The beginning of modern Jewish historiography: Prague – A center on the periphery

摘要

This paper questions the well-established view that modern Jewish historical writing began in Germany about 1820, with the Wissenschaft des Judentums. Following a summary of various scholarly discussions of this issue, attention shifts to Prague. Prague was a center of Jewish historical writing before the birth of Wissenschaft, and the historical narratives of three distinct Bohemian maskilim, Peter Beer (1758–1838), Salomo Löwisohn (1789–1821), and Marcus Fischer (1788–1858) are shown to illustrate the options available to Jewish historians before institutionalized German historicism came to dominate the field. No less important, it becomes clear that scholars should treat Prague as a center of Jewish historical production, which they have not done in the past.Louise Hecht: The paper was presented under the title The Ramshak-Chronicle and the Beginning of Modern Jewish Historiography in Bohemia at the conference Toward Normality? Patterns of Assimilation and Acculturation within German Speaking Jewry, organized by the Leo Baeck Institute in Cambridge (U.K.) in September 2001. I would like to thank the organizers and participants of the conference for the stimulating discussions and remarks. Moreover, I am especially grateful to Martin Wein for his inspiring comments on this paper. I am particularly indebted to my teacher Michael Silber for reading through several versions of the manuscript and offering his valuable advice.