The Absent Jews: Kurt Forstreuter and the Historiography of Medieval Prussia 9781785334931

Table of contents :
Contents
Figures
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
Chapter 1 Absent Jews: The Rise of a Truism and the Loss of Some Forefathers
Chapter 2 On the Frontier
Chapter 3 Archives at War
Chapter 4 A Ban on Jewish Settlement?
Chapter 5 Absent from Akko to the Baltic
Chapter 6 Absent Victims, Absent Violence: Persecutions and Blood Libel
Chapter 7 Beyond the Bulwark: Traces of Jewish Life in Medieval Prussia
Conclusion: The Wreckage of History
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

The Absent Jews

The Absent Jews Kurt Forstreuter and the Historiography of Medieval Prussia

Cordelia Hess

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

Published in 2017 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2017 Cordelia Hess All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hess, Cordelia, author. Title: The absent Jews : Kurt Forstreuter and the historiography of medieval  Prussia / Cordelia Hess. Description: New York : Berghahn Books, 2017. | Includes bibliographical  references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016054877 (print) | LCCN 2016055447 (ebook) | ISBN  9781785334924 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781785334931 (eBook) Subjects: LCSH: Forstreuter, Kurt. | Medievalists--Germany--Biography. |  Jews--Prussia, East (Poland and Russia)--History--To 1500. | Teutonic  Knights--Historiography. | Prussia, East (Poland and Russia)--Ethnic  relations. Classification: LCC D116.7.F67 H47 2017 (print) | LCC D116.7.F67 (ebook) |  DDC 943.8/3202207202 [B] --dc23 LC record available at hlps://lccn.loc.gov/2016054877 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-78533-492-4 hardback ISBN 978-1-78533-493-1 ebook

2 Contents List of Figures vi Acknowledgements vii Abbreviations x Introduction 1 Chapter 1. Absent Jews: The Rise of a Truism and the Loss of Some Forefathers

11

Chapter 2. On the Frontier

47

Chapter 3. Archives at War

101

Chapter 4. A Ban on Jewish Settlement?

149

Chapter 5. Absent from Akko to the Baltic

176

Chapter 6. Absent Victims, Absent Violence: Persecutions and Blood Libel

203

Chapter 7. Beyond the Bulwark: Traces of Jewish Life in Medieval Prussia

232

Conclusion. The Wreckage of History

278

Bibliography Index

292 312

2 Figures Map 1. Germany and the occupied territories in Poland and Lithuania 1939–43 Map 2. Medieval Prussia

100 148

Table 4.1. Occurrences of the 1309 Landordnung in Early Modern Prussian Historiography 157

2 Acknowledgements To study East Prussia is to study a topic with deep roots in the German past and in the atrocities committed by Germans during the twentieth century. For many of the scholars working on this region, Jewish and non-Jewish, it comes with painful memories or family stories. Despite having only distant connections of that sort of my own, I have always been fascinated by the entanglement of personal and collective guilt and responsibility and how quickly it is joined by the personal and collective loss and suffering of the Germans in East Prussia, Silesia and some parts of the Balkans. The images of a lost Heimat, as well as of cultures and communities destroyed, have had their effect on me, even though it is not my Heimat or my culture. I have no doubt that many of my fellow medievalists share my concerns about the constructedness of archives, as well as the insight that our image of the past would be different if war and destruction had not so radically altered our access to written memory. Why we choose the research topics we do, why we ask the questions we ask and why we pursue certain issues and ignore, abandon or neglect others is a question that lies at the basis of much of our academic work, but we rarely talk about it. That our own biographies affect our research is no great surprise—for me, though, it has been both surprising and shocking to explore someone else’s biography and reconstruct the effect it had on his research, as well as on an entire research tradition. Studies that cross or bridge research areas separated by institutional and chronological boundaries pose their difficulties. This book certainly would not have been possible without the generous funding provided by the Royal Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities and the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, where I have had the honour of being a research fellow from 2012 to 2016. This has given me the intellectual freedom and the financial support essential for just this sort of academic adventure. The funding provided by both organizations allowed me to undertake the necessary travels and research sojourns abroad and to host international conferences, as well as making it possible for me to publish internationally by providing the funding for

viii • Acknowledgements

professional copyediting (performed marvellously by Michael Ryan of Montréal). Extended stays in Tel Aviv and in Berlin allowed me to make contact with researchers more experienced than myself in Holocaust studies, biographic studies and twentieth-century history in general. These were particularly crucial to the success of this research project. At different points in 2013, both the Department of History and the Kantor Center at Tel Aviv University were my hosts for several months. Dina Porat, Eyal Naveh, Aviad Kleinberg, Gadi Algazi and Mikael Shainkman all proved to be gracious and accommodating hosts and colleagues. While in Israel I met Dan Michman of the Yad Vashem International Institute for Holocaust Research, who provided me the opportunity to present the early stage of my research at a Yad Vashem seminar. I thank all of the seminar participants, particularly Professor Michman, for the support and guidance they provided me. David Silberklang, ever kind and helpful, oversaw the publication of these initial results in the Yad Vashem Studies. Without this experience and all of the support I received, I would never have had the courage to consider writing about an area and period so far outside of my original area of expertise. In 2015 and 2016 I had the opportunity to be a fellow at the Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung at Technische Universität Berlin. The head of the centre, Stefanie Schüler-Springorum, and the rest of the staff created a very welcoming atmosphere and were more than generous in sharing their expertise. I would particularly like to thank Felix Axster, Isabel Enzenbach, Ulrich Wyrwa, Daniel Mahla, Peter Ullrich, Michael Kohlstruck and Marcus Funck. Staff at the archives and libraries in Olsztyn, Berlin, Yad Vashem, Copenhagen and elsewhere were a tremendous help in carrying out the research necessary for this study. The staff at Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin-Dahlem, which holds the majority of sources used here, were extremely helpful. In particular, I would like to express my gratitude to Albrecht Eckhardt, who allowed me access to Kurt Forstreuter’s estate, which had never previously been the subject of research or even catalogization, and to Sven Kriese, who addressed my various inquiries, both large and small. It was when reading Ingo Haar’s study of German historians under National Socialism that I first developed an interest in Forstreuter’s biography. Dr. Haar has generously shared his thoughts with me every step of the way. I would also like to thank everyone at Berghahn Books, the publisher of this book, particularly Marion Berghahn for her support and Chris Chappell for accompanying me throughout the entire process,

Acknowledgements • ix

and above all for finding committed peer reviewers. Their comments helped me to vastly improve upon the first version of the manuscript. There was also no shortage of medievalists who played important roles in helping me complete this project. Roman Czaja provided me with copies of some older, elusive Polish research, and Krzysztof Kwiatkowski generously shared with me his scans of files from the Gdańsk town archives, and Radosław Biskup his edition of a formula book. All three of them work at the University of Toruń. Wojtek Jezierski, of Gothenburg, has helped me with various minor and major issues. Julie L. Mell at NCU provided invaluable feedback; I thank her in particular for drawing my attention to the significance of Selma Stern’s work to my argument. Rachel Furst, of Munich and Jerusalem, helped me with a last-minute translation. I also found the comments made by participants when I presented the topic to Michael Borgolte’s research seminar at Humboldt University in Berlin very helpful. I have had the good fortune to be a research fellow at the Vitterhetsakademien at the same time as Jonathan Adams (Uppsala), who has proven to be my best friend in the academy, incredibly supportive and inspiring. Jonathan has helped me most by sharing my interest in the long history of antisemitism in the peripheries. Our years as colleagues have seen a wealth of academic output based on mutual support and collective work processes. In the long run, this was absolutely crucial to bringing this book to completion. This book is more personal than my earlier work, and, consequently, through the entire process, I have talked about it with my friends more than has previously been the case. I would like to thank my family for their support, particularly my mother – and my ‘family by choice’: Peter, Gabi, Rike, Hauke, Chris, Ernst, Rasmus, Noam, Caro, Yael and many others, your thoughts and comments at kitchen tables and on barstools in Stockholm, Hamburg, Berlin, Copenhagen, Tel Aviv and Göteborg are well preserved on the following pages. Berlin and Göteborg, July 2016

2 Abbreviations AF Altpreußische Forschungen AST Acten der Ständetage Preussens BArch Bundesarchiv Cod dipl Warm Codex diplomaticus Warmiensis EK Einsatzkommando ERR Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg GStA Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz HA Hauptabteilung HIKO Historische Kommission für ost- und westpreußische Landesforschung KB Det Kongelige Bibliotek/Kungliga Biblioteket MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica MVGOW Mitteilungen des Vereins für die Geschichte Ost- und Westpreußens NSDAP Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei NOFG Nord- und ostdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Nl Nachlass OBA Ordensbriefarchiv OF Ordensfoliant PuSte Publikationsstelle Berlin-Dahlem RSHA Reichssicherheitshauptamt SD Sicherheitsdienst SS Schutzstaffel StA Staatsarchiv StaBi Staatsbibliothek SRP Scriptores rerum Prussicarum UB Urkundenbuch ZfGAE Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Altertumskunde Ermlands ZfO Zeitschrift für Ostforschung ZwG Zeitschrift des westpreußischen Geschichtsvereins

2 Introduction The Competition of Evil Why write a biography of a man who was ordinary in so many ways, including the amount of evil he was responsible for during National Socialism? In a period in which we know a lot about inconceivable crimes and are used to accepting their inconceivability, it might seem pointless to describe a lesser degree of evil. This study deals with the work and legacy of a historian and archivist who was not among the most famous and important representatives of his field, was not a particularly active National Socialist and was not even a party member. His deeds were so banal that not even the famous ‘banality of evil’ dictum applies to him. It is difficult to escape the competition of evil, which in an unfortunate way seems to be linked to the competition of scholarly impact. Kurt Forstreuter was a thorough, slightly boring historian of medieval Prussia and the Teutonic Order, a topic burdened with the devastating results of Germany’s Drang nach Osten (strive eastwards), but today rarely any longer giving rise to heated academic debates. Forstreuter took pride in the idea that he wrote about politically heated topics sine ira et studio,1 without anger or zeal. The utterly zealous political and historical environment this work was conducted in and contributed to often compensated for a lack of anger or passion in his writing. Sine ira et studio has also been used to denote a historian’s role as a neutral bystander and chronicler.2 Forstreuter was neither neutral nor a bystander. The study of the history of Prussia in the Late Middle Ages and of the Teutonic Order has in the past reached heights far above its current status. In the context of the struggle between Germany and Poland since World War I, it became overloaded with territorial claims, racist and nationalist constructs and legitimizing narratives. The recognition of the Oder-Neiße border in 1970 constituted a preliminary step towards a denouement, one that was completed by the German reunification, and this change of political context made the history of the Crusaders and

2 • Introduction

their eastward push a marginal discipline in both German and Polish universities, compared to the significance it had been assigned during most of the twentieth century. Once the topic of heated debates, as well as the source of early initiatives for reconciliation and accommodation, Prussian regional history now lives on listlessly, rarely troubled by the source editions produced from the holdings of the Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz (GStA). This archive, which, among other things, warehouses the holdings of the former Staatsarchiv Königsberg (Königsberg State Archive), is in possession of most of the remaining material from the Teutonic Order’s Prussian administration, and therefore of a significant part of the history of German colonialism in the East. A closer look makes it clear that this archive is the site not only of the preservation of historical sources but also of their far-reaching and systematic destruction. Both aspects are intertwined in the history of Jewish communities in East Prussia. With a few exceptions, nothing has been written about this aspect of medieval history – a complete absence of Jews, which cannot be explained solely by their absence from the medieval sources. The sole researcher to systematically examine this issue is very closely connected to both the preservation and the destruction of sources and, as such, with the way the history is remembered. Kurt Forstreuter, a state archivist in Königsberg until 1945 and thereafter director of the exiled archive in Goslar and Göttingen, compiled two versions of the Teutonic Order’s sources about Jews within its Prussian state and its administrative territory, the first in 1937 and the second in 1981. Forstreuter also played a key role in the destruction of Jewish community archives in the region, making him a witness to the destruction of the actual communities themselves. The archivists from Königsberg and, more generally, from the Prussian archival administration were responsible for the comprehensive looting and ‘restructuring’ of archives in the occupied territories. Besides this, they also played a prominent role in the vein of historical research known as Ostforschung, a politically motivated approach to the history of East Central Europe that arose in response to German territorial losses in the Treaty of Versailles.3 The sources held in the German and Polish archives in Königsberg/Kaliningrad, Wrocław, Gdańsk, Poznań and elsewhere played a crucial role in issues surrounding the German, Polish and Lithuanian borders. As a result of both their administrative functions and their research tasks, they played a crucial part in the institutionalization of Ostforschung – probably one that was more important than even that of the universities and their staff, which have been the subject of a good deal more historical scholarship.4 After

Introduction • 3

1939, Germany took practical measures to revise its eastern border; it occupied Poland, Lithuania, the Baltic countries and parts of Russia, and that also set in motion an unlimited desire for complete control of the archives in these regions. For the Prussian archivists, this meant both practical and scholarly revisionism. On the basis of the existent sources and research, the present study will show that Jews were a relatively minor issue in the Teutonic Order’s Prussia, both in positive and in negative terms; it will also explore how the control of memory and its destruction or conscious political framing came to shape an entire research tradition around this minor issue, as well as others of greater significance. Most of the Jewish community archives in the area were destroyed along with the people. As far as written sources go, what is available for the entire area of East and West Prussia comes from Polish and German Christian writers, because either the Jews themselves did not produce sources before the Early Modern period or possibly any existent documents were destroyed before or during National Socialism. According to the accepted wisdom, there were no stable Jewish communities until the seventeenth century, making it unlikely that modern synagogue archives would include lost evidence of such communities. However, these communities had maintained the memory of their ancient roots; in 1900, the rabbi Isaac Rülf of Memel/Klaipėda wrote the history of his community, presenting evidence of a 1567 expulsion order as the first written reference to it – no trace of this document remains today.5 How could one write sine ira et studio about Jews in 1937? How could one update this research some forty years later and not mention the numerous Jewish communities and their archives that had been destroyed in the meantime? Were it not for Forstreuter’s personal involvement in this destruction, this attempt would seem rather naïve. However, considering his role during the war, it just seems cynical. His article about the Jews in medieval Prussia, although one of his shortest, is significant because it formulates a kind of common-sense opinion that has influenced German, Polish and other scholars until the present: the truism that there was no Jewish life in medieval Prussia due to an active Teutonic Order anti-Jewish policy. Forstreuter’s line of argument is not particularly consistent or skilled, but, obviously, the not-veryskilled work of not-very-important scholars can, nonetheless, have a deep impact on our common knowledge of the past. Forstreuter’s scholarly and professional acumen is located at the juncture of so many still-unresolved aspects of German-Jewish history that he is an excellent example of an ordinary man in the service of National Socialism, one whose work had a considerable impact on our present-day knowledge

4 • Introduction

about historical realities. The allure of his argument and the results he presents lie in the fact that they create and replicate a research paradigm that is still in use; the Teutonic Order, as a Christian Crusading institution, aimed to create a purely Christian state in the Baltic and, thus, served as a bulwark against Slavic and Jewish immigration while dealing with an already multiethnic population in Prussia. From a medievalist’s point of view, I have several objections to this paradigm, which ignores a number of source genres, misjudges the importance of the Teutonic Order in the Prussian heartlands and misconceives the relationship between anti-Jewish regulations and those directed against all foreigners – for example, the trading regulations of the towns. These will be presented in detail in the second part of this book. However, my first objection is that a study about Jewish life conducted by a man who cooperated closely in the extinction of that life during the Shoah, and especially in the extinction of the memory of the Jewish communities, can only be biased. It is a common misconception that there were certain studies undertaken during National Socialism that were entirely politically contaminated, while others, which only used a couple of problematic terms, represented otherwise serious scientific groundwork, and that there were yet others that, even today, seem unproblematic. The latter are those that involve basic work on the sources, source editions and lists of discoveries related to a certain topic. The Forstreuter articles about Jews seem to belong to the latter category – an impression which will be repudiated in the present study. Instead of identifying single politically contaminated terms, this study aims at an analysis of the entire semantics of ethnically informed hostility which shaped the Ostforscher’s ideological and scholarly framework. Within this framework, Forstreuter’s article about medieval Jews receives a different significance. Finally, I wish to object to the double competition of evilness and scientific impact which determines whose deeds we investigate and whose achievements we question. National Socialism produced the most monstrous crimes we know of, but also a lot of lesser evils. And it is not only the most prestigious of thinkers who influence our collective memory. From a methodological point of view, it is both justified and necessary to investigate one of the lesser evils, especially since Forstreuter’s legacy, in large part, consists of source editions that we still use and which have shaped the current research paradigms.

