Christopher R. Friedrichs

Politics or Pogrom? The Fettmilch Uprising in German and Jewish History

Something important happened in the imperial city of Frankfurt am Main between 1612 and 1616. Nobody doubts that. The Fettmilch Uprising, as it is generally known, involved a complex and turbulent series of events which culminated in the dramatic execution of the ringleader, Vincenz Fettmilch, and six of his comrades. But why exactly were they executed—and what was the uprising all about? This depends on what you read. It is a commonplace, of course, that historical events are subject to different interpretations, but here a much deeper problem of historical perception seems to be at stake. For we come across descriptions of the uprising so different in substance as to make one question whether they even refer to the same event. And the differences between these accounts are generally related to one of the most sensitive and troubling aspects of German history: the status and treatment of the Jews. In fact the Fettmilch Uprising illustrates with disturbing clarity the difficulties that both Germans and Jews have long experienced—and continue to experience—in attempting to understand and give meaning to some important aspects of their common past.

Teaching the Unteachable: A Canadian Perspective:

Much attention has been devoted to the development of college or university courses dealing entirely with the Holocaust. For many students, however, a general survey course provides the only context in which they will study the Holocaust as part of their higher education. This article, based on the authors experience in teaching at a Canadian university, suggests how the Holocaust can be treated in a survey course on twentieth-century history. While the Holocaust certainly reflected trends that are typical of our century as whole, in many ways it must also be seen as unique. Among other things, it is the greatest episode of modern history whose very occurrence has been widely denied. A direct engagement with the Holocaust-denial movement has thus become a regrettable necessity in teaching twentieth-century history.

Urban Politics and Urban Social Structure in Seventeenth-Century Germany

The heavy tax laid on capital sums of money, which, for want of a proper opportunity to put them out at interest, lie as useless hoards, and several other inconveniences which the burghers look upon as great grievances, induced them some years ago to petition the Aulic council for redress, and that a commission might be appointed to settle the affair. On the other hand the council or senate endeavours by every method in its power to elude this determination. Both parties are very strenuous in prosecution of their different views

How German was the German Home Town

We have loved this book for more than forty years. Age cannot wither its intellectual charms, nor custom stale its endless teachability, especially in graduate seminars. As in any long relationship, there have been moments of vexation and irritation, but we return to this book over and over to be nourished anew by its originality, its insights, and its capacity not just to evoke a certain kind of German community but also to convince us that the values of such communities shaped much of German history right into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

German cities in the late early modern era: some problems and prospects

Sources of information abound for the study of German urban demography in the ‘late’ early modern era – the period from about 1600 to 1800. Yet we are still a long way from a comprehensive grasp of urbanpopulation trends. Frequently-cited figures for the total population of German cities are often based on the uncritical replication of casual estimates. Intensive case studies which exploit the full range of available sources are more reliable, yet only the smallest towns can be subjected to the process of ‘total reconstitution’. A true understanding of German urban demography in the early modern era may come less from the endless accumulation of data than from a thoughtful comparison of findings from different cities.

Reviews : David Warren Sabean, Property, Production, and Family in Neckarhausen, 1700-1870, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991; xxv + 511 pp.; £37.50 hardback, £12.95 paperback

or bourg and faubourg that characterized other towns with essentially proletarian suburbs, including those of Lyon, Reims, ChAtellerault, and Limoges.... In Nimes, the faubourgs were not pitted against the central city: rather, religious rivalry helped link ordinary people of both faiths to elites of their confession living in the cite’, pp. 156 et 166. Finalement, le mdrite de J.M.M. est moins d’avoir repris le theme, aujourd’hui bien rebattu, des classes laborieuses, classes dangereuses, que d’en avoir montre les limites. Car, comme il 1’admet tres bien lui-meme, Paris, ou le theme a pris naissance, n’est pas toute la France. On ajoutera que les villes industrielles ne sont pas toutes les villes de France. Dans

Early Capitalism and its Enemies: The Wörner Family and the Weavers of Nördlingen *

The long, slow decline of the handicraft industries in Western Europe was attended by protracted hardship and misery for the artisan classes, short-term exploitative opportunities for crass merchants to whom the old medieval communal values were outdated cant, and confusion and eventual rout for the town fathers who attempted to maintain such values in the face of ineluctable economic change. Professor Friedrichs draws these conclusions from his research on woolen cloth weavers in the German town of Nordlingen in the seventeenth century and shows how, once the old values were no longer useful, the state itself took the initiative in the eighteenth century in facilitating the conversion of handicraft industry to the modern wage-labor system.