Seminar “Half Profit, Half Loss – Negotiating Jewish Economic Law in Non-Jewish Courtrooms”

11 October 2022, 5 pm
ZOOM (online)

1785 Hebrew-German side-by-side translation of Jewish legal texts in a court case at the Imperial  Aulic Council, Austrian State Archive

It was common practice that Jewish men and women brought their conflicts before non-Jewish courts throughout the early modern period. This talk explores how, due to this ongoing litigation, the awareness and applicability of Jewish Law in non-Jewish courtrooms reached a peak by the second half of the eighteenth century. Using a case study from the Imperial Aulic Council (Reichshofrat) in Vienna, it introduces questions of cultural mediation, translation, and litigant strategies in the overlapping legal systems of the Holy Roman Empire.

Verena Kasper-Marienberg is Associate Professor at the Department of History at North Carolina State University. Her research focuses on the intersection of Jewish and Christian communities in the early modern period in Central Europe. She is especially interested in questions of legal practice, gender relations, and socio-economic structures in early modern societies. She teaches a variety of classes in Early Modern History, Jewish Studies, and Museum Studies/Public History.

The seminar will be held in virtual form only, link here.

Invitation (PDF)

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