Introduction • 5

Two Books in One The two parts of this study, the scholarly biography of Kurt Forstreuter and the reconstruction of the legal framework of potential Jewish life in medieval Prussia, are intimately connected by the common research tradition regarding the Teutonic Order in Prussia and the absence of Jews from its documentation, as well as by an insight into the way archives are constructed. Forstreuter’s life is not the only reason his work needs to be questioned. However, it is a good starting point, and combining Forstreuter’s biography with a reassessment of his work on the Prussian Jews will contribute to a shared understanding among scholars of medieval and modern history about the impact of their work. The present study has two objectives: first, to show that Kurt Forstreuter’s scholarly biography and his research into medieval Prussia, and particularly its Jewry, were intimately connected to his professional biography, which included participating in the looting of archives and cultural goods; the administration of occupied territories; close cooperation with the Gestapo, SS and SD; and ultimately the administration of files and archival holdings used for cataloguing and creating lists of Jews during the Holocaust. It also included a broader ideological preparation for German expansion within the institutional and scholarly framework of Ostforschung. This part of the study will focus on Forstreuter’s professional career before 1945 and will place the research he carried out during those years in its chronological, geographical and ideological context. Antisemitism is one rather minor aspect of this; more significant is both the assumption of the superiority of Germanity and the view of the border regions of East Prussia as a field for the struggle over Volkstümer and Volksboden,6 which, in turn, also affects how he addressed the Jewish question. Kurt Forstreuter is an example of a qualified civil servant who was loyal to the German state before, during and after National Socialism. He had no say in major decisions, but he nonetheless faithfully and fastidiously fulfilled his professional duties, adjusting to the shifts that occurred as a result of changes in the political framework. His professional attitudes and his understanding of scholarly research, in contrast to ideologically infected propaganda, are paralleled in the biographies of many of the more prominent historians of his generation, such as Theodor Schieder, Hans Rothfels or Peter-Heinz Seraphim, whose work have become the topic of biographic approaches to Ostforschung. In addition to this, Forstreuter’s biography seems to be typical for the

6 • Introduction

group of archivists and other civil servants trained in the period following World War I and already active by 1933, and who later had little problem being re-employed in West Germany. Forstreuter’s central position at the Königsberg state archive, and later at the Archivlager in Göttingen, as well as the extensive responsibility he had for the cultural tradition of an entire region, bear witness to the oft-neglected political role of archives. The elitist and proud (or arrogant) identity and selfimage of the Königsberg archivists as a ‘specific kind of historian’, as their leader Ernst Zipfel put it, had its roots in the immense importance of history and historicism in German nationalist movements since the 1870s. The study’s second objective is to disprove Forstreuter’s conclusions regarding the Teutonic Order’s relationship with Jews. In the case of Prussia, this does not mean the sudden detection of previously unknown large and stable Jewish communities. It does, however, mean thoroughly questioning the assumption of an anti-Jewish policy imposed by the Order, something that will also shed new light on the process of state formation in Prussia in general, as well as on the existing traces of Jewish life in the region. Because Forstreuter left out a number of sources and fields relevant to the question of Jews in Prussia and to the Teutonic Order’s relationship with them, it is necessary to extend the study far beyond Forstreuter’s chosen sample of sources. The Order’s historiographic tradition needs to be investigated to determine if there was a connection between Crusading ideology and antiJudaism in the Baltic, and the handful of legends and host desecration stories included in the material need to be placed in the context of local and European tradition. Furthermore, the Teutonic Order’s text production needs to be investigated with a particular eye to potential anti-Jewish regulations, and the same is true for other urban sources. In all of these areas, the absence of Jews is more striking than their presence, at least prior to the mid-fifteenth century. This absence does not, however, prove an absence of actual Jews; it could also indicate an absence of conflicts and, thus, an absence of source material addressing blood libels, pogroms and anti-Jewish regulations – this interpretation was tentatively advanced by some of the Wissenschaft des Judentums (a nineteenth-century scholarly movement for the investigation of Jewish and rabbinic sources) scholars at the beginning of the twentieth century, but it was not taken up in later research. Given the lack of other studies on the topic and the obvious flaws in Forstreuter’s interpretation of the sources, a reassessment seems more than justified. Some tentative conclusions can be drawn based on the structure and content of the extant sources about Jews from the

Introduction • 7

neighbouring areas in Poland and Lithuania, where large and stable Jewish communities were found. It is essential to keep in mind the fact that even these communities often produced no written documentation before the sixteenth century, and even what we have from Christian sources is very poor. The absence of documentation requires not only reflection on the absence of actual Jews but on the structure of the documentation itself – long before the Königsberg archivists helped to destroy the communities’ own written memory. While none of this provides sudden insights, it all contributes to my major point; the Teutonic Order did not have an anti-Jewish policy and the Prussian lands were relatively free of conflicts between Christian and Jewish inhabitants and between inhabitants and foreign guests until the Reformation. Additionally, the results raise questions about the definitions of ‘Jewish life’ at the margins of Ashkenaz: Do we only count stable communities, based on and at least the size of a minyan (ten male adults), and those with a certain amount of Jewish infrastructure, such as a slaughterhouse, a mikveh and a synagogue? Certainly we have enough evidence of Jews travelling, selling and buying, being robbed and lending money to wonder how they expressed their Jewish faith and identity in surroundings that lacked stable community structures. This study stops abruptly in the sixteenth century, when the last high master of the Teutonic Order converted to Protestantism, and the Order, as a landlord, disappeared. The first secular ruler of Prussia, Albrecht von Brandenburg, immediately developed a more active and more contradictory policy towards Jews in Prussia than had ever previously been the case. Albrecht’s policies provide additional evidence that there were small Jewish communities in Prussia before the Reformation. It is only when Albrecht addresses them as a problem in the second half of the sixteenth century that the Jews of medieval Prussia become visible. Some areas are consciously left out of this study; for example, the entire field of place names seemed alternately too specific or too uncertain to be useful for generalizing. Most often, investigations of the urban tradition have focussed on legislation and jurisdiction, and this has rendered close to no results regarding Jewish life. While there might be more evidence of actual Jewish inhabitants or even citizens in the smaller towns, the perusal of the archival documentation in these towns would require a different approach with a far greater focus on uncovering evidence of Jewish life in the area. An investigation of that sort would also need to include the results of archaeological studies and eventually a fresh assessment of those results, as well as a new look at appraisals of material culture, particularly of art history.7 In this context, the Jewish sources from the surrounding area might also need

8 • Introduction

to be re-examined for references to travellers or for possible responsa addressing halachic questions at the peripheries of the Baltic coast.8 The emergence of Jewish academic life in the Early Modern period might also prove relevant here – in 1635, two scholars at the University of Königsberg defended their theses about questions of Hebrew linguistics in Rabbinic Hebrew. Where did they come from, and how did the topic gain institutional attention in Prussia? But these and other questions will be left to future research and researchers. The common assumption underlying both parts of this study is that historiographic writing and research are never free of ideology. The fact that research into the Teutonic Order is basically free of Jews – as it is of women, by the way – does not mean that the source material is free of Jews; it simply means that we have become used to a certain reading and approach. My point is that this approach is heavily burdened with the deeds of the perpetrators of the Shoah. To claim that their work was performed sine ira et studio is to ignore the underlying ideological framework and to assume the possibility of unsullied work on the sources – for which Forstreuter, the archivist, is a good counterexample.

Some Notes on Spelling, Place Names and Translations Non-English terms, titles and expressions will generally be translated at first use, as well as quotations. However, quotations are not translated verbatim in footnotes when the main text contains a close paraphrase. In Medieval German languages, nouns are most often not capitalized and will be given in the form they appear in the sources (willkor, friheit). Terms that already are a result of linguistic normalization from medieval to modern German (Landordnung, Judeneid) will be capitalized. Preußen is the contemporary correct spelling for the area under investigation; however, many older publications use also Preussen and preussisch. As I follow the spelling from the sources, this will result in a certain inconsistency between the two versions. Most of the places mentioned in this study have historically had both Polish and German names, and there has been quite a lot of argument on which names to use in contemporary historiography – one more minor topic in Prussian history which has been burdened with ideological issues. The German names are used in German-speaking scholarship, based on the argument that these were the historical names. Polishspeaking scholarship generally uses the Polish names. English has not developed specific preferences for most of the towns and villages in Prussia, Silesia and Lithuania. When they exist, I use the common

Introduction • 9

English forms (e.g., Warsaw, Pomerania and Culm). Otherwise, I generally use the contemporary names (e.g., Wrocław, Elbląg and Toruń), to avoid alternating place names when discussing the fifteenth century, a period when the Prussian towns were sometimes under Polish rule and at others under the Teutonic Order’s rule. The exceptions are the towns and districts that were renamed during National Socialism; the German names, such as Warthegau and Zichenau, are essential in that particular historical phase. Yet another exception is Königsberg, whose contemporary name was never used during the period addressed by this study. When I refer to the town after 1946, I use Kaliningrad. Throughout this volume, I use the spelling ‘antisemitism’ instead of ‘anti-Semitism’, because the hyphen may suggest that the Semites in anti-Semitism are an actually existing ethnic group – parallel to the Slavs in anti-Slavism, for example. While Semites as an ethnic group do exist, they are far from identical to the group constructed as the object of antisemitism.9

Notes 1. K. Forstreuter, ‘Vom Blickpunkt eines Archivars: Zu viele Memoiren?’, in K. Forstreuter (ed.), Wirkungen des Preußenlandes: Vierzig Beiträge (Köln: Grote, 1981), 406. 2. The notion of neutrality was proven wrong by the first historian to use the phrase: Tacitus. Selma Stern also uses the phrase in her monograph on Court Jews during Absolutism, denoting the historian’s duty to be neutral. S. Stern, Der Hofjude im Zeitalter des Absolutismus: Ein Beitrag zur europäischen Geschichte im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 32. 3. Ostforschung is an unprecise term, as many scholars have noted, but it nevertheless serves to denote a particular revisionist form of historical scholarship, in contrast to the purely geographically determined Ostmitteleuropaforschung. 4. Evidence of this can be found in the biographies of a number archivists in M. Szukała, Pruskie archiwa państwowe a niemieckie badania wschodnie (deutsche Ostforschung) w okresie międzywojennym XX wieku (1918–1939): Między nauką a politycznym zaangażowaniem (Warszawa: Naczelna Dyrekcja Archiwów Państwowych, 2011). 5. The medieval town archive of Memel has been lost. The GStA holds files from the commander of the castle but not those of the town administration. The 1567 expulsion is mentioned in I. Rülf, ‘Zur Geschichte der Juden in Memel’, in E. Carlebach (ed.), Erster Bericht der Israelitischen Religionsschule zu Memel (Memel: Siebert, 1900), 3–26. 6. Volkstum is a politically charged term for the ethnic and cultural identity of peoples. Volksboden describes the territory that this kind of homogenous population inhabits. Both terms have been used in völkisch discourse. Völkisch, a term frequently used in this volume, denotes a German political

10 • Introduction

movement since the late nineteenth century, defined by its racist, ethnocentristic, nationalist and populist ideology. 7. For later periods, see P. Fijałkowski, ‘Kultura i sztuka religijna Żydów na Mazowszu w XVI–XVIII wieku’, Kwartalnik Historii Żydów 2 (2007), 142–63. 8. Michael Toch claims a total absence of Jewish sources from the East for the Early and High Middle Ages. M. Toch, The Economic History of European Jews: Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 154. 9. See also S. Almog, ‘What’s in a Hyphen?’ SICSA Report: Newsletter of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (Summer 1989).

2 Chapter 1 Absent Jews The Rise of a Truism and the Loss of Some Forefathers

Beginning with High Master Siegfried of Feuchtwangen’s regulation of 1309, Jews were not permitted to settle in the Order’s East Prussian land … they were not able to achieve the actual right of habitation in the strictly religious country, where the ‘manacle of religion’ was more powerful than the ‘manacle of politics’, and the complicated and closely controlled settlement, staple and foreigners’ rights in the East Prussian towns created limitations similar to those in neighboring Pomerania.1

This is all that Selma Stern has to say about medieval Prussia in her groundbreaking 1925 study Der preußische Staat und die Juden (The Prussian State and the Jews). Twelve years later, Kurt Forstreuter presented the first outline of the sources available for addressing the topic of Jews in medieval Prussia. This was the year when the Königsberg Jewish community was forced to deliver its archive to the Königsberg state archive where Forstreuter worked, an oppressive measure that would ironically serve to preserve the community’s archive through the war. Forstreuter did not quote Selma Stern – or any other Jewish scholar – in his first article about Jews in medieval Prussia, although he shared both her basic assumption that even in its early days there was an intense religious hostility towards Jews in Prussia and her conclusion that as a result of the Teutonic Order’s active anti-Jewish policy, there were no Jews in medieval Prussia. Two scholars with widely differing political and scholarly perspectives shared what has become a truism, treated as valid and still asserted today, but there are a number of flaws in their argument, the main one being that there was no regulation of 1309. In a later version of his article, Forstreuter mentioned Stern in a footnote, suggesting that she had used outdated research literature.2 By that point, he had a more nuanced view of High Master Siegfried von Feuchtwangen’s alleged regulation of 1309. This second version was published posthumously in a collection of forty short articles and papers that were part of his estate, all of it work he had been doing shortly before he died, some of it original, some of it, like the article about the Prussian Jews, reworking older publications. The same

12 • Chapter 1

c­ ollection contains one of the few egodocuments he left behind, a short autobiographic text entitled ‘Vom Blickpunkt eines Archivars: Zu viele Memoiren?’ (From an Archivist’s Viewpoint: Too Many Memoirs?). The document is a comprehensive justification for his and other archivists’ collaboration with the National Socialist state; an acknowledgement of responsibility fails to materialise. In the case of the Prussian Jews in particular, Forstreuter feels no need to look back in regret. When now, four decades later, the author reads his 1937 text, he does not find much that does not still stand up today, even though the world has changed since then.3

The world had indeed changed since the first version was published in Altpreußische Forschungen in 1937;4 six million Jews had been killed by the state the author had worked for, and he himself had played a considerable role in drawing up the lists of victims and in seizing or destroying the written documentation these extinguished communities had left behind. East and West Prussia, the Memelland (Lithuanian: Klaipėdos kraštas; the northern part of East Prussia as defined in the Treaty of Versailles and put under the control of the League of Nations) and larger parts of Central Eastern Europe had been occupied by Germany and then been lost again, including Forstreuter’s home region. The racist construct of Judaism, which provided the ideological and institutional basis of his 1937 work, had, in the meantime, largely been dismissed by scholars and public opinion alike, and in Forstreuter’s second account, colonial access to the Polish areas had been replaced by the expatriate’s uncertain perspective and memories. The archive he relied upon most, the files of the Teutonic Order’s Prussia from the Königsberg state archive, had been transported to West Germany, and Forstreuter was the director of the archive holding them. Kurt Forstreuter’s work itinerary during the war years reminds one of the fragility of historical memory and tradition and of the arbitrary nature of archives and their contents. Even though the world had changed, he did not see the need to question his own assumptions, which were heavily shaped by an antisemitic mindset, underlying biases and, above all, blind spots. Most striking is his ignorance of medieval legislation and jurisdictional issues regarding Jews, both in the West and in the surrounding Polish, Russian and Lithuanian areas, and thus his lack of context for appraising the presumed policy of the Teutonic Order. It is also striking how little Forstreuter knew of older research into settlement in the area, particularly Jewish research, and about Jewish religion and culture in general. Given that Forstreuter was a scholar and archivist who worked closely with the sources, it is

Absent Jews • 13

particularly puzzling that he never discussed the possibility that the extant archives supported a particular construct. Why do we have the sources we have? Might there have been others that are now lost? What about the archives destroyed during the war? Still, Kurt Forstreuter was not a Nazi, probably not even an antisemite, and not a bad historian either, all factors that have likely helped to establish his articles about Prussian Jews as the unquestioned scholarly status quo. His work on Prussian Jews needs to be read in the context of his overall scholarly production: more than four hundred minor or major contributions addressing various aspects of the regional history of Prussia and the Teutonic Order in general. Out of these, only two dealt with the topic of medieval Jewish life. Another minor contribution addressed the town of Tolmicko/Tolkemit and the likelihood of Jewish life there, rebuking another scholar’s assessment of this possibility.5 Obviously, Forstreuter’s work on the Prussian Jews is not quantitatively significant, but has to be considered utterly influential because of its position within his and others’ research about medieval Prussia, and about Jewish-Christian relations. It became the sole point of reference for research on the topic because it presents the only list of sources – although incomplete and with contradicting interpretations – and thereby establishes the topic as a non-issue. It is considered credible because it was produced by a scholar perceived as sober and thorough in his source assessments, something that is best challenged by reconstructing his scholarly biography and situating his work on Jews within his overall intellectual production and archival work. The import of his truism is also determined by its place in his overall narrative of Prussia as a frontier region and a Crusader state – and this, for its part, is a common feature of much of twentieth-century German Prussian regional historiography. A criticism of this historiographic tradition cannot be limited to easily identified examples but must also reassess works that do not in any obvious way fit into a simple ‘political instrumentalization’ versus ‘neutral scientific production’ dichotomy. Kurt Forstreuter’s historiographic production is a good example of the ambiguity of scholarly sincerity, political assumptions, the potential for paradigmatic shifts in certain areas and the maintenance of figures of thought from the interwar period in others. In this regard, his work is also symptomatic of the research into the Teutonic Order in general. It is impossible to divide the historiographic tradition into fields with distinct boundaries, with certain arguments and issues always correlating with a specific ideological framework. The ideological framework for Prussian Landesgeschichte (historiography of a politically defined

14 • Chapter 1

t­ erritory or province) has obviously changed since the interwar period and National Socialism. However, some of the research paradigms developed in this framework remain valid – the absent Jews is one that is intimately connected to enduring ideas about the Teutonic Order’s state and its population(s). From a political and epistemological point of view, it is surprising that even Selma Stern’s grand work on the Prussian Jews, a prestigious project of the fledgling Akademie für die Wissenschaft des Judentums and the very first attempt to present a history of the relations between the Prussian state and its Jewish inhabitants, added to the idea of medieval Prussia as a bulwark against Jews. This can be explained by the methodology and scope of the project; the timeframe was 1648 to 1812, with medieval relations only briefly described as a prehistory to Stern’s attempt to present the mutual process of ‘assimilation of the Jewish spirit into the European, the Jewish influence on the European [spirit]’6 – quite the opposite of Forstreuter’s attempt to prove the nonexistence of mutual influences. Stern’s teleological conception of Prussian-Jewish history, which culminates in the Emancipation, did not spur a thorough search of the archives for earlier sources,7 and the existence of a medieval anti-Jewish regulation, a Landordnung which forbid Jewish settlement, that was later lost seemed entirely probable from the perspective of an Early Modern state. Following in Stern’s (and Forstreuter’s) footsteps, scholars who focussed on the period after 1800 usually treated the existence of the Landordnung as indisputable. From the perspective of Prussia as a fully developed state, scholars of modern history are prone to project the situation of a landlord acting autonomously in his legislation for the territory onto medieval power relations. Recent scholarship has largely supported Stern’s assessment of the role played by the towns and their complicated systems for obtaining citizenship, but her appraisal of the Teutonic Order as the strict orthodox landlord of a religiously homogenous country must be challenged. Forstreuter himself discussed a number of instances where the Teutonic Order set the vinculum religionis aside in its relations to Poland and Lithuania – nevertheless, regarding the absent Jews, his and Stern’s assessments correlate.

