In this thoughtful and well-researched book, Yair Mintzker examines several accounts of the trial of Joseph Süss Oppenheimer in order to uncover the motivations underpinning and unique dimensions guiding those accounts and their authors. While the subject of the book is the trial, the focus is simultaneously narrower—concerned with the context and texture of the individual sources—and broader—piecing together a range of observations to address issues related to the long history of Jewish and Christian relations and Jewish integration in the Holy Roman Empire.
Mintzker notes that none of the sources related to the trial solely present “the facts” of the case, since they often disagree about the basic details and, upon closer reading, reveal differing concerns, agendas, and even notions of truth itself. Minzker suggests a new approach to the topic and the sources, which he terms a “polyphonic history,” by which he means taking different sources individually and in conversation; combining elements from previous approaches to the topic; and redirecting attention back to the sources, including taking fiction seriously as a historical source. For each of the four sources he considers, Mintzker applies a consistent approach that focuses on the lives and writings of the individuals who provided different genres of narratives about the case, as well as on illustrative passages from the sources. In order to further clarify his approach, at end of his presentation of each of these four sources Mintzker appends “conversations” between him and an imaginary reader. While these conversations do, in fact, surface some interesting methodological and interpretative questions and relate closely back to the chapters they close, they are largely unnecessary and at times even distracting, largely because Mintzker admirably implements his useful approach within the body of the work.
The Oppenheimer trial serves as a valuable foil for several larger questions that emerge, Mintzker notes, because of the immense contemporary interest in the story. The trial encouraged as many interpretations as it did interpreters, providing a perfect case for exploring how people understood and leveraged the story for their own purposes. At times, these interpretations appear to have been rather conscious constructions that served specific goals; at other times, they presented significant themes that the narrators may hardly have thought about directly, but that, precisely for that reason, allow us windows into their world.
The first figure Mintzker examines is Dr. Philipp Friedrich Jäger, the judge who composed the verdict in the case. Particularly valuable is Mintzker's juxtaposition of the Oppenheimer case with a previous case involving Christina Wilhelmina von Grävenitz, the mistress of Duke Eberhard Ludwig. Mintzker makes a compelling argument that the similarities between this trial and Oppenheimer's are not only coincidental and structural, but reveal larger concerns. Perhaps more importantly, Mintzker provides evidence that the Oppenheimer trial was not simply a case of anti-Jewish machination—after all, Jäger had earlier in his career been concerned about the treatment of court Jews in Württemberg, and the voluminous materials related to his work on the trial never reference classical blood-libel accusations. Demonstrating a deft reading of inquisitorial sources, Mintzker argues that Jäger had a preconceived idea of what Oppenheimer did, which he drew directly from his experience with the previous case. At times Mintzker teases out some of Jäger's personal background in the sources. Especially poignant is Mintzker's assertion that Jäger ignored or responded violently to evidence that contradicted his preconceived story and that he “edited, amplified, and dramatized” (81) evidence that only partly corroborated his predetermined narrative, at times altering the evidence beyond recognition. What emerges is a nuanced reading of the sources that provides insights into the legal and criminal system of the time and the unique aspects of one of the central figures in the trial.
Mintzker then examines the convert from Judaism, Christoph David Bernhard, a lecturer at the University of Tübingen, who visited Oppenheimer in prison on several occasions. Bernhard's background drives Mintzker to discuss the social and religious complexities associated with conversion. In particular, he notes that converts frequently made their living by using their insider knowledge of Judaism for professional advancement and, in some important ways, to combat hostile prejudices against them resulting from embedded suspicions about their true religious beliefs. While Mintzker concedes that there is evidence to suggest that some of what Bernhard reported was likely true, he identifies other parts of his writings that were clearly figments of his imagination—despite the fact that later historians have generally assumed that Bernhard left us a fairly accurate account. Some of these latter passages were edited after the fact and some were constructed to follow an a priori script. Mintzker reveals some of Bernhard's personal concerns that may have influenced his narrative and makes a persuasive case that Bernhard's immersion in Christian polemic shaped how and why he presented the details he did.
In the third case, Mintzker introduces the only eyewitness account written by a Jew, Mordekhai Schloss. Mintzker offers a rich background for Schloss, detailing his travels and settlement, as well as his occupational successes and failures, and specifically the challenges to his business from within the Jewish community. In this case, Mintzker shows that the early modern court Jews did not constitute a uniform, or always harmonious, unity. Detailing some of the possible influences on Schloss's account, Mintzker concludes that the sources for his publication, The Story, were all biased, and that the account served obliquely to critique other Jews and elevate Schloss himself, especially through the medium of a Yiddish account constructed upon a biblical story that would be familiar to his readers.
In the final source, published three months after Oppenheimer's execution, David Fassman offers a fictional account in which Oppenheimer, now residing in the netherworld, narrates his own story. Mintzker again provides a useful context for Fassman, his publications, and the genre of literature represented by the work. Fassman's “Conversations” was popular and a bit sensationalist, bridging a fine line between truth and fiction. Mintzker reviews the history of dialogues published in the period and the increasingly negative portrayal of Jews in these works.
Taken together, these various sources and their authors allow us an unusual opportunity to see important perspectives and experiences in eighteenth-century Germany. Along the way, these individual cases add to scholarship on specific issues of Jewish and Christian interactions—in areas of law, conversion, literary representation, as well as internal Jewish social and economic structures. In the end, this book advances our understanding of a number of well-trodden themes, but with depth and nuance, as well as introduces new topics for consideration. Beyond the content, Mintzker is to be applauded for his careful historical approach and his deep and profitable reading of a range of sources that have never been taken together. This work serves as a valuable example of rigorous scholarship that is also attuned to larger questions and metanarratives, enriching the study of Jewish history even as that history (those histories) are connected to historical accounts and concerns beyond the Jewish world.
