Fractality and the Dynamics of Jewish Existence in the Southern Parts of the Holy Roman Empire during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

虽然在过去的二十年里，对17世纪和18世纪德国犹太人历史的研究得到了加强，但犹太人在神圣罗马帝国存在的核心特征尚未得到充分解释。这涉及：（1）在以小规模、流动和“开放”的领土政府结构为特征的地区，犹太人定居点的密度非常高;（2）在该地区，犹太人在地方、领土和帝国一级的保护地位之间存在复杂的联系;（3）犹太教与基督教在当地共存的矛盾和矛盾，这揭示了社会隔离和互动的做法类似于那些在教派混合社会，但也显示出显着的差异。该项目旨在首次全面解释神圣罗马帝国某些地区的犹太人定居传统，并将这些特定的空间模式与犹太历史行为者的社会实践联系起来。基本的假设是，领土一级复杂的政治和行政安排与由此产生的多层犹太人保护模式以及犹太少数民族高度活跃的社会实践相互作用，这在犹太精英中出现的高效网络中尤为明显。在概念上，该项目采用了Falk Bretschneider和Christophe Duhamelle最近引入帝国历史领域的分形数学模型，重点关注复杂多层结构中的社会行动逻辑和空间逻辑之间的联系。该项目的重点是以下问题：（1）如何解释犹太人对这些地区的明显偏好;（2）犹太人如何在其中定位他们的网络;以及（3）他们的行动如何帮助塑造这些空间的特定逻辑。此外，分形模型强调了分形结构中边界和边界的基本相关性，从而为系统地解释建立和超越宗教边界的做法开辟了视角，这是犹太教-基督教共存的特征。为了给这一项目提供一个坚实的经验基础，将使用三个案例研究来系统地比较为犹太人提供保护的三个不同的领土空间：富尔特的共管区，其中三个领土权力共享管辖权;米特维茨的自治领，由一个帝国骑士家族统治;以及条顿骑士团的弗兰肯领土（Ballei弗兰肯，Meistertum Mergentheim）。这三个案例研究的结果将以专题论文的形式发表。除此之外，收集到的人学数据将被链接到一个在线数据库中，以揭示犹太精英的网络，并将数据提供给随后的研究人员。

Although research on German-Jewish history during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has been intensified during the past two decades, central characteristics of Jewish existence in the Holy Roman Empire have not yet been sufficiently explained. This pertains to (1) the remarkably high density of Jewish settlement in regions marked by small-scale, fluid, and “open” structures of territorial government; (2) the complex linkages between Jews’ status of protection on the local, territorial, and imperial level within this region; (3) the contradictions and ambivalences of Jewish-Christian local coexistence, which reveal social practices of segregation and interaction similar to those in confessionally mixed societies, but show marked differences as well. The project aims to offer the first comprehensive attempt at explaining the traditions of Jewish settlement in certain regions of the Holy Roman Empire and link these specific spatial patterns to the social practices of Jewish historical actors. The basic assumption is that complex political and administrative arrangements on the territorial level interacted with the resulting multi-layered patterns of Jewish protection and with the Jewish minority’s highly dynamic social practices, which are particularly evident in the emergence of highly effective networks among the Jewish elite. In conceptual terms, the project takes up the mathematical model of the Fractal, which Falk Bretschneider and Christophe Duhamelle have recently introduced into the field of imperial history and which focuses on the links between social logics of action and spatial logics within complex, multi-layered structures. The project focuses on the questions (1) how the obvious preference of Jews for these regions can be explained; (2) how Jewish actors positioned their networks within them; and (3) how their actions helped to shape the particular logics of these spaces. Moreover, the model of Fractality emphasizes the basic relevance of borders and boundaries within fractal structures and thus opens up perspectives for systematically explaining the practices of establishing and transgressing religious boundaries, which were characteristic for Jewish-Christian coexistence. To provide a solid empirical base for this project, three case studies will be used to systematically compare three different territorial spaces which offered protection to Jews: the condominium of Fürth, in which three territorial powers shared rights of jurisdiction; the dominion of Mitwitz, which was ruled by a family of imperial knights; and the Franconian territories of the Teutonic Order (Ballei Franken, Meistertum Mergentheim). The results of these three case studies will be published in monographic form as dissertations. Beyond that, the collected prosopographical data will be linked in an online database in order to reveal the networks of Jewish elites and make the data available to subsequent researchers.