Perpetual Absence: Earlier and Later Research Despite the fact that a ban on Jewish settlement seems more likely from the perspective of modern than of medievalist scholars, the idea persists in most scholarly works until today. Since 1945, most of these works

Absent Jews • 15

have quoted Forstreuter. Nevertheless, there have been attempts to develop a more nuanced view of Jewish-Christian relations in Prussia, and they primarily differ in the degree to which they accept the tradition of the alleged Landordnung of 1309. Before World War II, it was mainly Prussian authors, both Jewish and non-Jewish and of different political persuasions, who were interested in the early Jewish history of the region. Selma Stern’s sources include Ludwig von Baczko, who simply adhered to the long tradition among Christian Prussian chroniclers when he repeated claims of a ban on Jewish settlement.8 Several smaller studies from that period dealing with the local histories of Gdańsk and Königsberg presented a more nuanced view of the legal situation in Prussia, but they were not referenced in later works.9 In a discussion of the alleged absence of Jews from medieval Prussia, Heimann Jolowicz (1816–75), a rabbi in Kwidzyn/Marienwerder and Koszalin/Köslin, who retired to Königsberg,10 mentioned an episode also found in Simon Grunau’s Preussische Chronik, in which a somewhat modified version of a host desecration story is posited as the reason for the expulsion of Jews from Prussia; the incident is dated to the years 1340–45 and, as such, comes in the aftermath of the presumed 1309 ban.11 Jolowicz is among Selma Stern’s sources. Emil Hollack, an archaeologist affiliated with the Prussia museum in Königsberg, followed Jolowicz’s lead and worked from the assumption of an active anti-Jewish policy, further consolidating the claim that towns issued anti-Jewish regulations from the mid-fifteenth century onward.12 Gerhard Kessler, professor of national economy in Leipzig and Jena, who, as an opponent of National Socialism, was dismissed from his post in 1933, studied Jewish conversion in modern Prussia but ignored the evidence of Jewish converts in medieval Prussia. He does, however, mention the Landordnung of 1309.13 All of these scholars are ambivalent in their assessments of the Landordnung – for none of them is it a sufficient explanation for the absence of Jews from medieval Prussia. Samuel Echt, a member of the Gdańsk Jewish community who was forced to emigrate to the United Kingdom and later the United States, mentioned the Landordnung of 1309 in his post-war history of the Jews of Gdańsk, as well as the fact that when it was founded, in keeping with the Lübeck law, the town of Gdańsk prohibited the settlement of all ‘non-Germans’ (Undeutsche).14 It is important to note that these scholars were solely focusing on Jewish populations and thus on a religious antagonism, not an ethnic one. Furthermore, none of them were medievalists. As such, their remarks about medieval Jews are usually just a short introduction to their main Early Modern or modern topic and present merely an ex post explanation of the fact that there

16 • Chapter 1

are no sources proving the existence of stable Jewish communities in the region before the seventeenth century. Post-war scholars of Jewish history have generally accepted Kurt Forstreuter’s articles as state of the art.15 The German tradition of Ostforschung scholarship took a different tack, basically ignoring the topic of Jews in the context of the Teutonic Order and Prussian medieval history in general. Even medievalists like Forstreuter who worked in this field did not acknowledge the earlier studies carried out by Jewish and non-Jewish historians. Instead, these scholars generally pointed at the Landordnung of 1309 to establish this as a nonissue. After the war, Max Aschkewitz, assistant to Erich Keyser and the infamous author of numerous studies on the demographic history of Prussia, published a study on Jews in West Prussia using material that he had collected during his service at the Forschungsstelle für westpreußische Landesgeschichte (one of several research institutions founded by the Germans in the occupied Polish territories). When addressing the Middle Ages, he presumed a ban on Jewish settlement and mentioned Gdańsk’s anti-Jewish regulations – another issue that will be reinvestigated in the following chapters – but somehow still assumed that Jews lived in Prussia and played a role as traders in medieval Gdańsk.16 One of the scholars frequently quoted in Aschkewitz’s work is Fritz Gause. Gause, who spent the war years engaged in activities similar to those of Forstreuter, wrote a history of the town of Königsberg that became surprisingly influential. In addition to the generally presumed medieval ban, he claimed that Jews were still forbidden from entering the three towns of Königsberg during the sixteenth century.17 Anneliese Triller and Gerhard von Glinski were among those who accepted this claim in their own work.18 However, Stefanie Schüler-Springorum has produced a collection sampling the openly antisemitic passages found in Gause’s history of the town of Königsberg,19 so a reassessment of his passages regarding Jewish life in the town is called for. As is the case with Aschkewitz’s treatment of ‘anti-Jewish’ trading restrictions in Gdańsk (which were not established until the midfifteenth century and were not directed specifically against Jews, but were meant to ensure the city council’s control over the settlement of foreigners in general), German scholars have been surprisingly uncritical and contradictory in their readings of the sources regarding Jews. Frombork/Frauenburg diocesan archivist Anneliese Triller mentions an episode in which a travelling convert to Judaism is held responsible for the spread of the Plague in the Prussian coastal towns, simultaneously assuming that Jews were still entirely banned from Prussia at that point20 – her argument is actually a fair representation of what

Absent Jews • 17

one finds among Prussian historians and archivists who address the topic; they are not in any way obviously antisemitic, but they unquestioningly quote antisemitic scholarship like Gause’s. The fact that the National Socialist and antisemitic strictures imposed upon Prussian historiography have not been sufficiently addressed in contemporary scholarship led to a tradition that uncritically makes use of pre-existing arguments. A few scholars have acknowledged the dubious character and tradition of the presumed anti-Jewish legislation but have not pursued the matter. Arno Mentzel-Reuters, for example, offers the only reflection on the question of anti-Judaism in the Teutonic Order’s literary output. He refers to Karl Helm, who connected the presumed existence or even positive reception of Heinrich von Hesler’s fiercely anti-Jewish Evangelium Nicodemi in Prussia to the Landordnung of 1309. MentzelReuters rejects Helm’s argument, correctly asserting that the alleged Landordnung was a sixteenth-century invention.21 A complete reassessment of the sources, however, remains a desideratum. Even the current leading German scholarship regarding Jews in the Baltic assumes that they simply did not exist. Alfred Haverkamp, for example, says that to the best of our knowledge, there were no Jews in Sweden, Denmark or the Baltic.22 Some of these assessments can be explained by the traditional focus of scholars on the minyan as the core of a Jewish community and the expectation that a community large enough to form a minyan would certainly be visible in the sources, in one way or another. However, recent scholarship addressing Jewish life in the medieval Mediterranean has shown that there are also other forms of community life worth considering. The fact that there is no evidence of stable Jewish communities could also mean that the Jewish families had a somewhat nomadic lifestyle, with the whole family relocating several times during a person’s lifetime, which meant that they did not establish communities in the traditional sense or the concomitant written documentation. This, however, does not mean that they had no community life at all, as evidence from the High and Late Middle Ages in some parts of Italy indicates.23 Contemporary Polish scholarship also accepts the alleged Teutonic Order ban. Most recently, Hanna Zaremska left Prussia completely out of her impressive study of Jewish life in medieval Poland, on the basis of the assumed ban.24 Zenon Hubert Nowak addressed the topic in a conference paper, in which he assumed that the nonexistence of stable Jewish communities proved that there was a ban, arguing that if there had been any Jews, the Teutonic Order, as a Christian religious ­corporation, would have registered them;25 his paper is quoted in some

18 • Chapter 1

minor studies about Jewish physicians in fifteenth-century Prussia,26 as well as on the Jewish community of Nowa Nieszawa on the PolishPrussian border.27 In particular, Sławomir Jóżwiak’s study of the Jewish community that has existed in Nowa Nieszawa since the early fifteenth century opened the way for a more nuanced view of the nonexistence of Prussian Jews, but his findings have as yet not led to any major reconsideration of the issue. These are only some examples of a number of articles addressing the prehistory of the large Jewish communities in Northern Poland that take the existence of a ban for the Prussian lands as a given.28 Maria Bogucka presumes a non tolerandis Iudaeis privilege for at least Gdańsk, and probably for all of Prussia, during the pre-Reformation period29 – de non tolerandis Iudaeis was in fact a privilege issued by the Polish king on behalf of the towns allowing them to prohibit Jewish settlement, Toruń and Gdańsk among them, but these were not in use before the mid-sixteenth century.30 Bogucka’s study does, however, shine an extremely useful light on relations in Gdańsk. In sum, the ban on Jewish settlement in medieval Prussia has become a commonplace and a truism. One of the few scholars who doubted the sources for this ban was Kurt Forstreuter, but he nevertheless believed that the Teutonic Order’s state had been largely free of Jews, and hostile toward Jews. Even though he believed that the Order had an active anti-Jewish policy, he pointed out a central problem regarding the ban of 1309; it is handed down as part of a tradition of chronicles written about 150 years later – no contemporary sources, diplomatic or otherwise, prove the existence of this regulation that is said to have had such a tremendous impact on Jewish settlement in the Baltic Rim region. The ambiguity of Forstreuter’s assessment of this central source derives from a central figure of thought that he never abandoned: the bulwark theory.

Medieval and Modern Bulwarks After presenting a number of somewhat contradictory sources about Jewish presence in medieval Prussia, Kurt Forstreuter concluded that the territory was basically free of Jews. [A]nd this special status [of Prussia] is particularly striking if we consider the exceptionally strong Jewish impact beyond the East Prussian borders, in Poland and Lithuania. For this East Jewry [Ostjudentum], Prussia was not an entrance point, but, as a result of the politics of the Teutonic Order, a barrier which constricted them.31

Absent Jews • 19

This is the conclusion Kurt Forstreuter draws in 1937, in the first version of his article on medieval Prussian Jews. ‘Ostjudentum’ is a modern term, denoting social, cultural and linguistic differences in Jewish culture in Europe after the Emancipation. It was also used as an antisemitic combat term after World War I and is generally inadequate for describing medieval Jewish populations. Forstreuter’s quote formulates the idea of Prussia as an anti-Jewish bulwark, a concept intimately connected to the parallel notion of an anti-Slavic bulwark. The bulwark theory has prominent forerunners: Leopold Ranke and Heinrich von Treitschke presented Prussia as the Occidental bulwark against the East in general and the Slavs as a deadly threat to Germanity in particular – this figure of thought gained importance in the malevolent debates between German and Polish scholars after World War I. Other voices employed the same metaphor: Social Democrat Otto Braun introduced the distinct innovation of Prussia as a potential bulwark of democracy in the last phase of the Weimar Republic. Shortly after his fall and the National Socialist takeover, the chauvinist and racist bulwark rhetoric culminated in Rosenberg’s 1934 speech at Marienburg.32 National Socialist Ostforschung and its conservative predecessors relied heavily on the idea of the Teutonic Order as a defender not only of Christianity – as stated in its early statutes – but also of a presumed German culture and race. After the war, critical appraisals of the interconnection of medieval Prussian historiography in terms of bulwark and the Nazis’ enthusiasm for the German colonization of the East and the Teutonic Order’s role in this were often repelled with the hint that the actual Teutonic Order was liquidated in 1938 – two facts that do not actually have anything to do with each other.33 Forstreuter eliminated the quoted sentence from the 1981 version of his article but retained the figures of thought that had led him to this assessment: the idea that the dominion of the Teutonic Order in medieval Prussia was extraordinary in so many ways; that the ethnic structure of the territory was but one aspect in its extraordinariness; and that this, namely, the absence of Jews, was the result of an antiJewish policy of the Order, which stood in direct opposition to the Jew-friendly policies of the neighbouring territories. This conclusion, as well as the rest of the article, is not antisemitic per se – the lack of open antisemitism is a striking aspect of Forstreuter’s work on medieval Jews. In this, it resembles the work of a number of National Socialist scholars who wrote about Jewish history using no obvious antisemitic terminology. (This is not to say that Ostforschung generally omitted openly anti­semitic statements and research results.)

20 • Chapter 1

The bulwark rhetoric took up even more space in Forstreuter’s work on the Prussian borders, particularly that with Lithuania, a topic that remained a central interest throughout his life.34 As such, his perception of Prussia as an anti-Jewish bulwark derived from the idea of Prussia as a bulwark of Germanity, or Christianity, or the Occident, against the Other: non-Christians and non-Germans. You would think that this openly völkische figure of thought would have been long since discredited; however, it continues to resonate in the role it plays in our understanding of the Teutonic Order’s state-building in Prussia, still a much-debated aspect of Prussian history: When did the military order formulate and begin to apply a conscious strategy of territorial concentration and state-building, and what role did the establishment of a dominant German elite play in this strategy? This issue places medieval history at the centre of Ostforschung, which attempts to describe and elucidate the history of Eastern Europe from a perspective based on the superiority of Germanity and its cultural and political achievements. From its paramount place in the Germanic state-building process and as the nucleus of the 1870 and 1933 empires, this frontier region of Germany or even of Germanity, medieval Prussia, has dwindled into a research subject pursued by small German and Polish circles and institutions.35 Since the question of Germany’s eastern borders seems to have been resolved to the disadvantage of those who, until recently, dreamed of the reintegration of East Prussia into Germany, the lobby groups that have supported research into the regional history of the area have declined in importance, along with their subject matter. Although politically important and innovative in the 1980s, the heirs of the German-Polish Schulbuchgespräche (dialogues on school books, mainly targeting the depiction of the history of the Teutonic Order in these) have largely failed to turn their topic into an academic discipline. This might be one of the reasons that certain figures of thought remain so persistent in this field. The lack of critical reflection on the discipline of medieval history and its tradition comes up about once a decade in some rare study of Prussian historiography, but thorough investigations remain a ­desi­deratum – investigations of the perpetrator’s biographies, of certain events and topics and of the ideological assumptions that shape the historiography underlying them.36 One reason for the lack of critical reflection is a view of scholarly research, particularly medieval research – if well conducted – as an objective response to ideologically motivated propaganda. This perspective shares much with that developed and acted upon by many Ostforscher before, during and after World War II. It is always the others who are ideologues: Polish, Jewish

Absent Jews • 21

and, later, Marxist scholars – as a result, most medievalist research from the Ostforschung tradition remains in use and is seen as more or less objective. In 1961, Manfred Hellmann traced the bulwark theory back to Ranke and then identified those historians who, even after the fall of the ‘Third Reich’, carried on the tradition, including Erich Weise and Walter Hubatsch – both of whom, like Forstreuter, continue to be frequently quoted today, not least for their source editions.37 Hellmann also criticized the conception Walter Hubatsch used in the source edition Quellensammlung zur Geschichte des Deutschen Ordens as an early tendentious history of the arrival of the Brothers in Prussia. In doing so, he showed how a contemporary political conflict can be mirrored in source editions. The Hellmann article is frequently quoted – but only in connection to the broader question it addresses, whether the process of ‘state foundation’ in Prussia can be seen as a conscious strategy on the part of High Master Hermann von Salza from the outset or, as Hellmann suggests, as something that arose in 1309, when the high master’s seat was moved to Prussia and the Order became its de facto territorial lord. As far as the bulwark theory and other political aspects of Weise’s and Hubatsch’s work go, early criticism seems to have gradually faded away – at least when it comes to medievalists.38 More recent critical reappraisals of medieval Landesgeschichte and Ostforschung identify Walter Schlesinger’s 1963 lecture on Ostforschung, delivered at the Johann Gottfried Herder Institute in Marburg, as one of the few fundamental interventions.39 His research focused on the settlement processes before the Teutonic Order’s arrival and initial dominion. His rejection of the idea of the German settlers as bearers of a superior culture placed him in opposition to the entire earlier generation of Ostforscher, who at this point formed the Herder-Forschungsrat.40 There have been other similar attempts to criticize the research tradition for its broad use of the bulwark theory and reliance on a general sense of German supremacy in cultural matters – but most of them have not come from medievalists. The academic tradition currently addressing Ostforschung and its connection to the National Socialist state consists of scholars of modern history who are able to address biographies and institutions but who are either uninterested in or unable to criticize the ideology underlying medievalist research. The fact that most studies that address Ostforschung, its ideological foundations and its importance for the National Socialist state are carried out by modern historians – in spite of the fact that most of the protagonists were medievalists – means that the important controversies

22 • Chapter 1

that arise are not taken up in medievalist scholarship. It also results in the medievalist perspective about some aspects of Ostforschung being unaffected by the debate – it has not, for example, led to the necessary reappraisal of the pertinent medieval studies in light of the critique formulated by modern historians. Medievalists have generally restricted their criticism to questions closely connected to the historical circumstances. Erich Weise’s edition of the acts of the Council of Constance and of the conflict between the Teutonic Order and the Polish crown has been criticized by Hartmut Boockmann – Boockmann takes aim at a distinct anti-Polish prejudice on Weise’s side, but his main criticism targets the anachronistic way in which Weise interprets the acts from 1415 to 1418 as documentation of historical facts from 200 years earlier, failing to note that the Teutonic Order produced propaganda equivalent to that of Paulus Vladimiri in defence of the Polish position.41 Despite the eventual fierce debates responding to the anti-Polish bias of certain researchers or regarding seemingly nonpolitical questions about Prussia’s medieval history, none of the researchers who have been criticized have been openly discredited. Furthermore, the political circumstances underlying the creation of works such as Das Widerstandsrecht im Deutschordensstaat Preußen (The Right of Resistance in the Teutonic Order’s State Prussia, by Weise) are treated as a nonissue – not in the least taboo, simply of no interest.42 Reappraising Forstreuter’s two articles on Prussian Jews in the ­context of his intellectual biography is a minor contribution to the re-­ examination of the scholarly fundamentals of Prussian history. It is located at the juncture of three important fields: first, an ideological critique of Prussian historiography in general, particularly the bulwark theory; second, the importance and influence of the National Socialist research institutions and other veins of Ostforschung as they are reflected in Forstreuter’s scholarly work, with his approach to Prussian Jews being but one small part; third, the entrenchment of antisemitism in the ideological framework of medievalist Ostforschung.

