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

尽管在过去的二十年里，对十七世纪和十八世纪德国犹太人历史的研究有所加强，但神圣罗马帝国中犹太人存在的主要特征还没有得到充分的解释。这涉及到(1)犹太人在以小规模、流动和“开放”的领土政府结构为标志的地区的极高密度的定居点；(2)犹太人在该地区地方、领土和帝国层面上的保护地位之间的复杂联系；(3)犹太和基督教地方共存的矛盾和矛盾，这揭示了类似于信奉宗教的混合社会中的隔离和互动的社会做法，但也显示出显著的差异。该项目旨在提供首次全面的尝试，解释神圣罗马帝国某些地区的犹太人定居点传统，并将这些特定的空间模式与犹太历史行动者的社会实践联系起来。基本假设是，领土一级的复杂政治和行政安排与由此产生的犹太人保护的多层次模式和犹太少数民族高度活跃的社会习俗相互作用，这在犹太精英中出现的高度有效的网络中尤为明显。在概念上，该项目采用了分数数学模型，福尔克·布雷施奈德和克里斯托夫·杜哈梅勒最近将其引入帝国历史领域，重点研究复杂、多层结构中的社会行动逻辑和空间逻辑之间的联系。该项目侧重于以下问题：(1)如何解释犹太人对这些地区的明显偏好；(2)犹太行为者如何在这些地区内定位他们的网络；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，分维模型强调了边界和分维结构中边界的基本相关性，从而为系统解释建立和超越宗教边界的做法开辟了新的视角，这是犹太-基督教共存的特征。为了为这一项目提供坚实的经验基础，将利用三个案例研究系统地比较三个不同的领土空间对犹太人的保护：Fürth共管公寓，其中三个领土大国共享管辖权；Mitwitz领土，由一个帝国骑士家族统治；以及日耳曼教团的Franconian领土(Ballei Franken，Meistertom 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，收集的人口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，并将数据提供给后续的研究人员。

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.