'Der vollkommene Pferdekenner', 1764: Jewish Horse Traders in the Margraviate of Brandenburg-Ansbach and their Language at the Threshold of Modernity. (5th January 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Evers, Renate
• Is Part Of: Year book. Volume 63:issue 1(2018)
• Page Start: 201
• Page End: 228
• Publication Date: 2018-01-05
• Subjects: Jews -- Germany -- Periodicals; Judaism -- Germany -- History -- Periodicals; Germany -- Ethnic relations -- Periodicals; 305.8924043
• DOI: 10.1093/leobaeck/ybx021
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0075-8744

Abstract

Abstract: Der vollkommene Pferdekenner ('The Complete Horse Connoisseur') is a comprehensive equestrian guide that was published in 1764 by the southern German nobleman Baron Wolf Ehrenfried von Reitzenstein. In a Jewish context, it is interesting because of a language appendix consisting of thirty-six pages of Western Yiddish phrases and words, mainly of Hebrew origin, that were used by Jewish horse traders in the eighteenth century. This appendix includes a collection of five lively sample dialogues between Jewish horse traders. Through this appendix, non-Jewish customers and traders were provided with a tool to understand the trading language used by Jewish horse traders at that time. The language appendix of Der vollkommene Pferdekenner gives insights into the everyday life and socio-economic circumstances of German Jews in a rural setting in the Margraviate of Brandenburg-Ansbach in southern Germany in the eighteenth century. It provides glimpses into the world of horse-trading as a specific public space where paths between Jews and non-Jews crossed at the threshold of modernity in the rare absence of an anti-Jewish agenda.