Biographic Approaches to Ostforschung Political infatuation had at that time moved the historical boundaries of Prussia into Poland. The holdings from these areas also had to be taken care of and secured. Thus I was sent to Płock several times … I also got to know various minor places in Masovia and the Suwałki area. From a scholarly point of view, these travels were an asset, but from a personal and professional perspective, no source of pleasure.43

Absent Jews • 23

What Forstreuter labels as ‘no source of pleasure’ here were looting trips in the occupied territories, where he and other Königsberg archivists assessed and collected what was left of the Jewish community archives after the first wave of pogroms and searched the Polish archives for holdings useful for developing a history of Germanity in the region. These travels in the service of the National Socialist state will be described in detail in chapter 3, but before that the significance of a biographical approach to this medievalist’s work should be discussed. Late in his life, Forstreuter was still able to appreciate the scholarly assets of his looting trips, and what he had welcomed in 1939 as a ‘necessary correction’ of the historical Prussian borders he later labelled an infatuation. This mix of acknowledging the failures of the political system, while pointing out the ways in which his scholarship profited from the processes he participated in, is characteristic for Forstreuter’s relation to his own past, and it indicates that using his professional duties to advance his research came naturally to him. This leaves a central issue unaddressed in the case of many of the archivists from Königsberg: In what way does their work reflect their looting trips and their role in war crimes both as witnesses and participants? While Erich Weise, one of Forstreuter’s colleagues in Königsberg, was much more openly political and ideological in his research than Forstreuter and was thus much more vulnerable to the kind of criticism the post-war medievalists did engage in, his biography has remained as little discussed as Forstreuter’s. His anti-Polish mindset had a long history; he and Forstreuter were fellows of Publikationsstelle BerlinDahlem (PuSte), where, among other things, they wrote assessments of ‘anti-German’ research. The important role this organization played in the ideological preparation for the war of extinction is by now well known. In 1939, one of their negative assessments led the Gestapo to arrest the historian Kurt Obitz. Forstreuter and Weise, who remained colleagues and engaged in a lively scholarly dialogue throughout their lives, first attended a Nord- und Ostdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (NOFG) conference in 1934.44 Erich Weise would later head up the newly founded Reichsarchiv Posen and was responsible for the looting of archives in Estonia and Belarus.45 Erich Weise’s actions during World War II are well known, and many of his research theses are considered outdated and are openly challenged. The situation with Forstreuter is different. For some reason, his scholarly work seems to have been untouched by the ideological waves of time; unlike Weise, there are no known reviews condemning his work, although his name frequently appears in passing in studies about the looting of archives, the Ostforschung institutions and the

24 • Chapter 1

German occupation of Poland and Lithuania. Thus far, however, he has managed to escape a full appraisal, even though he was undeniably one of the absolutely key figures involved in looting archives in Poland and Lithuania and, as the director of the Archivlager Göttingen, was also central to the post-war research into the sources from the regions he had looted. Much of the discussion about the protagonists and institutions of Ostforschung has been aimed at distinguishing between nationalist and young conservative ideologies and flat out National Socialism, as well as at determining whether the protagonists changed their political views after 1945. The debates around Theodor Schieder and Werner Conze are symptomatic of this, and more recently even Hermann Aubin and Erich Keyser46 have begun to receive attention. The politicalideological differentiation is important from a theoretical perspective – but there are boundaries for what we can know about a person’s inner motivations and thoughts. In many biographies of scholars who were also perpetrators during National Socialism, there is much speculation about their motivations, their mindsets and their intentions and how these affected their actual deeds and scholarly work, often formulated in a benevolent or even apologetic way.47 In Forstreuter’s case, all of this is poorly documented. Almost no private material from before 1945 is included in his estate; his so-called egodocuments are restricted to a post-war travel diary entitled ‘Meine Reisen’ from 1951 and the previously quoted article ‘Vom Standpunkt eines Archivars: Zu viele Memoiren?’ in the posthumously published collection Wirkungen des Preußenlands. The majority of the extant letters in his estate are of a professional character, with occasional private notes on his health, about conflicts with colleagues and about contact with friends from East Prussia. Because he left Königsberg as a soldier in 1943 and returned directly to Berlin from war imprisonment, the documentation of his private life before 1945 is extremely limited; the few affects and papers included in his estate from that period seem to be copies of archival material and bank documents that he received after the war from a neighbour. In contrast, the sources for the Prussian archival administration are extraordinarily good; about 85 per cent of the contents of the Königsberg archive were sent to western Germany in 1944–45, and all the records of the archive survived. The archival administration of the newly occupied territories is thoroughly documented in the file ‘Archivangelegenheiten in den neuen, ehemals polnischen Gebietsteilen Ostpreußens’ (Archival Matters in the new, previously Polish Territories of East Prussia), in particular (I. HA, Rep. 178, no. 334). The file that includes the reports on

Absent Jews • 25

archival staff travels (I. HA, Rep. 178, no. 2428) is also quite extensive, and it makes clear that Forstreuter was responsible for about 70 per cent of travel related to the seizure of archives in the occupied districts of Warthegau and Zichenau. The available sources might not be the best for writing a biography of Forstreuter, in the sense of an attempt at reconstructing his mindset, feelings, influences and extraprofessional life – but that is not my intention here. The absence of personal accounts makes it easier to avoid overidentifying with the study’s subject, a problem that has repeatedly arisen among scholars discussing the usefulness and pitfalls of biographies of National Socialist perpetrators.48 His scholarly work, his publications and his ongoing research projects – listed in the annual reports of the Königsberg state archive – and his professional activity as an archivist at the same institution are well documented. ‘Nazification’ used in reference to German archivists means more than something as obvious as joining the NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) or working for a National Socialist organization. It can also refer to a variety of potential forms of collaboration, many of them processual in nature.49 Employment as a civil servant, accepting various professional assignments connected to the administration of the National Socialist state, and subsequently the war of extinction and the Shoah, as well as carrying out research that more or less directly supports these processes are all part of a professional Nazification process that is perfectly apparent, even if we lack personal corroborating statements. Whether or not an archivist was an antisemite, and to what extent, is difficult to assess. Christoph Nonn, for example, discusses a ‘Sickerprozess’ (process of seeping) by which Theodor Schieder introduced more antisemitic phrases and figures of thought into his scholarly work as the war and the Shoah proceeded.50 Generally speaking, for most of the Ostforscher addressing questions of legitimacy, demographic history and territorial claims, the perceived German-Slavic contradiction was much more prevalent than German-Jewish issues, and, as a result, their potential antisemitism is rarely clearly visible – despite their professional contact with or support for the attempted destruction of the European Jewry. As a result, a biography of Kurt Forstreuter is de facto not concerned with establishing a distinction between his mindset and his actions – potentially falling into apologetics in the process – but will necessarily be a structuralist and an intellectual biography, focussing on the connection between the available biographical data and his professional accomplishments and scholarly production, as well as on the institutional framework in which he produced his texts and in which

26 • Chapter 1

he treated the archives. This connection turns out to be a fruitful one in Forstreuter’s case: the link in chronology and content between his travels in the occupied territories and his research topics is generally quite striking, as is the chronological link of his travels to the beginning of the extinguishment of the Jewish communities. Whether Forstreuter welcomed this extinguishment or not, whether he personally viewed National Socialism as a welcome solution to the territorial losses of the Treaty of Versailles or the war of extinction as a necessary evil, is something we will never know – but we do know what part he played in all of this. Kurt Forstreuter represents a historiographic tradition regarding the Teutonic Order’s Prussia that, sadly enough, stands the test of time, even though its main assumptions have been the subject of criticism since at least the 1960s.51 I am not suggesting that the entire research tradition is politically contested – however, a majority of the scholars dealing with the Teutonic Order today are indifferent to the ideological implications of the research they are using and quoting, even when dealing with clearly contested areas, including Jewish studies or demographic history.52 In part this is based on the conviction that medieval scholarship is generally less political in nature than research into modern periods and topics – with source editions being particularly politically neutral and therefore rarely critically appraised for ideological bias. As a result, the biographers of many National Socialist scholars have neglected their work on medieval periods, hinting that these were ‘less political’.53 Of course, Albert Brackmann’s publications for Germania Pontificia are different from his Denkschrift zur Eindeutschung Posens und Westpreußens – but is it really likely that the political views of people and institutions would not influence all of their projects? Most of Brackmann’s biographers and critics were much less interested in how this framework manifested itself in his medieval research than in the more obvious examples of political propaganda. The significance of Brackmann and others for the National Socialist state remains of interest – his role in the development of paradigms about medieval Prussia much less so. There is a potential consistency in professional curriculum vitae, scholarly output and political activities that is central to the biographies of Ostforscher and other historians of the twentieth century, and critically examining central research paradigms is one aspect of addressing that potential consistency. In Forstreuter’s case, his historiographic writing is one part of such an assessment, with the other being his archival work.

Absent Jews • 27

Archives and War Crimes Maciej Szukała, himself an archivist, has described the way in which the Prussian state archives and the institutions of Ostforschung were entangled. His study from 2011 tries to compensate for the overweight and focus on university staff from the side of critical scholarship, while the archivists were more or less neglected as protagonists of Ostforschung. Drawing on some of the archivists’ biographies, Szukała delineates the way in which Ostforschung became institutionalized within the archives from the late nineteenth century onward. He sees a mixture of bureaucratic and institutional necessities and personal nationalist enthusiasm as the reasons for the archivists’ commitment to the overall goals of Ostforschung as formulated by the archival administration and by other research institutions.54 His study ends with the German attack on Poland and provides only a brief overview of the principles of archival work in the occupied territories, which is, nonetheless, particularly comprehensive in the case of the Königsberg state archive. Szukała is one of the few scholars who mentions Forstreuter’s professional acumen as an Ostforscher in more than a few footnotes. Forstreuter visited numerous towns in the days immediately following the expulsion of Poles or pogroms against Jews to ‘secure’ the victims’ archives. He witnessed pogroms, cooperated closely with the SD, the SS and the Gestapo and actively participated in thoroughly looting Polish and Lithuanian archives – whether these actions were part of a master plan to lay the groundwork for the Holocaust or more or less random acts is a larger research question, but, on a case-by-case basis, the cooperation is clearly visible. A reconstruction of his ‘short business trips’ as an archivist and historian sheds light on the responsibility borne by state employees who played no role in shaping major decisions, and who probably did not welcome or support the war or the Holocaust, with all of the inevitable consequences, but who nevertheless served the system in their professional lives. Forstreuter’s professional acumen meant that he was directly called upon to participate in German war crimes. He was forty-two years old and one of Königsberg’s more experienced archivists when Germany occupied Poland. He had a good grasp of Polish and had published extensively on questions related to the Deutschtum (Germanity) in the border areas, and like his colleagues, he had integrated National Socialist ideology into his archival work. He was not, however, a party or SS member;55 he was only loosely associated with the organizations responsible for laying the intellectual groundwork for the war

28 • Chapter 1

of extermination – the Volksdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaften – and his published work is not specifically antisemitic. The Königsberg state archive, with the Prussian archival administration on its upper floors, was central to Kurt Forstreuter’s activities, both before and during World War II.56 Given the clear interconnection of political bias, archival work and Ostforschung in their professional biographies, Albert Brackmann and Ernst Zipfel,57 two men at the head of this institution, have been the subject of extensive research. They institutionalized the connection between the archives and National Socialist research in the Volksdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaften, thereby securing intellectual and academic legitimacy for German expansion.58 Zipfel outlined the general contours of the archival measures adopted in the occupied territories, but nonetheless he allowed individual archivists working on the spot a good deal of leeway – the delegation of responsibility was well established in other areas of civil administration in the National Socialist state, and it is certainly clearly visible in Kurt Forstreuter’s daily work. German researchers have tried to assess the importance of German Ostforschung and the individual and collective responsibility of the historians involved in it from different angles. Those who work on individual biographies usually want to distinguish between national and völkische research and ideologies on the one hand and a clearly National Socialist ideology on the other. This, in return, usually leads to a particular perception of the political impact of Ostforschung as minimal – for example, Eduard Mühle’s biography of Herman Aubin and Christoph Nonn’s biography of Theodor Schieder. Even though both acknowledge the importance of research centred on Germanity for the war of extinction in the East, they describe this area of research – and its protagonists – as something entirely different, growing out of the revisionist and Young Conservative circles working on an intellectual and academic level for the revision of the Treaty of Versailles. That this area of research and its comprehensive plans for restructuring the East for a Volk ohne Raum (People Without Space, the title of a novel by Ernst Grimm used as a combat term during the Weimar Republic) were gladly adopted by the National Socialist government is more or less described as an unlucky coincidence, even though the embrace between Ostforschung and National Socialism was often mutual and provided a career advantage. Susanne Heim’s and Götz Aly’s dictum Vordenker der Vernichtung (Masterminds of Annihilation) for the Ostforscher is rejected in this area of research, either based on an estimate of the amount of support these researchers felt for the National Socialist state or by distinguish-

Absent Jews • 29

ing between the scholarly plans for a new order in the East and the plan actually implemented by the National Socialist state.59 These opposed paradigms are visible, for example, in the debate around Nonn’s biography of Theodor Schieder, who wrote detailed plans for the resettlement of the East that were somewhat different than those developed by the National Socialist administration, and which were rejected.60 These men’s biographers usually come to the conclusion that antisemitism was but a small part of their subject’s ideological mindset. Christoph Nonn in particular rejects the idea that the various organizations that participated in looting the archives in the occupied territories – scholars, archivists, librarians, SD, Gestapo, etc. – followed an organized master plan and were intent upon preparing for the Holocaust from the outset.61 That said, an openly apologetic approach, which presented the institutions of Ostforschung as strongholds of resistance to National Socialist ideology, has been firmly rejected, even by scholars who see the ideological foundations of Ostforschung and National Socialism as fundamentally different.62 The second approach taken by contemporary historians has been to describe the functional and institutional basis of Ostforschung. The researchers working in this area uniformly assess the role of Ostforschung and its protagonists as heavily entangled with the National Socialist state, both structurally and personally, assigning it much greater relevance than do the biographers. Torsten Musial’s study of the state archives, Michael Fahlbusch’s study of the Volksdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaften and Ingo Haar’s dissertation on German historians all identify the ideology of the individuals involved in these institutions as völkisch and nationalist, but they also emphasize their antisemitism and belief in the racial superiority of Germans, describing how this led not only to an ‘affinity with National Socialism’ but to actual support for the war of extinction and even to a limited administrative role in the Holocaust. Although it ignores the actual topics of research and neglects distinctions between different individual actors, this field usually judges Ostforschung in general as having played a key role in the intellectual preparation for the war of extinction and the Holocaust. A third line of historiographic research acknowledges the differences between the positions of the Volkstumsforscher before and during the war and under National Socialist policies, seeing these differences as an outcome of both pragmatic politics on the one hand and ideological positions on the other, and does so without engaging in apologetics.63 The Prussian archival administration and the individual archives have not played a major role in the research into German war crimes

30 • Chapter 1

in the East (or the West, the existence of a similar policy for occupied France would suggest). However, Forstreuter’s professional biography makes clear the importance of these institutions in the looting of cultural goods as part of a defined research policy, and of his own role in it. Ironically, his book Das Preußische Staatsarchiv in Königsberg: Ein geschichtlicher Rückblick mit einer Übersicht über seine Bestände (The Prussian State Archive in Königsberg. A Historical Review with an Overview of its Holdings) is among his most extensively quoted works, even in research dealing with the German looting of archives in the occupied territories. That Forstreuter himself was a protagonist of this looting goes unmentioned.64 If the people responsible for protecting and preserving the sources are corrupted by a political system, how can we trust the source collections themselves? We are reminded of the constructedness of archives, the history and vulnerability of the source collections and how this shapes the way we can access historical realities.

Necessarily Hostile? Religion and Ethnicity in Medieval Prussia When Papal Legate Ludwig of Silva came to Prussia in 1450 and visited the diet (Tagfahrt) of the Prussian estates in order to express the pope’s dissatisfaction with the Prussian congregation, as well as with the general moral decline in Prussia, Council Member Tylman vom Wege, from Toruń, replied, ‘The legate should consider visiting the infidels and Jews and bad Christians in his own country, Portugal, and not here in Prussia, where he, with God’s will, shall and will not find these evil and unchristian people’.65 There was a basis for Tylman’s statement. Compared to Portugal, Prussia was a very homogenous Christian country. That said, should we be inclined to read his polemics against the legate as an accurate description of the status quo of interreligious relations in Prussia? As in the Middle Ages overall, a search for Jewish life in medieval Prussia easily gets caught up in the semantics of religion and ethnicity, partly because Jews and other ‘infidels’, that is, Prussian and Baltic pagans, are clumped together in the sources, and partly because modern scholars have incorporated the categories. In twentieth-century research into medieval Prussia, the categories of religion and ethnicity are often merged as a result of a topical interest in the latter on the part of scholars. Before 1945, determining the ethnic makeup of the region around and between the Vistula (Polish: Wisła) and Nemunas (German: Memel) Rivers was the main interest

Absent Jews • 31

of German and Polish historians of the region. The common opinion was that the Baltic Old Prussians (Pruzzen or Prußen) had rapidly Germanized, while the Poles, Lithuanians, Russians and other Slavic groups remained foreign to German culture and, thus, had to be treated as distinct elements in contemporary research.66 The potential political implications of this assumption are clearly formulated in Hermann Aubin’s and Theodor Schieder’s Ostforschung programs67 – the precise way their ideas were used during the German war of extinction notwithstanding, their texts incorporated an ideological blueprint for an entire field of research about the medieval colonization of the East. In this blueprint, the potential of certain ethnic groups to Germanize was clearly established and the Entmischung (segregation) of populations was the declared goal.68 However, historians face serious problems when they try to assess sources from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries and assign ethnic identities – in the long run, the attempt to assign a certain Volkstum to the people in this region even proved difficult for the National Socialist government. Some of the representatives of Ostforschung realized this and suggested a different research paradigm, substituting Occidental-Christian culture for German culture. This paradigm, developed among conservative historians during the Weimar Republic, helped to linguistically cleanse many of the studies of demographic history from the period before 1945, but it could still be used to portray Prussia as a bulwark against what by this point was the Bolshevik East.69 The figure of Kulturraum that had been developed for the methodologically innovative and politically contested regional history after World War II remained in place.70 Kurt Forstreuter was one of the historians who never stopped believing that the focus of his work was the strict ethnic divisions; as late as 1966, he described Poznań as a place with ‘genuine Poles, filled with a Polish national ethos’ (echtes Polentum, das auch von polnischer Nationalgesinnung erfüllt war), in contrast to the rest of Prussia, which bore a German character.71 In 1996 – before the discussion about German historians during the National Socialist period as perpetrators had begun – Jörg Hackmann asserted that specifically in the case of the historiography of the Teutonic Order’s state, there are factors that remain valid in both Polish and German scholarship that derive from the history of political relations between the countries, despite the visible Verwissenschaftlichung (scientification) of the regional history of East and West Prussia. Hackmann understood this phenomenon to be the result of a lack of critical assessment of the historiographic traditions – thus many of the studies produced during the 1960s that expressed a clear continuity of

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Volkstum-centred figures of thought are being republished and are still very much in use. What this means is that despite the many attempts at German-Polish scholarly dialogue and Verwissenschaftlichung, the research traditions, particularly those addressing the Teutonic Order in Prussia, remain biased in the extreme – including a conscious strategy on the part of research institutions, such as the Historische Kommission für ost- und westpreußische Landesgeschichte (HIKO), and individuals, including, for example, Udo Arnold and Hartmut Boockmann, who presented or still present their work as a continuation of pre-1945, or even pre-1939, Prussian historiography. Udo Arnold, who, for example, sees the foundation of HIKO as a necessary response to the aggressive Polish nationalism in the interwar period, claims that the hostility between the German members of the association and Polish scholars occurred primarily during the National Socialist period, but he perceives HIKO as having largely eschewed these hostilities.72 Nowadays, the scholarly discussion about Volkstum in medieval Prussia has adopted modern terminology and shifted focus from the ethnic groups toward the ‘social structure’ of the territory. In the immediate post-war period, Polish scholars characterized medieval Prussia as a colonial structure, with a German-speaking minority dominating the various other groups. German scholars have often argued against this view, primarily as a rejection of the negative connotations of the term ‘colonialism’, and have largely ignored various possible definitions of colonialism that could be fruitfully applied to Prussia;73 the majority refer to Prussia as a multiethnic or multicultural territory. They point to the potential for social mobility among indigenous Prussian people, as long as they converted to Christianity and adopted the German language. From the Polish side, the phrase ‘multiethnic’ has often served to point out the difference between the Teutonic Order’s governmental and administrative structures – which did not survive the Early Modern period – and the cultural and social setting of the region, as well as its material culture, which are placed within a continuity stretching back to the medieval settlement processes.74 In very few of the numerous studies and articles about state-­ building and the social structure of Prussia in the thirteenth century does the question of groups other than Christian knights and indigenous pagan inhabitants play any role. The question of the relationship of the Teutonic Order with Jews seems to run its course with Forstreuter’s articles, making the subject a nonissue. Nonetheless, the question of the relationship of the military order to non-Christian inhabitants touches upon several issues that might shed new light on the question of state formation and the character of the Order as a ter-

Absent Jews • 33

ritorial landlord in Prussia and elsewhere. It also touches upon one of the most vital assumptions of the bulwark theory: the idea that the Prussian heartlands were the most relevant and archetypical implementation of the Teutonic Order’s raison d’état, and that the corporation’s policies in Livonia, Nova Marchia, Mergentheim and so on were deviations not pertinent to an assessment of the character of the Order’s Landesherrschaft (territorial dominion). This view has been subjected to abundant criticism – for example, by Klaus Militzer, whose monograph provides the most recent and comprehensive overview and makes a point of addressing the Order’s activities in all of its territories. While broadening the focus from the Prussian heartlands does indeed serve to contextualize many of the sacred cows of the state-building theory, Jews, nonetheless, go unmentioned in Militzer’s study.75 Another example of a research topic that has also undergone a paradigm shift without taking Jewish life into account is that addressing the organization of the Prussian estates in the first half of the fifteenth century. The lack of comparative international studies about late medieval urban conflict, particularly the events in Gdańsk, is one factor that has facilitated the view that the struggle for urban autonomy in Prussia was unique. The German Volkstum-centred research tradition has interpreted these urban conflicts and the organization of the estates within a nexus of ethnic struggles; the German urban elites betrayed the Order and their own ethnic group by allying with the primarily Polish rural nobility, ultimately leading to the defeat of the Order and its territorial losses in the treaties of 1422 and 1460. Erich Weise’s monograph on Widerstandsrecht is symptomatic of this interpretation.76 The sudden appearance of demands for anti-Jewish trading regulations in this process has also yet to be addressed. Finally, and probably most surprisingly, the assumption of an antiJewish policy in Prussia is based on the supposition that a Crusading order’s state-building and legislation would necessarily seek to exclude Jews. The yet-unquestioned acceptance of the idea of an anti-Jewish policy in Prussia is based on underlying assumptions about the collective attitudes and wishes of the different segments of the medieval population: the Jews wanted to spread and settle in the towns; the Christian merchants necessarily saw them as a foreign element and as a competition, so the towns wanted to expel them; the Teutonic Order wanted a purely Christian state. The assumption of a necessarily hostile relationship between Jewish and Christian merchants (or, generally, between Christians and Jews in the towns) is particularly pervasive in the numerous studies about medieval towns.

