting her self-recognition as a woman. This identity is oriented towards social justice, based on socio-emotional tools such as care, empathy, and participation; and understands and values the role these elements must take in Chilean education. The case study presents tensions for the Chilean educational system, which must be able to address the complexities that women experience while holding leadership positions, especially when challenged with the perspective that school is an inclusive space of social justice.


Author(s):  
Emanuel Ringelblum

This chapter takes a look at Johann Anton Krieger. Krieger played a central role in the history of Jewish printing in Poland in the eighteenth century. This remarkably enterprising and versatile man owned a printing press in Nowy Dwór, in the province of Mazovia, and, for a time, another in the town of Korzec, in the province of Volynia. He also established a Jewish printing business close to Warsaw and engaged in extensive publishing activities. What is more, he influenced the policies of the Polish financial authorities, compelling them to take account of the needs of the Jewish printing industry inside Poland and to protect it from foreign competition while it was still weak.


2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-274
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Key Fowden

What made Athens different from other multi-layered cities absorbed into the Ottoman Empire was the strength of its ancient reputation for learning that echoed across the Arabic and Ottoman worlds. But not only sages were remembered and Islamized in Athens; sometimes political figures were too. In the early eighteenth century a mufti of Athens, Mahmud Efendi, wrote a rarely studiedHistory of the City of Sages (Tarih-i Medinetü’l-Hukema)in which he transformed Pericles into a wise leader on a par with the Qur'anic King Solomon and linked the Parthenon mosque to Solomon's temple in Jerusalem.


2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 481-498
Author(s):  
Justin Smith

This article charts the history of an experiment, conducted during the autumn and winter of 1986–7, in which Channel 4 trialled an on-screen visual warning symbol to accompany screenings of a series of international art-house films. The so-called ‘red triangle’ experiment, though short-lived, will be considered as a case study for exploring a number of related themes. Firstly, it demonstrates Channel 4's commitment during the 1980s to fulfilling its remit to experiment and innovate in programme form and content, in respect of its acquired feature film provision. Channel 4's acquisitions significantly enlarged the range of international classic and art-house cinema broadcast on British television. Secondly, it reflects contemporary tensions between the new broadcaster, its regulator the IBA, campaigners for stricter censorship of television and policy-makers. The mid-1980s was a period when progressive developments in UK film and television culture (from the rise of home video to the advent of Channel 4 itself) polarised opinions about freedom and regulation, which were greatly exacerbated by the press. Thirdly, it aims to shed light on the paradox that, while over thirty years of audience research has consistently revealed the desire on the part of television viewers for an on-screen ratings system, the UK is not among some forty countries that currently employ such devices on any systematic basis. In this way the history of a specific advisory experiment may be seen to have a bearing on current policy trends.


2007 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELIZABETH FOYSTER

One of the most intriguing and challenging problems facing historians of crime and the law is determining what were popular perceptions of criminal behaviour and criminal justice. Each of the articles in this special issue tackles this question by examining the content of British and colonial newspapers that were printed in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The choice of this period is significant both for the history of the press, and for that of criminal justice. It was during the eighteenth century that the newspaper became the dominant form of print culture, with readers enjoying an increasing choice of papers that were printed both in London and in the provinces. As literacy rates improved, and because newspaper stories could be read aloud, the audience for newspapers continued to expand. At the same time, the British state attempted new ways of administering criminal justice. The multiplication of the number of offences that carried the death penalty meant that the criminal code gained notoriety as the ‘Bloody Code’, while the Transportation Act of 1718, covering England and Wales, authorized the deportation of English and Welsh criminals to the American colonies. By the end of the eighteenth century London magistrates were experimenting with new methods of urban policing, as fears mounted about how the growing population could be both controlled and protected from crime. Newspapers reported, reflected upon and sometimes debated each of these developments, yet remarkably, it is not until now that historians of crime have analysed in any detail what the content of these newspapers can reveal about contemporary attitudes towards crime and justice.


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