A groundbreaking historical reexamination of one of the most infamous episodes in the history of anti-Semitism
Joseph Süss Oppenheimer—’Jew Süss’—is one of the most iconic figures in the history of anti-Semitism. In 1733, Oppenheimer became the ‘court Jew’ of Carl Alexander, the duke of the small German state of Württemberg. When Carl Alexander died unexpectedly, the Württemberg authorities arrested Oppenheimer, put him on trial, and condemned him to death for unspecified ‘misdeeds.’ On February 4, 1738, Oppenheimer was hanged in front of a large crowd just outside Stuttgart. He is most often remembered today through several works of fiction, chief among them a vicious Nazi propaganda movie made in 1940 at the behest of Joseph Goebbels.
The Many Deaths of Jew Süss is a compelling new account of Oppenheimer’s notorious trial. Drawing on a wealth of rare archival evidence, Yair Mintzker investigates conflicting versions of Oppenheimer’s life and death as told by four contemporaries: the leading inquisitor in the criminal investigation, the most important eyewitness to Oppenheimer’s final days, a fellow court Jew who was permitted to visit Oppenheimer on the eve of his execution, and one of Oppenheimer’s earliest biographers. What emerges is a lurid tale of greed, sex, violence, and disgrace—but are these narrators to be trusted? Meticulously reconstructing the social world in which they lived, and taking nothing they say at face value, Mintzker conjures an unforgettable picture of ‘Jew Süss’ in his final days that is at once moving, disturbing, and profound.
The Many Deaths of Jew Süss is a masterfully innovative work of history, and an illuminating parable about Jewish life in the fraught transition to modernity.
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Yair Mintzker is professor of history at Princeton University. He is the author of
The Defortification of the German City, 1689–1866.
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