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Two aspects are problematic here; first, the assumption of a general hostility prevents different interpretations of the historical sources and evidence and directs the focus towards conflicts instead of realizing that – as Forstreuter insightfully stated, but without consequence for his own work – it was only conflicts which ended up written down in the sources, in any case. The assumption of a general hostility relies on the idea of Jewish foreignness and Christian rejection of this foreignness – but that is only one part of the story. Since, in medieval societies, Jewish Otherness was constructed in various ways that to a large extent corresponded with the construction of the Otherness of other groups, the simple existence of this Otherness fails to explain medieval antiJudaism. Medieval Christian society was obsessed with creating status markers for all groups, something that should be kept in mind when assessing Jewish Otherness – and, as Guido Kisch pointed out in his study of the yellow badge, medieval Jews themselves chose to wear clothing that set them apart from the others. Given his attempt to see the Middle Ages as more than a direct predecessor of National Socialist Germany, Kisch suggested a cautious approach when assessing medieval Jewry law.77 At the same time, the focus on Jewish Otherness reproduces modern projections of the Jews as necessarily different from the German/the Christian/the Self; it assumes that both ‘the Jews’ and ‘the Christians’ had collective goals and that most of these collective desires were understood in antagonistic terms. Medieval Prussia is actually an area that challenges this presupposition. On the one hand, there was space for peaceful coexistence of Jews and Christians. On the other hand, medieval societies relied so much on practical manifestations of social stratification for all social groups that it is remarkable that it was usually the Jews who fell victim to violent attacks and pogroms. The basic assumption that Jews were suitable as scapegoats – for the Black Death, for murdered children, for economic decline – ignores the fact that they were not the only ones pushed out of the mainstream by a different legal status and visual cues. This is not to say that the Church did not play a central role in the development and popularization of antisemitism and anti-Judaism. Jewish Otherness was highly specific due to the relationship between Christianity and Judaism and the subsequent theoretical and practical attempts of the former to tackle the theological problems that the presence of the latter posed to its claim to superiority. This is where Selma Stern’s dictum of the vinculum religionis in a territory ruled by a religious corporation is most interesting: Was the religious military order actually more inclined to expel Jews from its territory than any other Christian landlord? A peculiarity of Kurt Forstreuter’s work, one

Absent Jews • 35

he shared with others, is that, on the one hand, he largely acknowledged that religion was not the main driving force behind the Order’s administration, expansion and warfare in the Prussian heartlands. On the other hand, he took it as a given that religion had been the main driving force for policies regarding Jewish settlement.

Forstreuter and the Jews Both versions of Kurt Forstreuter’s article about Prussian Jews need to be read in the context of his overall scholarly output – in which Jews played no role at all. The way he approached the subject, the particular terminology he used and his own personal biography indicate that he by no means rejected nineteenth-century antisemitism. It just was not his main concern. His academic and political energy was focussed on ideological support for German land claims in the East, particularly in his home region. Forstreuter’s medieval research ultimately aimed to create a coherence between medieval findings and contemporary political contentions. The consistent underlying assumption was that the contradiction between German and Slavic populations, cultures and languages was primary. Even in his work on Prussian Jews, the contradiction and struggle between the Germanic and Slavic Volkstümer remains central; the Jews came from Poland and Lithuania and were thereby agents of foreign ethnic groups rather than a foreign religious group in their own right. Besides the two articles about Prussian Jews, Forstreuter’s publications make no mention of Jews or issues related to Jews. The vigour with which he tried to establish a certain interpretation of the presence of the Teutonic Order in Prussia, the importance he assigned the ‘defensive character’ of the Christianization and colonization process, even his attempt to justify the recurrent attacks and raids of the Order in the Lithuanian border region during the fourteenth century – none of this is reflected in his tepid treatment of the absence of Jews. After 1945, in particular, it was crucial to Forstreuter – and the other Prussian scholars in exile, as well as for the Teutonic Order itself – to define the Order as a peaceful, strategically sophisticated, ethnically homogenous corporate body that more or less operated in accord with the Geneva Convention. It was obviously far less important to establish the Order’s tolerance of and generosity toward Jews. The presumed anti-Jewish policies in medieval Prussia were not seen as having any potential to negatively influence public opinion against the Order or, by consequence, against the German presence in the East. This blind

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spot influences the portrayal of German-Slavic antagonism, such that it far outweighs the German-Jewish antagonism – to stretch Marxist terminology a little bit, the German-Slavic antagonism was definitely seen as the primary contradiction. While there were fierce antisemites among the Ostforscher, Jewish questions only played a minor role in the positions they held about the medieval East.78 This emphasis on the German-Slavic antagonism characterizes Forstreuter’s scholarly production and is also visible in other documents he left behind, such as letters and lecture manuscripts; there are numerous attempts to define, legitimize and even softpedal the medieval relations between German colonizers and the Slavic population, but there is almost no mention of Jews. In his lectures, the occasional labelling of the expelled Germans as the equivalent of the biblical ‘deported Jews’ is a clearly antisemitic turn of thought deriving from Schuldabwehr (rejection of guilt), but he never openly attacks or expresses obvious hostility toward contemporary Jews. Neither historical nor contemporary Jews arise in any measurable way in his communication and letters. Ethnic relations between German and Slavic people shape Forstreuter’s ideology, and this is expressed not only in his research but also in a testimonial he wrote for the German government in a case involving Jewish victims. His testimony provides an example of Forstreuter’s theoretical approach to the Jewish question in the Prussian borderlands. In April 1966, a Dr Dübler from the office of the Bundesminister für Vertriebene, Flüchtlinge und Kriegsgeschädigte (Federal Minister for Displaced Persons, Refugees and War Victims) asked Forstreuter for his expert opinion on the status of the Jews in the town of Klaipėda during the years 1923–39, to address a compensation claim from one Abraham Bock, a jeweller who had lived in Klaipėda in those years and had survived the Shoah.79 Presumably, Dr Dübler was trying to determine whether or not his ministry was responsible for the case, since he was particularly interested in knowing if the Jews in Klaipėda formed a distinct Volksgruppe, or ethnic minority, clearly separate from Germans, with synagogues, Jewish schools, Jewish social clubs, etc. Forstreuter provided a thorough response supported by both personal experience and pre-war scholarly literature. He translated Dübler’s question into a more obvious one: Did the Jews form a nationality of their own? His answer shows clear traces of racism, but also the dominance of the German-Slavic antagonism in his thinking. He asserted that those Jews who had been in Klaipėda for a long time had been entirely Germanized and assimilated, and he argued that the same was true of the German Jewish emigrants who came to Klaipėda after 1933. However, he also pointed out that the majority of Jewish

Absent Jews • 37

immigrants after 1923 had come from Lithuania and that these Jews were ‘a special people, who even formed a specific group during elections’. As he put it, ‘When I myself was in Memel in the second half of the 1930s, I noted that the population of the town had changed its face considerably in comparison to earlier periods and had taken on Eastern features. It strikes me that the majority of Jews in Memel at that time were of non-German origin.’ As such, he considered it essential to determine which of these groups the jeweller in question belonged to – the Germanized Jews who had been there for a long time or the ‘foreign’ Jews from the East. Besides his personal impressions, Forstreuter quoted the numbers given for the Jewish population in Klaipėda in the book Das Memelgebiet, by Eginhard Walter, which was published in 1939 by the Institut für Osteuropäische Wirtschaft in Königsberg, one of the leading departments for Ostforschung. According to this study, in 1925 there were 2,401 Jews in Klaipėda, and by 1938, approximately 6,000. The origin of the Jewish immigrants is not specified.80 This testimony is one of the very few times Forstreuter discusses Jews in his post-war correspondence. It suggests that he adheres to a notion of Jewishness that is, on the one hand, related to culture and religion and, on the other hand, to nationality or ethnicity. He seems to acknowledge a capacity for assimilation or cultural integration on the part of the German Jews of Klaipėda while defining those who came from Lithuania as an entirely different moiety that played a role in shaping his impressions of Klaipėda as ‘Eastern’. These distinctions are proof of the rigour Forstreuter brought to bear when looking at the ethnic groups in his home region. Antisemitism plays a very small role, with the main distinction being between German and Slavic culture, ethnicity and race. It should, however, be mentioned that recent studies contradict his view on the ‘Eastern character’ of Klaipėda’s Jewish population considerably. Ruth Leiserowitz differentiates the German Jews in the town from the Litvaks who immigrated in the 1920s and 1930s but states that the absolute majority of them spoke German in public, and maybe Russian at home. She also describes how the discrimination that gained speed in the second half of the 1930s – when Forstreuter was in the town gathering the evidence for his later expert opinion – led most sections of the Jewish population of Klaipėda to plan their escape, although many of those with German passports continued to hope until the last minute that they would be considered German and not fall victim to the persecution.81 Given that Fortstreuter was an acknowledged expert on Klaipėda and the Nemunas region, it is significant that he, to all intents and purposes, avoided the topic of Jewish life in the town throughout his

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scholarly engagement with the town’s history. In his popular monograph Memelland, he mentions Jews only once, when describing the election in 1938, in which the party Deutsche Liste scored a considerable victory over the Lithuanian parties, ‘despite the large immigration of Lithuanians and Jews to Memel’,82 effectively casting the Jews as neither German nor Lithuanian. This blind spot encompasses both Jewish life and anti-Jewish measures; when describing the cultural work of Duke Albrecht von Mecklenburg in Memel, he fails to mention that the town was the site of the first complete expulsion of a Jewish community in Prussia. Also, the resettlement of Jews in Memel, including the comprehensive privilege granted to Moyses Jacobson the Younger and his family in 1664,83 is well known and thoroughly documented, but none of this seems of impact upon Forstreuter’s view on the town. As far as his work on Prussian Jews goes, Forstreuter’s ideological and political commitment made him a bad historian. As we will see in the following chapters, this is reflected in his neglect of sources, his biases and his treatment of the archives in general. Since anti-Slavism and not antisemitism was the main impetus for his work, it can be presumed that this resentment also coloured his assessment of sources for other topics and in other fields of research. The overarching paradigm of German culture struggling to overcome Slavic culture in the medieval frontier regions was so strong and omnipresent in German research into medieval Prussia during the entire nineteenth century that it is hard to assess the full extent of its continuing impact. Forstreuter’s professional biography shows that simply cleaning up unfortunate language is far from enough if our objective is to use and critically develop the scholarship of earlier generations. We need a complete critical reassessment that focuses on the underlying traditional mindset that continues to shape conclusions and paradigms, even after scholars have completely broken with their former political framework. In this field, we are not standing on the shoulders of giants. We are standing on the shoulders of German supremacists.

Notes  1. ‘Im Ordensland Ostpreußen war seit der Verordnung des Hochmeisters Siegfried von Feuchtwangen aus dem Jahre 1309 den Juden die Ansiedlung nicht gestattet … ein eigentliches Wohnrecht konnten sie sich in dem streng orthodoxen Land, in dem das “vinculum religionis” eine größere Macht hatte als das “vinculum politicae”, und bei dem komplizierten, streng gehandhabten Niederlaß-, Stapel- und Fremdenrecht der ostpreußischen

Absent Jews • 39

Städte ebenso wenig als in dem benachbarten Pommern für längere Zeit erwirken.’ S. Stern, Der preußische Staat und die Juden, 4 vols. (Berlin: Schwetschke, 1925), 1:6.  2. ‘Für die frühere Zeit folgt die Verfasserin älterer, nicht zureichender Literatur, so auch über die angebliche Austreibung der Juden unter Siegfried von Feuchtwangen.’ K. Forstreuter, ‘Die Juden im Deutschordenslande Preußen’, Wirkungen des Preußenlandes: Vierzig Beiträge (Cologne: Grote, 1981), 280n17.  3. ‘Wenn der Verfasser nach vier Jahrzehnten seine Ausführungen von 1937 liest, findet er, obgleich die Welt unterdessen sich verändert hat, kaum etwas, was nicht auch heute noch bestehen könnte’. Forstreuter, ‘Juden im Deutschordenslande’, 270.  4. K. Forstreuter, ‘Die ersten Juden in Ostpreußen’, AF 14 (1937), 42–48.  5. K. Forstreuter, ‘Die Frage der Juden und Polen in Tolkemit’, MVGOW 13(1) (1938): 61–63.  6. ‘… die Assimilierung des jüdischen Geistes an den europäischen, die Beeinflussung des europäischen durch den jüdischen’. Stern, Der preußische Staat, 1:xi.  7. Additionally, Stern’s project of source edition had methodological flaws regarding her approach to the sources, selection of archives and techniques of edition – flaws which were not mentioned in the reception of the work in the 1920s and which Der preußische Staat und die Juden shared with many other source editions of the period, which had, unlike the studies of Jewish archival sources, already a decades-long tradition of methodological discussion. M. Sassenberg, Selma Stern (1890–1981): Das Eigene in der Geschichte: Selbstentwürfe und Geschichtsentwürfe einer Historikerin (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 228–32.  8. L. Baczko, Versuch einer Geschichte und Beschreibung der Stadt Königsberg: Viertes Heft. (Königsberg: Hartung, 1789), 315.  9. ‘Geschichte der Juden in Danzig: In Briefen’, Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 6 (1857): 205–14. 10. T. R. Mendenhall, ‘Biographical Note’, Guide to the Heimann Jolowicz Collection, 1807–1915, AR 3163, Leo Baeck Institute, New York, http://find ingaids.cjh.org/?pID=479542. 11. H. Jolowicz, Geschichte der Juden in Königsberg i. Pr. Ein Beitrag zur Sittengeschichte des preußischen Staates (Posen: Jolowicz, 1867), 2–3. See a discussion of this episode in chapter 6 below. 12. E. Hollack, ‘Zur Vorgeschichte der Juden in Ost- und Westpreußen’, Zeitschrift für Demographie und Statistik der Juden 6(1–2) (1910): 17–18. 13. G. Kessler, ‘Judentaufen und judenchristliche Familien in Ostpreußen’, Familiengeschichtliche Blätter/Deutscher Herold 36, Sonderdruck (1938): 1–62. 14. S. Echt, Die Geschichte der Juden in Danzig (Leer/Ostfriesland: Rautenberg, 1972), 12–13. 15. A. Sommerfeld, Juden im Ermland – ihr Schicksal nach 1933 (Osnabrück: Fromm, 1991), 21–22; K. Murawski, ‘Grundzüge der staatlichen Entwicklung in Ost- und Westpreußen’, in Zur Geschichte und Kultur der Juden in Ost- und Westpreußen, ed. M. Brocke, M. Heitmann and H. Lordick (Hildesheim/New York: Olms, 2000), 2:13–38.

40 • Chapter 1

16. M. Aschkewitz, Zur Geschichte der Juden in Westpreußen (Marburg/Lahn: Herder-Institut, 1967), 1. 17. F. Gause, Die Geschichte der Stadt Königsberg in Preußen (Cologne: Böhlau, 1965), 115. 18. G. v. Glinski, Die Königsberger Kaufmannschaft des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts (Marburg/Lahn: Herder-Institut, 1964), 23–24. 19. S. Schüler-Springorum, Die jüdische Minderheit in Königsberg/Preußen, 1871– 1945 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996), 13. 20. A. Triller, ‘Juden im Ermland um die Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts’, ZfGAE 38 (1976): 42–52. 21. A. Mentzel-Reuters, ‘Heinrich von Hesler- von Thüringen nach Preußen: Facetten deutschsprachiger Bibeldichtung 1250–1350’, in Der deutsche Orden und Thüringen: Aspekte einer 800-jährigen Geschichte, ed. T. T. Müller, (Petersberg: Imhof, 2014), 57–58. 22. A. Haverkamp, ‘Jews and Urban Life: Bonds and Relationships’, in The Jews of Europe in the Middle Ages (Tenth to Fifteenth Centuries): Proceedings of the International Symposium Held at Speyer, 20–25 October 2002, ed. C. Cluse, (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 61. This also represents the state of the art expressed in Germania Judaica. 23. M. Luzzati, ‘Northern and Central Italy: Assessment of Research and Further Prospects’, in Cluse, The Jews of Europe, 194. 24. H. Zaremska, Żydzi w średniowiecznej Polsce. Gmina Krakowska (Warszawa: Instytut Historii PAN, 2011). 25. Z. H. Nowak, ‘Dzieje Żydów w Prusach Królewskich do roku 1772: Charakterystyka’, in Żydzi w dawnej Rzeczypospolitej: Materiały z Konferencji ‘Autonomia Żydów w Rzeczypospolitej Szlacheckiej’: Międzywydziałowy Zakład Historii i Kultury Żydów w Polsce, Uniwersytet Jagielloński, 22–26 IX 1986, ed. A. Link-Lenczowski and T. Polański (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1991), 136–43; Z. H. Nowak, ‘Zwischen Emanzipation und Identität: Geschichte der jüdischen Gemeinde in Thorn vom Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts bis 1939’, Jahrbuch des Bundesinstituts für ostdeutsche Kultur und Geschichte 2 (1994): 285–98. 26. M. Broda, ‘Żydowscy lekarze w państwie zakonu krzyżackiego w Prusach  w późnym średniowieczu’, Kwartalnik Historii Żydów 4 (2011): 435–43. 27. S. Jóźwiak, ‘Kontakty komturów toruńskich z Żydami z Nowej Nieszawy w latach czterdziestych XV wieku’, Rocznik Toruński 29 (2002): 39–48. 28. A. Wołosz, ‘Żydzi w miastach Prus Wschodnich: Obecność zapomniana czy zatarta?’, in Obcy wśród obcych – swojacy wśród swoich: Materiały z konferencji – Węgorzewo, 16 listopada 2002 r., ed. J. Okulicz-Kozaryn et al. (Węgorzewo: MKL, 2002), 99–121. 29. M. Bogucka, ‘Jewish Merchants in Gdansk in the 16th–17th Centuries – A Policy of Toleration or Discrimination?’, Acta Polonia Historica 65 (1992): 47–57. 30. J. Goldberg, ‘De non tolerandis iudaeis: On the Introduction of the AntiJewish Laws into Polish Towns and the Struggle against Them’, in Studies in Jewish History: Presented to Professor Raphael Mahler on His Seventy-Fifth

Absent Jews • 41

31.

32. 33.

34.

35.

36.

37.

Birthday, ed. S. Yeivin (Merhavia: Sifriyat poalim, 1974), 39–52; M. Piechotka and K. Piechotka, Oppidum Judaeorum: Żydzi w przestrzeni miejskiej dawnej Rzeczypospolitej (Warszawa: Krupski i S-ka, 2004), 36ff. ‘[U]nd diese Sonderstellung ist besonders auffällig, wenn man den überaus starken jüdischen Einschlag jenseits der ostpreußischen Grenze, in Polen und Litauen, in Betracht zieht. Für dieses Ostjudentum ist Preußen, durch die Politik des Deutschen Ordens, kein Einfallstor gewesen, vielmehr eine Barriere, die sich davorlegte.’ Forstreuter, ‘Die ersten Juden’, 48. M. Burleigh, ‘The Knights, Nationalists and the Historians: Images of Medieval Prussia from the Enlightenment to 1945’, European History Quarterly 17(1) (1987): 47. Udo Arnold sees the instrumentalization of the Teutonic Order during National Socialism as restricted to Prussia and Livonia, while the actually existing Order in Austria was illegalized in 1938. U. Arnold, ‘Nationalismus, Nationalsozialismus und der Mißbrauch der Deutschordenstradition in Deutschland’, in Der Deutsche Orden und die Ballei Elsass-Burgund: Die Freiburger Vorträge zur 800-Jahr-Feier des Deutschen Ordens, ed. H. Brommer (Bühl/Baden: Konkordia Verlag, 1996), 205–22. This argument was already crucial for the Order’s self-defence against criticism from various Catholics and historians during the 1960s, and served against claims for a critical assessment of the Order’s political entrenchment and a critical reappraisal of its role in the Baltic Crusades. See chapter 3 in this book. He employs bulwark rhetoric not only in his article about the Prussian Jews, but also in connection with the question of Lithuanian settlement on Prussian territory at the end of the fifteenth century: the ‘Volkskraft’ of the Teutonic Order had been weakened in the wars of 1454–66, and thus Prussia was not anymore a ‘Damm gegen das litauische Volkstum’ ­(bulwark  against the Lithuanian population). K. Forstreuter, ‘Die Entwicklung der Grenze zwischen Preußen und Litauen seit 1422’, AF 18 (1941): 59. It has been noted in a few studies in the past twenty years that Prussia has become a kind of lacuna in German research. See M. Weber (ed.), Preußen in Ostmitteleuropa: Geschehensgeschichte und Verstehensgeschichte (München: Oldenbourg, 2003); M. Kittel, ‘Preußens Osten in der Zeitgeschichte: Mehr als nur eine landeshistorische Forschungslücke’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 50(3) (2002): 435–63. In 1996, Jörg Hackmann – a scholar of modern history – provided an overview of Prussian regional history and its political implications. J. Hackmann, Ostpreußen und Westpreußen in deutscher und polnischer Sicht: Landeshistorie als beziehungsgeschichtliches Problem (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1996). Mainly focused on the Early Modern history of Prussia and its historiographers but even more critical toward the ‘Germanization’ of Prussian history is K. Friedrich, The Other Prussia: Royal Prussia, Poland and Liberty, 1569–1772 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Ironically enough, Hellmann wrote admiringly and gratefully about Forstreuter’s work on the relationship between the Teutonic Order and the Lithuanians in the Klaipėda region, as well as on his source editions

42 • Chapter 1

38.

39.

40.

41. 42.

43.

on the Teutonic Order’s history, honouring him as an ‘ungewöhnlich bescheidenen, allem lautem Getriebe abholden Gelehrten’ (rare humble scholar who despised all noisy business), whose work was ‘jahrzehntelang in die Stille von Studierstube und Archiv gebannt’ (banned for decades in the silence of the study room and the archive). M. Hellmann, ‘Chronik: Kurt Forstreuter zum 80. Geburtstag’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 25(1) (1977): 154. Scholars of the Early Modern Period have been much better in integrating critical views of the paradigms of state-building and ethnic conflicts in the region. See K. Friedrich, Brandenburg-Prussia, 1466–1806: The Rise of a Composite State (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). On the controversy regarding a new orientation in Ostforschung in connection with the Herder Institut in Marburg, promoted by Walter Schlesinger and Manfred Hellmann, see A. C. Nagel, Im Schatten des Dritten Reichs: Mittelalterforschung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1945–1970 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005), 131–35; M. Werner, ‘Zwischen politischer Begrenzung und methodischer Offenheit: Wege und Stationen deutscher Landesgeschichtsforschung im 20. Jahrhundert’, in Die deutschsprachige Mediävistik im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. P. Moraw and R. Schieffer (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2005), 325. Schlesinger outlined his assessment of the political bias of Ostforschung since Ranke and particularly since World War I again in a Reichenau lecture in 1970. He presented historical positivism as the only solution against ideological bias from both völkisch-nationalist and Marxist-Leninist oriented scholars. W. Schlesinger, ‘Zur Problematik der Erforschung der deutschen Ostsiedlung’, in Die deutsche Ostsiedlung des Mittelalters als Problem der europäischen Geschichte: Reichenau-Vorträge 1970–1972, ed. W. Schlesinger (Sigmaringen: J. Thorbecke, 1975), 21. The Herder-Forschungsrat was founded in 1950 as a scholarly community for the Ostforscher who had emigrated to West Germany, and thereby one of the most important institutions for the personal continuity of Ostforschung. Cf. K. Neitmann, ‘Walter Schlesinger und die mittelalterliche deutsche Ostsiedlung: Fragestellungen, Kontroversen, Wirkungen’, Hessisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte 60 (2010): 264–75. H. Boockmann, Johannes Falkenberg, der Deutsche Orden und die polnische Politik: Untersuchungen zur politischen Theorie des späteren Mittelalters (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975), 15–17. Forstreuter had professional and private contact with Weise throughout his life. Beginning in February 1955, he regularly exchanged letters with Weise, who lived in Hannover, and he wrote a friendly obituary about him in Blätter für deutsche Landesgeschichte in 1973. ‘Politische Verblendung hatte damals die alten historischen Grenzen Ostpreußens nach Polen hinein verschoben. Auch die Akten aus diesen Gebieten sollten betreut und gesichert werden. So wurde ich mehrfach nach Plock geschickt … Auch verschiedene kleinere Orte in Masowien und im Suwalkigebiet lernte ich kennen. Wissenschaftlich waren diese Reisen in die Nachbargebiete Ostpreußens ein Gewinn, persönlich und dienstlich keine Freude.’ Forstreuter, ‘Vom Blickpunkt’, 407.

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44. A. Kossert, ‘“Grenzlandpolitik” und Ostforschung an der Peripherie des Reiches: Das ostpreußische Masuren 1919–1945’, Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte 51 (2003): 139–40; Szukała, Pruskie archiwa, 134–35. 45. M. Fahlbusch, Wissenschaft im Dienst der nationalsozialistischen Politik? Die ‘Volksdeutschen Forschungsgemeinschaften’ von 1931–1945 (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1999), 505. 46. A. Pinwinkler, ‘“Bevölkerungsgeschichte” in der frühen Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Konzeptionelle und institutionengeschichtliche Aspekte. Erich Keyser und Wolfgang Köllmann im Vergleich’, Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung 31 (2006): 64–100. 47. Beyrau and Keck-Szajbel carry this argument forward and see a similar tendency in most studies focussing on individual biographies, mostly in those where the role of historians as ‘Vordenker der Vernichtung’ is neglected. D. Beyrau and M. Keck-Szajbel, ‘Eastern Europe as a “Sub-Germanic Space”: Scholarship on Eastern Europe under National Socialism’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 13(3) (2012): 713. 48. R. Jaworski and H. Petersen. ‘Biographische Aspekte der “Ostforschung”: Überlegungen zu Forschungsstand und Methodik’, BIOS: Zeitschrift für Biographieforschung, Oral History und Lebensverlaufsanalysen 15(1) (2002): 51. 49. A. M. Eckert, ‘Archivare im Nationalsozialismus: Zum Forschungsstand’, in Bibliothekare im Nationalsozialismus: Handlungsspielräume, Kontinuitäten, Deutungsmuster, ed. M. Knoche and W. Schmitz (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011), 57, quoting Mark Walker’s work on the Nazification of German physics and his definition of Nazification. 50. C. Nonn, Theodor Schieder: Ein bürgerlicher Historiker im 20. Jahrhundert (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2013), 113. 51. It is important to not forget that a critique of the connection drawn between the Teutonic Order and German enthusiasm for regaining Prussia had already arisen during World War II. See the introduction by Paul Eden in Treitschke’s Origins of Prussianism (The Teutonic Knights), trans. P. Eden and P. Cedar (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1943). 52. An example is the prizewinning dissertation by Grischa Vercamer about the early demographic history of Prussia, which indeed employs serious methodology and accurate terminology to address the ethnic groups dealt with but which fails to mention even once the political implications of most of the earlier research in the field. G. Vercamer, Siedlungs-, Sozial- und Verwaltungsgeschichte der Komturei Königsberg in Preußen (13.–16. Jahrhundert) (Marburg: Elwert, 2010). 53. See, for example, Christoph Nonn’s assessment of Brackmann, in which he makes a distinction between obvious political activism and scholarly work that is less obviously political. Nonn, Theodor Schieder, 29. Stefan Lehr, on the other hand, points out the consistency that links Brackmann’s political commitment with his scholarly work, but does not focus on the scholarly output of any of the Ostforscher. S. Lehr, Ein fast vergessener ‘Osteinsatz’: Deutsche Archivare im Generalgouvernement und im Reichskommissariat Ukraine (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2007), 47. 54. Szukała, Pruskie archiwa.

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55. Ingo Haar claimed that Forstreuter was a member of the NSDAP, but this cannot be verified. The BArch Berlin-Lichterfelde does not have a copy of an NSDAP membership card for him, and a questionnaire that he filled out in 1943 as a Prussian archives staff member lists his military and party activities but makes no mention of membership in the NSDAP. I. Haar, Historiker im Nationalsozialismus: Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft und der ‘Volkstumskampf’ im Osten (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 297. 56. The Prussian archival administration has only recently started with a more critical assessment of its history during National Socialism. See S. Kriese (ed.), Archivarbeit im und für den Nationalsozialismus: Die preußischen Staatsarchive vor und nach dem Machtwechsel von 1933 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2015). 57. For an intensive assessment of Zipfel’s personal and professional qualifications, see Lehr, Osteinsatz, 53–56. 58. Fahlbusch, Wissenschaft; Kossert, ‘Grenzlandpolitik’; Beyrau and KeckSzajbel, ‘Eastern Europe as a “Sub-Germanic Space”’. 59. E. Mühle, Für Volk und deutschen Osten: Der Historiker Hermann Aubin und die deutsche Ostforschung (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2005), 627. 60. In Schieder’s case, the debate has additionally centred on the fact that he consciously broke with the National Socialist research paradigms after the war. 61. C. Nonn, ‘Direkte und indirekte Beiträge zur nationalsozialistischen Vertreibungs- und Vernichtungspolitik: Die Landesstelle Ostpreußen der Zentralstelle für Nachkriegsgeschichte unter Theodor Schieder’, in Kriese, Archivarbeit, particularly 213–14. 62. See the references to Martin Burkert’s study Die Ostwissenschaften im Dritten Reich in S. Guth, Geschichte als Politik: Der deutsch-polnische Historikerdialog im 20. Jahrhundert (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2015), n57–58. 63. See for example G. Wolf, Ideologie und Herrschaftsrationalität: Nationalsozialistische Germanisierungspolitik in Polen (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2012). 64. See for example P. K. Grimsted, ‘Displaced Archives and Restitution Problems on the Eastern Front in the Aftermath of World War II’, Contemporary European History 6(1) (1997): 40. 65. ‘Tylman vom Wege sprach ouch offenbar, der herre legatus sulde die ungloubigen und Juden und andere bosze cristen in seynem lande in Portugal besuchen, der aldo vil weren und nicht in dissen landen, do her, ab got will, sulche bosze und uncristenlewte mit nichte fynden solde noch wurde als in seynen landen.’ 10 December 1450. AST: M. Töppen (ed.), Acten der Ständetage Preußens unter der Herrschaft des Deutschen Ordens, 5 vols. (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1878–86), 3:217. 66. For a recent different perspective, see A. Pluskowski, The Archaeology of the Prussian Crusade: Holy War and Colonisation (London/New York: Routledge, 2013). 67. Regarding the controversy about Schieder’s Arbeitsplan für die Denkschrift über die ostdeutsche Reichs- und Volkstumsgrenze, see A. Ebbinghaus and K. Roth, ‘Vorläufer des “Generalplans Ost”: Eine Dokumentation über

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Theodor Schieders Polendenkschrift vom 7. Oktober 1939’, Zeitschrift für Sozialgeschichte des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts 7 (1992): 62–94; Haar, Historiker, 327ff.; Mühle, Für Volk und deutschen Osten, 577ff. 68. See, for example, a lecture delivered by H. Aubin, ‘Deutschland und der Osten’, Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft 100 (1940): 358–411. 69. Mühle, Für Volk und deutschen Osten, 589–91. 70. On the development of Landesgeschichte and the term Kulturraum, see Werner, ‘Zwischen politischer Begrenzung’, 276–78. 71. K. Forstreuter, ‘Ostpreußen’, in Die deutschen Ostgebiete zur Zeit der Weimarer Republik, ed. E. Hölzle (Cologne: Böhlau, 1966), 16. 72. Hackmann, Ostpreußen und Westpreußen, especially 352–57; U. Arnold, ‘Ostdeutsche Landesforschung im letzten Vierteljahrhundert: Das Beispiel Ost- und Westpreußen’, in Land am Meer: Pommern im Spiegel seiner Geschichte: Roderich Schmidt zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. R. Schmidt et al. (Cologne: Böhlau, 1995), 42–43. 73. See, for example, Ewa Thompson’s recent study, which develops a definition of colonialism that is not primarily based on the history of the African continent but also takes the history of Eastern and eastern Central Europe into account – albeit her main arguments stem from the period of the Partitions of Poland. E. Thompson, ‘A jednak kolonializm: Uwagi epistemologiczne’, Teksty Drugie 6 (2011): 289–302. 74. Hackmann, Ostpreußen, 354, regarding the study M. Biskup and G. Labuda, Dzieje zakonu krzyżackiego w Prusach: Gospodarka, społeczeństwo, państwo, ideologia (Gdańsk: Wydawn. Morskie, 1986). 75. K. Militzer, Die Geschichte des Deutschen Ordens (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2005). 76. E. Weise, Das Widerstandsrecht im Ordenslande Preußen und das mittelalterliche Europa (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1955). 77. G. Kisch, ‘The Yellow Badge in History’, Historia Judaica 4(2) (1942): 89–146. A critical assessment of this approach, which interprets Kisch’s presentation of medieval Germany and its law system as romanticizing, is found in M. B. Hart, ‘“Modern and Genuine Medievalism”: Guido Kisch’s Romance with the German Middle Ages’, Postmedieval 5(3) (2014): 295–307. 78. Only a few Ostforscher methodically combined research on Jewish life with the broader concerns for population history; the most prominent example is Peter-Heinz Seraphim. See H. Petersen, ‘“Ordnung schaffen” durch Bevölkerungsverschiebung: Peter-Heinz Seraphim oder der Zusammenhang zwischen “Bevölkerungsfragen” und Social Engineering’, Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung 31 (2006): 282–307. 79. There is a chance that this Abraham Bock was the same person who, along with his son Harry, survived the Kaunas ghetto and Dachau concentration camp, immigrated to Dallas after the war and founded a jewellery and diamond trade business that was later taken over by his son. ‘Dallas Jeweller, Holocaust Survivor Harry Bock dies’, Southern Jewelry News, 1 September 2010. 80. XX. HA, Nl Forstreuter, no. 118. The numbers are verified from various sources. In 1939, Jews made up 14 per cent of the population of Memel.

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R. Leiserowitz, Sabbatleuchter und Kriegerverein: Juden in der ostpreußischlitauischen Grenzregion 1812–1942 (Osnabrück: fibre, 2010), 294. 81. Ibid., 302–3, 306–12. 82. K. Forstreuter, Memelland (Elbing: Preußenverlag, 1939), 55. 83. Privilegium des Juden Moyses. Potsdam, 18 June 1674. Markgraf Friedrich Wilhelm. GStA, XX. HA, Ostpreußische Folianten no. 13745, fol. 207r.

2 Chapter 2 On the Frontier

Antisemitism was not the main aspect of Ostforschung. Jewish questions were also not the main concern of Kurt Forstreuter’s research interests and archival work; his professional biography and scholarly output is a typical example of the inferior significance of antisemitism within the context of Ostforschung. His biography is also typical in many other regards: the personal connection to the German East, experiences with war and annexation during World War I, an education in Berlin and Königsberg typical for the archivists who later served in the occupied territories. As did many others, Forstreuter, early on in his career, had contact with the Publikationsstelle Berlin-Dahlem (PuSte) and published extensively on topics related to borders and ethnicities in the border regions of East Prussia. While these aspects of his professional biography are similar to those of many other Ostforscher, his profession as an archivist provided a particular combination of scholarly research about the East, contact to revisionist and National Socialist research institutions, and the implementation of governmental policies before and after the Nazis came to power. The struggle to control the archives and the collective memory of the border regions separating Germany, Poland, Lithuania and Russia had been going on for decades, with the Prussian archives, archivists and historians in the forefront, making the new fields of activity in the annexed territories little more than a practical implementation of an established research paradigm from the inter-war period: the idea of a German Kulturboden that stretched far beyond the actual areas settled by German-speaking people. Here the question of an underlying acceptance of antisemitism must be asked again, even though we lack openly antisemitic statements. In the context of the Ostprogramm (a program for research and archival measures in East Europe), the Prussian archival administration and its staff provided ideological support for a primarily anti-Slavic German expansion. But to which extent did Prussian archivists participate in the implementation of antisemitic policies? The archival sources are key to this aspect of politically informed control over history, bringing

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archivists like Forstreuter already before the war in contact with the oppression of the Jewish population. The Prussian archival administration implemented National Socialist ideology in three areas: the looting of archives, the research program and the administration of the Holocaust. Some of these areas are better researched upon than others, but Kurt Forstreuter’s involvement is visible in all of them. Particularly regarding the research program of the Prussian archival administration, it is important to note that its political framework was not primarily shaped during National Socialism but during the revisionist struggles of the inter-war period.

Berlin and Königsberg: The Early Years of a Career For many of the historians of the inter-war period, Prussia was not only their research topic but also their homeland. In the fierceness of attacks against the Corridor after World War I and the apologetic regarding the German attack on Poland, the Baltic countries and Russia, experiences of war, expulsion, loss and struggle merged. Kurt Forstreuter was no exception, born into a prosperous family in 1897, in Weedern (Talniki, Kaliningrad Oblast). His father, who died in World War I, was a physician, and the family also owned a large farm. He had a brother, who died serving in the army in World War I in France, and a sister, Erna, who later took over the family estate with her husband Willy Schaak. After World War II, Erna’s and Willy’s son Dietrich was Forstreuter’s only remaining close relative, and Forstreuter went to quite some lengths to find him and then to help him get settled and find work. Besides mother and sister, who play a certain role even in Forstreuter’s post-war private communication – for example, when he receives a detailed account of the mother’s death in a camp on the escape from the Red Army in 1945 – his life seems to have been almost empty of women. No intimate relations with either men or women are documented in his estate, and his professional surroundings were almost entirely male. Most of his close friends were other archivists, all of them male as well. The family had arrived in Weedern in the 1730s as part of a group of refugees from Salzburg. There is a fair amount of local historical research – much of it produced by Forstreuter’s colleague Hermann Gollub, also a Salzburger and historian of the Teutonic Order, who, like Forstreuter, participated in plundering Polish archives during World War II – into this particular group of Protestants, who ended up in the Gumbinnen district.1 In the post-war period, Forstreuter himself also

On the Frontier • 49

engaged in research into his family’s lineage, having Forstreuters from all over Germany send him their family trees. The Tilsit (Sowetsk) district became a war frontier during the early weeks of August 1914. Along with many other families, the Forstreuter family fled the area, returning already in September when German troops captured the six thousand Russians occupying the area. Forstreuter graduated from the Tilsit Realgymnasium in 1916 – his connection to his former high school would last his lifetime.2 Thereafter, he studied for one semester in Königsberg before being conscripted in December 1916 – the same year his father died. From 1917 until September 1918, Kurt Forstreuter fought at the front in Gradsko, Macedonia.3 After the war, he returned to Königsberg, where he resumed his study of history and German and Slavic languages. In 1920, he moved to Berlin to continue his studies there. The early years of Forstreuter’s education are briefly described in the posthumously published article ‘Vom Blickpunkt eines Archivars’, but the text contains no personal insight into these early experiences as a refugee and a soldier. Forstreuter barely mentions these events in his memoirs, making it apparent that he does not consider them relevant to his professional career. He does not address his family, any intellectual or personal influences or his parents’ economic and class background. Some incomplete paperwork regarding the patrimony of the family farm is preserved with his estate, along with records of his (successful) attempt to gain the restitution of the money from his Königsberg bank accounts and his stock holdings; these documents suggest an extremely well-to-do background with substantial financial means. There is no information that allows us to determine whether or not the family suffered financial losses due to the war, nor is there any way of determining if his father’s death affected Forstreuter’s situation as a student. His memoirs make it seem as if it was a given that Forstreuter would go to university; the only doubts he expresses concern whether to major in history or German literature. A reconstruction of his academic education, as well as his later work, shows interest in both fields, always with a focus on medieval history. The outlines of Forstreuter’s later professional network were already visible during his student years. Forstreuter was not a member of the young conservative networks at the Albertina in Königsberg, which would later be central to the careers of the National Socialist Ostforscher; he was several years older than most of the people in these organizations, and his academic home was not with Hans Rothfels and his circle but mostly in Berlin.4 His professors were, for the most part, among the majority of academics who supported anti-democratic,

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monarchist movements and sympathized with the German National People’s Party (DNVP) and the other conservative nationalist parties and movements that were also prevalent among students in Berlin and Königsberg during the Weimar Republic. By 1920, 60 per cent of the members of the student organizations also came from radical rightwing and anti-republican groups.5 In Berlin, Julius Petersen and Gustav Roethe served as Forstreuter’s PhD supervisors; he received his PhD in 1923 for a thesis entitled Die deutsche Ich-Erzählung (The German First-Person Narrative).6 Both professors were academically well-situated and politically national conservative, and in both cases their antisemitism can be detected. Julius Petersen was considered one of the most influential scholars of German literature during the inter-war period, primarily because he oversaw the production of significant editions of the collected works of Lessing, Schiller and Goethe. In 1934, he took a specific political stance in the book Die Sehnsucht nach dem Dritten Reich in deutscher Sage und Dichtung (The Desire for the Third Reich in German Legends and Poetry).7 Roethe was the leader of the Reichsausschuß deutschnationaler Hochschullehrer (an organization for academic staff lobbying for the DNVP) and a strong public voice against parliamentarianism and women’s right to study; he also excluded Jews from his PhD seminars.8 Some of Forstreuter’s contacts from these years stayed with him his whole life, such as his friend and fellow archivist Fritz Gause, whose biography is strikingly similar. Gause also studied history and German literature at the Albertina, delivering his dissertation in 1921. Erich Randt and Georg Winter, the two archivists who would later head the General Governorate’s archival administration, were also part of Forstreuter’s coterie and shared his background in the East, an education in Berlin and at the Albertina and training in the early years of the Weimar Republic. Erich Weise was also part of this group, but unlike Forstreuter, Randt and Winter, he would never receive a position as the director of an archive.9 Weise had also studied history at the Albertina, in 1921, with Albert Brackmann acting as his dissertation supervisor.10 All three of these men had their studies interrupted by World War I and military duty, with Weise even being taken prisoner of war. Besides these experiences, they shared a connection with Albert Brackmann, Weise’s doctoral supervisor, Forstreuter’s teacher in Königsberg and the most important figure in the inter-war archival world. His influence, not only as a scholar and organizer of institutions but also as a father figure for an entire generation of medieval historians and archivists, has, as yet, not received the attention it deserves. From 1905 to 1929, Brackmann worked and taught at several of the

On the Frontier • 51

most distinguished institutions for medieval history: the Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH), where he edited the Germania pontificia, the universities of Berlin and Königsberg and the Institute for Historical Auxiliary Sciences in Marburg. In 1929, Brackmann became the director of the Prussian state archives, a position he retained until his forced retirement in 1936, resulting from his efforts to take sides with some Jewish historians and archivists.11 Brackmann was a master juggler when it came to balancing his aspirations for scholarly truth and objectivity – he described historians as ‘servants of truth’ – and the clear political bias that guided his personal decisions, research plans and publications.12 Later correspondence makes it obvious that Forstreuter admired Brackmann and maintained a friendly and respectful relationship with him. But the person who played the central role in facilitating Forstreuter’s entry into the archival world was Brackmann’s predecessor Paul Fridolin Kehr; Forstreuter mentions him several times in his memoirs as the professional mentor who helped launch his career.13 Kehr was a distinguished scholar of papal letters and diplomas and held several important positions in the world of German medieval scholarship, including editor of Italia pontificia and, thereafter, director of the MGH. He was director general of the Prussian archives from 1915, when the war forced him to leave his post as director of the German Historical Institute in Rome, until his retirement in 1929. The Festschrift to commemorate his seventy-fifth birthday was edited by Brackmann, who had been designated by Kehr himself as his successor.14 Kehr, however, never openly participated in any of the political struggles of the interwar period.15 Many of the details of the first thirty years of Forstreuter’s life that would be necessary to create a proper biography that reflected the experience of his generation and his educational and class background are missing from the available documentation.16 The location of his hometown in the annexed Klaipėda region would certainly have played a role, and it relates in an obvious way to his research interests. The figure of a lost Heimat (homeland), which became so important for the post-war exiles from Prussia and Silesia, was a reality for Forstreuter in the post–World War I period, and he would return to various studies about the lost Memelland until the end of his life. However, as was noted in his post-war writings, he himself seems to have been reticent to make any explicit connection between loss of Heimat and academic interest. Coming from an academic family from the East, many of whom fostered both a cultural and academic elitism, he was part of the war generation later referred to as the ‘lost’

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generation, so named because their education was interrupted by war and imprisonment, resulting in relatively poor career opportunities despite their education. Nonetheless, Forstreuter’s career seems to have unfolded smoothly enough. Unlike those whose goal was a university position, followed by a chair, archivists and librarians found it easier to embark upon what were high-status careers. Although these positions required extensive training, they provided access to socially secure positions much more quickly than was the case for those who pursued an academic career. Forstreuter does mention that he was rejected for librarian training because his areas of expertise – history and German – were too common and that, although an ‘outsider’, he was subsequently accepted for archivist training – given the similarities between his background and education and that of a majority of archivists, his outsider status could only have been the result of moving in slightly different academic circles. A government profession was the goal of a majority of graduates during the Weimar Republic – the fact that the majority of these students were adherents of anti-democratic organizations would pose an obvious problem for the subsequent generation of the Republic’s civil servants. In 1928, approximately 50 per cent of students in Berlin were intent on a career in the civil service or the governmental administration – almost a third of them hoped for teaching posts, 13 per cent sought administrative positions, while 1 per cent of students, in each case, desired university professorships or work as archivists, librarians or museum staff.17 Thus, Forstreuter’s professional objective was relatively narrow and specific – and extremely elitist. Ernst Posner, an archivist in Berlin before being expelled – first from his position and then from Germany, because of his Jewish family background – and who would go on to provide U.S. intelligence with information about the German archival landscape during the war, spoke of a conservative déformation professionelle on the side of the archivists trained during the Weimar Republic that served as a precondition for their subsequent participation in National Socialism. He described them as a small, socially and politically homogenous group of highly competent professionals, who saw their main loyalty as lying on the side of the state bureaucracy and the defence of elitist institutions of historical memory against a misera plebs of genealogists and other non-professionals.18 Upon embarking on the career path of a civil servant, an archivist could anticipate first ascending to the position of Assessor, and later Staatsarchivrat, making life-long employment and Beamtenstatus almost 100 per cent certain; Forstreuter received the latter title at the age of

On the Frontier • 53

thirty-one.19 He commented upon the importance of achieving this position before the Nazis came to power. As he presented it, the fact that he already held a tenure position in 1931 allowed him to make fewer compromises with the National Socialist state and its demands than was the case for his younger colleagues.20 The surviving files, however, provide no evidence of any situation in which one could imagine Forstreuter refusing to take on a task assigned to him by his superiors. He did not, however, ever join the NSDAP, so maybe this is what he meant by the blessings of his early tenure.21 Not enough research has been conducted on the archivists and librarians of this period to allow for a comparative view of Forstreuter’s biography or of the ideological and social background of his professional class, its key political views or general behaviour. It would be interesting to understand the degree to which the self-perception of this ‘specific kind of historian’ – as Zipfel called them in a programmatic text about the National Socialist archives – with their academic education and administrative training, their early professional allegiance to the Prussian state and their relative social security, differed from that of the ‘pure’ academic, who faced a much more difficult struggle to attain a position and whose networks only overlapped with the archival world to a very limited degree. The importance assigned to the study of history, especially medieval history, during the German Empire, must have had a profound influence on the elitist identity of these civil servants, giving an almost eschatological quality to their profession, their studies and, potentially, even their political activities. Sanctus amor patriae dat animum (The Sacred Love to the Homeland Gives the Spirit) to the edition project of the MGH – even those who did not engage in public debates or join a political party were, nonetheless, intrinsically politically active – since the study of history and the preservation of the archives was understood as an essential service for shaping the ideological foundations of the German nation.

Prussian Volksboden: The Königsberg Frontier, 1927–33 Directly after receiving training as an archivist, Forstreuter gladly accepted a position at the Königsberg state archive. For him, this was a return home, but for most other archivists and academics, Königsberg was a remote outpost. He began to work in Königsberg during the period when Max Hein was the archive’s director.22 Post-war letters make it clear that Forstreuter perceived Hein as a very difficult boss,23 but when it came to research activities and strategies, it seems the two

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men were on the same page. Even though Hein’s specialty was modern Prussia, he joined Forstreuter to edit the medieval Prussian diplomas (Preußisches Urkundenbuch) and published a number of articles on the Teutonic Order. One of the few personal details that the material in Forstreuter’s estate makes clear is his passion for travelling. During the last years of the Weimar Republic and the early years of National Socialist government, Forstreuter travelled to Kaunas, Riga and Vilnius for the first time – at this point, still in a private capacity. He also travelled to Italy and, in 1931, by ship, across the Mediterranean to Palestine and Egypt – unfortunately, we know nothing about the impressions he drew from these travels, during which he must have encountered the early waves of Zionism, visited Crusade sites and seen and experienced things that were relevant to both his professional interests and his view of contemporary Jews. In 1932, he visited England, the Netherlands and the Rhineland. ‘Köln. Hier Nachricht vom Sturze Brünings’ (Cologne. Here, the news about the downfall of Brüning), is the only reference in his post-war diary about the political unrest at that time; there is no mention of the NSDAP takeover. From 1929 until 1933, Forstreuter worked on the registry for Teutonic Order incoming letters (Ordensbriefarchiv, OBA). During this period, he also travelled to Frauenburg/Frombork to advise colleagues at the local archives about the correct ordering and registration of documents, removing some archives and transporting them to Königsberg in the process. He also took part in packing the vellum diplomas of the Teutonic Order for the Königsberg archive’s move to its new and larger building in 1931 – until then, the state archive was housed in the castle, a beautiful but cramped location. In 1932, he assumed responsibility for the archives of the government of the Gumbinnen district,24 his native region, which had been divided between Germany and Lithuania following World War I. Located in the border area between the Lithuanian Klaipėda region and East Prussia, the district was at the centre of German revisionist politics and was an early target of National Socialist Germanization policies. East Prussia had once again become a frontier region and was rhetorically constructed as such. David Furber has catalogued rhetorical formulations in Nazi publications and propaganda related to colonialism in the East, from Warthegau to the Ostlandregierung (the civil government installed by the Germans in the Baltic countries in 1941). Among the problems he pinpoints for National Socialist propaganda was the cultural and geographical proximity of Polish and German cultures in border regions. This was addressed with constant remind-

On the Frontier • 55

ers of the racial and cultural barriers separating Germans from Poles.25 However, Furber only briefly mentions the long tradition of colonial metaphors that historians had established regarding East Prussia and the Baltic; the history of German Ostkolonisation (colonization of the East) in the wake of the Teutonic Order’s occupation of the land had consistently been written in terms of a superior culture’s hostile takeover of its periphery, and medievalists and National Socialist propagandists both drew upon this construct – this process began decades before the Nazis came to power. During the 1920s, for example, Forstreuter was the author of various publications about the German character of his native region during the medieval period, in a number of academic and popular channels, and always with a focus on what he perceived as the medieval struggle between the German and Slavic ethnic groups – although it was sometimes necessary to frame this struggle as one between Christianity and paganism. The perceived GermanPolish antagonism is in his area of interest supplemented by a GermanLithuanian antagonism; both of these issues were discussed starting from the ethnic relations in the region during the period of the Teutonic Order’s arrival, when various Slavic and Baltic tribes and populations were confronted with colonization and Christianization. During the Weimar Republic, Königsberg was indeed a frontier town, particularly in intellectual and academic terms. Its geographic and political situation as an enclave after the Treaty of Versailles, the immediacy of the Klaipėda region and its occupation by Lithuania and the proximity of the Baltic countries and their German inhabitants fostered a conservative nationalism in Königsberg intellectual circles and cultural institutions. In this context, the Prussian archival administration developed research programs for both the East and the West that had as their goal the reversal of the Treaty of Versailles26 – predecessors of the Ostprogramm and Westprogramm of 1940. Königsberg joined Wrocław/Breslau to play an important role in this effort. The results of Forstreuter’s research were most often published in the Altpreußische Forschungen (AF) and Mitteilungen des Vereins für die Geschichte Ost- und Westpreußens (MVGOW), journals connected to the Prussian and Königsberg archival administrations and adhering to their research parameters, which focussed on the reversal of aspects of the Treaty of Versailles related to the former German territories in the East, particularly the Corridor and the Klaipėda region. The Verein für die Geschichte Ost- und Westpreußens (Society for the History of East and West Prussia) was part of a formal network of local historical associations, which were ‘zur Abwehr entschlossen, wenn fremde Pseudowissenschaft versucht, das Bild unserer Geschichte zu

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­ erzerren’ (committed to defending the image of our history, when v foreign pseudo-science attempts to distort it), as Christian Krollmann, the director of the association and the director of the Königsberg town library, put it in 1933.27 This association, as well as several others with similar goals, such as Historischer Verein für Ermland (Historical Society for Warmia) or the Copernicus-Verein für Wissenschaft und Kunst (Copernicus Society for Science and Art), researched local history of East and West Prussia, in a conglomerate of academic and popular public activities. A lecture that Forstreuter gave at the annual meeting of the network was then published in the journal Deutsche Hefte für Volks- und Kulturbodenforschung. AF was the organ of the Historische Kommission für ost- und westpreußische Landesgeschichte (Historical Commission for the Regional History of East and West Prussia, HIKO), founded in 1923 by archivists, librarians and professors from Gdańsk and Königsberg, in tandem with local history associations, which in fact unified and took over most of the work of the smaller historical associations. The basic objective of this foundation was to fund and conduct basic research into diploma collections, bibliographies and historical atlases, as a contribution to the struggle of Deutschtum in the Eastern provinces through the documentation of German cultural achievements in the region28 – as Udo Arnold put it still in 1995, the founding fathers themselves perceived the association as necessary because of the aggressive Polish nationalism which had already struck Lithuania and Ukraina, and which raised fears in East Prussia as well.29 The HIKO was revived after World War II in a conscious attempt to create personal and scholarly continuity that spanned pre-war to post-war research into Prussia. Kurt Forstreuter was taken into the HIKO in 1927 and then again in 1950 and remained a member until his death.30 While Landesgeschichte generally flourished in this period, the importance assigned to the medieval history of Prussia was remarkable. The fact that an entire journal was devoted to research into preReformation Prussia, including prehistory, points to the important role the study of this period played for revisionist aims, and is thoroughly in keeping with the overall importance of the study of the territorial expansion and cultural history of the Middle Ages for the development of Landesgeschichte during the inter-war period.31 At first glance, many of the topics addressed in the AF journal do not seem to serve any particular political purpose, but the journal’s adherence to the overall research objective would establish German scholarship as the key and bona fide research into the region and serve to suppress or replace the results of Polish research, translating Polish and other Slavic

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studies that addressed specifically ‘anti-German’ topics and published ‘anti-German’ results, as well as focussing on publishing sources that seemed to prove German dominance in the region. The research strategy formulated by the Prussian archival administration in 1931 and again in 1940 was entirely in line with these aims. Forstreuter’s work on the Christianization of Lithuanian grand duke Gediminas during the fourteenth century is both an example of the mindset of the frontier scholars and an issue that is crucial for the assessment of the policy and legitimation of the Teutonic Order during that period. Until today, his discussion of Gediminas’s letters is often quoted and seen as one of the most relevant and sober contributions to the debate. A first statement on the topic appeared in 1928 in AF.32 While he acknowledged the ways in which territorial expansion and conversion were entangled, what’s key is that, for Forstreuter, ‘Christian’ and ‘German’ were basically synonymous. He wrote about the ‘state reasoning of the Order’ and the necessity of the Christianization of Lithuania for the development and position of Deutschtum im Osten (presence of Germanity in the east). With no connection to the topic of his article, he pointed out that he would have preferred Riga as the Baltic spiritual capital rather than Vilnius, as became the case under Gediminas, because of the lack of German influence in the latter. The article follows a clearly established script for fourteenth-century history: the Teutonic Order ‘wants’ and ‘needs to’ expand, foreign (Slavic) territories complicate the expansion of the German state, and religion is a mere façade for the ‘German’ raison d’état. Forstreuter sees the conversion of the pagans as superficial at best, not influencing the faith and the religious practices of the people in question for centuries to come. While this resembles current research on syncretism and religious hybridity in many newly converted regions, the interconnection between religion and ethnicity as brought forward by Forstreuter says even more; considered in this light, the adoption of Germanity and German culture by the Lithuanians also appears superficial. Forstreuter’s approach to the question of Gediminas’s conversion is clearly informed by the way he perceived the struggle between Christian-German and pagan-Slavic cultures in the Prussian-Lithuanian borderlands, an issue of some importance to him. One of the main problems (still) discussed by scholars in this regard is the authenticity of Gediminas’s letters, in which he complains harshly about the Teutonic Crusaders, expresses his willingness to be baptized and depicts Lithuania as a safe haven for Catholics. Forstreuter joins other Prussian scholars who, since the nineteenth century, have been expressing doubt about the authenticity of these letters, thereby delegitimising

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Gediminas’s complaints about the Teutonic Order.33 Besides the question of authenticity, which is a perfectly fine topic for controversies among medievalists, this argument projects a conscious and modern reason of state onto the Teutonic Order, which is described as ‘needing and wishing to subjugate Lithuania, since Lithuanian Samogitia formed a wedge between two of the Order’s countries, Prussia and Livonia’.34 A perceived hierarchy separating German culture from Slavic cultures is also an implicit element in this turn of thought. Forstreuter’s lifelong obsession for ethnicities and boundaries in his home region was visible here already, and it fit in well with the overall research strategies formulated by Albert Brackmann in his first version of the Ostprogramm for the Prussian Archives. But not all of his studies before 1933 were in the service of the frontier struggle. He was also commissioned to write a publication celebrating the two hundredth anniversary of the Königsberg publisher Gräfe & Unzer, and he generally succeeded in establishing himself as a specialist on the local history of Königsberg and East Prussia from the Middle Ages onward. While many of Forstreuter’s publications during these years address a single individual or a minor event in Prussian history, some of them also exhibit an explicit interest in the history of the region’s inhabitants and discuss different ethnic groups and races, for example, ‘Die Entwicklung der Nationalitätenverhältnisse auf der Kurischen Nehrung’ (The Development of the Relations of Ethnicity on the Curonian Spit), describing the ethnic groups and settlements on the Curonian Spit. This beautiful peninsula, situated between Kaliningrad and Klaipėda, was popular amongst German artists and politicians, its peculiar landscape of wandering dunes the result of the destruction of its original forest by the Teutonic Order, resulting in recurring resettlement of the villages next to the dunes. The land strip had been settled since prehistoric times by the Baltic Curonians, who maintained a distinct identity and language until the modern era, their language by then a mixture of indogermanic Curonian, Latvian and Lithuanian. In this article, the figure of German cultural superiority is clearly visible, as well as the idea of foreign elements on Prussian cultural soil, in this case, the indigenous Curonians, who he names a Fremdkörper (alien element).35 Besides publishing in the organs of the revisionist research institutions and the archives themselves, Forstreuter published in Prussia, the journal ‘for the protection of the Fatherland’ connected to the archaeological collection at the Königsberg Castle. He also published in the internationally recognized and less politically controversial Zeitschrift für slavische Philologie, founded and edited by Max Vasmer, the head of the department of Slavic Studies in Berlin.36 Forstreuter focussed on the

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medieval period and the issue of language and culture in the Prussian borderlands, as well as on the Teutonic Order’s administration. All of the articles are clearly related to the archival holdings Forstreuter was working with in the Königsberg archive, and in particular with his knowledge about the Teutonic Order, which derived from his work with the OBA and the Preußisches Urkundenbuch registries, work he did in 1930 and 1931, with some interruptions.37 One of his early works was specifically on the Klaipėda region, which would become his specific area of expertise. It was published in 1931 as a small monograph, Die Memel als Handelsstraße Preußens nach Osten (The Nemunas as Prussia’s Trading Route to the East).38 In it, he pointed out that the river Nemunas/Memel had never been a border but a connection for the Klaipėda region, and in consequence the area north of the river had traditionally been part of East Prussia – this would be a recurring theme in his work for decades to come, sometimes with an explicit, sometimes only an implicit pointer at the annexation of exactly this land strip by Lithuania in 1923. In the monograph about the Nemunas, Forstreuter failed completely to mention the role of Jewish merchants and tollkeepers in the area beginning in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a lacuna that was already noted in a review by Gerhard Kessler, a professor of national economy in Leipzig and Jena who was dismissed in 1933 because of his opposition to National Socialism.39 In her dissertation about the Königsberg’s Jewish community, Stefanie Schüler-Springorum portrayed the town before the Nazi takeover as home to a variety of progressive, liberal and artistically inclined people and movements, a factor that is, for the most part, overshadowed by the aspects of the town’s intellectual life that were related to its frontier status. Kurt Forstreuter’s Königsberg seems to have been a nationalist, conservative and hostile environment, with little space for heterogeneity of any sort, and the majority of his academic production served the purpose of reinforcing the ethnic boundaries in the frontier struggle and of portraying them as atemporal. On the other hand, his choice of academic journals and publication channels was not entirely exclusive to the ones provided by the revisionist historical commissions.

‘Scholarly Arsenal’: The Lithuanian Question and the Publikationsstelle Berlin-Dahlem Early in 1931, Forstreuter had his first contact with the PuSte, one of the institutions that played a leading role in laying the groundwork

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for Germany’s eastern expansion. The PuSte was not the only research institution with a specifically revisionist goal, but it was the first independent organization to develop a relationship with the archives and universities in pursuit of this goal. The PuSte was a subdepartment of the Prussian State Archive, founded under the auspices of Albert Brackmann. This was his first attempt to institutionalize the entire field of Ostforschung and make its results readily available to politicians and administrators. Brackmann and Johannes Papritz, the director of the PuSte, maintained close contact with the Ministry of the Interior and the foreign office, and this did not change after the National Socialists came into power. Providing political advice was the PuSte’s explicit goal, as was the case later for the Nord- und Ostdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (NOFG, the largest of the politically determined research institutions for the history of the German borderlands founded in the 1930s). The latter institution was also housed at the GStA. The PuSte and the NOFG largely worked in the same areas and even shared staff.40 From 1931 until 1939, the PuSte focussed on two main issues: assembling scholars to work in the context of the institution’s programme and collecting and translating Polish research documents. The research itself was conducted in part by the PuSte staff and in part by outside scholars, who either received monthly stipends or one-time payment for the publication of their research results. Most of these scholars had their first contact with PuSte when, for one reason or another, they personally contacted Brackmann or Papritz, as opposed to being approached by the PuSte to undertake a specific task. Forstreuter was no exception; he contacted Brackmann, a fellow medievalist, to discuss the need to research the Lithuanian question. It would seem that Brackmann was already familiar with Forstreuter’s earlier work, which, given the close-knit nature of the Prussian archival administration and the small circle of men working on Prussian medieval history, should come as no surprise. Forstreuter suggested two research topics: church and school politics in East Prussia during the sixteenth century, which was deemed politically complicated by Papritz.41 His other suggestion was a cultural history of Preußisch Litauen – Lithuania Minor, or the northeastern part of East Prussia and the western part of Lithuania, including the Klaipėda region. The PuSte expressed a particular interest in the second topic, and Forstreuter was offered a fellowship at the institute, which he accepted. His research plan makes it clear why this topic interested this revanchist institution; he promised to provide the ‘scholarly arsenal’ necessary to address ‘Lithuanian claims and aspirations’, a regular theme in his publications beginning in the late 1920s. The

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medieval history of the area, with the Teutonic Order in constant battle with Lithuania, and thereafter the Polish-Lithuanian Union, served as a tableau for interpreting modern ethnic and nationalist struggles, a key issue after Lithuania was re-established as an autonomous state after World War I and particularly since the Memelland was annexed by Lithuania in 1923. The Memelland/Klaipėdos kraštas, a tiny strip of land about 120 kilometres long and 40 kilometres broad, had been home to German-, Lithuanian- and Curonian-speaking populations for centuries and had become a focus of Lithuanian national aspirations in the nineteenth century. Since both Germany and Lithuania saw the current situation of the region after the Treaty of Versailles as an interim solution, both sides led the struggle for Klaipėdos kraštas on various levels – from the Lithuanian side, in order to end Klaipėda’s status as an autonomous region within the Lithuanian state, and from the German side for the reintegration of the region.42 In a review published in 1929, Forstreuter had explained the objectives of his primary research project: the ‘helplessness’ of German historians and politicians in the face of Lithuanian territorial claims – in contrast to the Polish question, where ‘both sides’ had already amassed the data necessary to support their arguments before World War I – arguments that are repeated almost verbatim in the research proposal Forstreuter sent to PuSte three years later. He describes ethnic relations in Lithuania as follows: Die Litauer des Memellandes sind zwar gente lituani geblieben, aber auf Grund einer langen geschichtlichen Entwicklung natione germani geworden. [The Lithuanians of the Klaipėda region have indeed remained Lithuanians by blood, but as a result of a protracted historical process have become part of the German nation.]

Compared to the tediously repetitive nature of the explanation for the German Drang nach Osten – cultural superiority and continuous expansion, something that can be shown to have already been an established pattern during the medieval period – the Lithuanian question was somewhat more interesting and complex from a racial point of view. As Arthur Hermann has recently indicated, there were four issues at play: whether or not the indigenous tribes Nadrauer, Schalauer and Sudauer were either ethnically Prussian or Lithuanian before the arrival of the Teutonic Order; whether or not their tribal areas were part of Lithuania; whether or not residual indigenous populations survived the centuries of Prussian and Lithuanian raids and warfare; and, most importantly, which ethnic groups and populations settled in the Große

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Wildnis43 during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries – the indigenous population (defined as Prussians or Lithuanians) or Lithuanian settlers.44 The presumed importance of the answers to these questions was based on their alleged connection with contemporary questions of legitimacy and land rights; and once more, the alleged contradiction between the Slavic and Baltic and Germanic populations was at the core of the conflict. The ‘Lithuanian question’ is a small and absurd issue within the broad historical and academic struggle for legitimacy of German territorial claims, intricately connecting actually interesting questions of assessing different kinds of medieval sources – archaeological, philological and historical material – with implicit conclusions regarding modern ethnic relations and rights. It is striking that antisemitism played no role in all of this because, within this region, the town of Memel/Klaipėda is of interest as a site that provides a certain amount of information about medieval Jewish life in the area. Jews had settled in Lithuania by the thirteenth century, but, for the most part, their trading activities in the border regions drew no particular attention and were not regulated by the Teutonic Order. It was not until the 1570s that the duke of Brandenburg and the Prussian authorities began to impose restrictions on Jews from Lithuania who settled in Klaipėda. Interestingly enough, the Jewish population is not an issue in Forstreuter’s argument favouring more research on the region – a fact which strongly suggests that the Jews did not play any particular role in the conflict for control of the territory in the early 1930s. Forstreuter positioned himself in an existing field of research. Gertrud Mortensen outlined the ‘Lithuanian question’ in her 1927 dissertation. In doing so, she followed the lead of medieval chroniclers, defining the eastern border of the so-called Große Wildnis (Great Wilderness) as largely a wasteland lying between Prussia and Lithuania. Previous research, primarily philological research based on place names – for example, that of Adalbert Bezzenberger – ­established a continuity of Lithuanian settlement in this area stretching back to the early fourteenth century, thereby calling into question the idea that the area was a blank Wildnis. The line of argument seemed to provide a medieval basis for Lithuanian claims to the Klaipėda region. Mortensen’s thesis, however, did not consider place names, instead drawing upon sources that served to establish a German presence and a Germanic culture in the region: for example, the Handfesten (founding diplomas) of the villages established under the authority of the Teutonic Order, which focussed on the German-speaking administration and law and thus asserted German possession of the land. This method was used to

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define the western borders of the Wildnis by claiming that Prussians had disappeared as a result of processes of acculturation and miscegenation. This approach was celebrated as a methodological innovation, and it did indeed add a dimension to the understanding of culture and cultural processes that was absent from a purely philological approach. This research into the nature of medieval settlements was meant to address a reality that disturbed the German state and threatened its need for ethnic homogeneity. The problem was that a good many of the inhabitants of Lithuania Minor – the Lietuvininkai – spoke Lithuanian but were politically and socially Prussian. (Already the definition of Lithuania Minor and the Klaipėdos kraštas has been an issue. Memelland, Klaipėdos kraštas and Lithuania Minor all mean slightly differing areas. Today, Lithuania Minor/Mažoji Lietuva is perceived by the Lithuanian state as its western part, even though the Kaliningrad Oblast is governed by Russia.) Recent research has shown that the Lietuvininkai had developed a specific local identity that only dissipated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in part due to acculturation and in part due to the aggressive Germanization policy instituted in 1871 to suppress this group’s use of the Lithuanian language. Lithuanian scholarship points to these attempts to use cultural and linguistic policy to completely extinguish this Lithuanian cultural element, while German scholars have tended to focus on the acculturation processes.45 Kurt Forstreuter, who was himself born in the Ragnit (Neman, Kaliningrad Oblast) district near the Lithuanian border, was part of the latter camp, for reasons that were personal as well as political and historical. Approaching the issue from the perspective of one of competing peoples, he stressed that the Germans did not violently suppress the Lithuanians but, as a result of the Germans’ superiority and greater power, subdued them peacefully. In 1933, the PuSte gave this virtually predetermined result a warm welcome:46 Lithuania Minor, or parts of it, were never part of the Lithuanian state, until the segregation of what today is Memelland. Nor was Lithuania Minor ever the territory of Lithuanian tribes. When the Teutonic Order arrived, there were only Prussian tribes living there, and Kurs in the North. … All of Lithuania Minor has to be understood as a specifically Prussian and German cultural space that was overrun by a Lithuanian cultural invasion that subsequently receded and withdrew. This coming-into-being and decline of Lithuanianity in Prussia must be demonstrated. The older, higher and socially superior German cultural stratum, which was temporarily undermined by the Lithuanians, subdued the Lithuanian cultural stratum, partly through immigration, but largely as a result of the allure of it as the cultural elite.47

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The thought patterns characteristic of völkische Ostforschung are apparent here, as are the typical metaphors of bulwark and ebbs and flows found in this construct: German and Slavic ethnic groups as fundamentally different and immutable entities; cultural contact interpreted as a hostile takeover; processes of acculturation interpreted as victories of the superior culture. The Kulturraum as a figure of thought is also apparent: an area which is said to have been shaped by German culture during earlier historical phases and which kept its German character, despite later being part of other countries and/ or having a majority non-German population. The distinctions made between Prussian, Lithuanian and German cultures are interesting; in Forstreuter’s argument, the Prussian tribes are seen as being German cultural entities, while the Lithuanians are categorized as foreign even though they are not Slavic, but Indogermanic Baltic. This is based on a perceived capacity of Prussians to Germanize, whereas the Lithuanians rejected German culture then and continue to do so. The distinction itself is ideological in the extreme; the Lithuanians and the Prussians were both part of the Baltic language group, while nearby Livonians spoke a Finno-Ugrian language – generally speaking, the question of the ethnic or linguistic membership of these tribes remains largely unanswered, in part due to the source situation. Recent Lithuanian scholarship has been less obsessed with the ethnicity of the Prussian tribes. For example, Zigmas Zinkevičius argued in the 1980s that it is impossible to define a linguistic border separating Prussians from Lithuanians. He pointed to the evidence of shifting place names that indicate Lithuanian dominance and to people’s names, which show both Lithuanian and Prussian origins to an equal degree.48 This sort of non-positivist scholarship would have been a nightmare for the Forstreuters and Mortensens of the 1930s. In any case, Prussians and Livonians were subjected to the Teutonic Order’s colonization policies to an equal degree. Furthermore, although it was in a constant battle with the Lithuanian grand dukes, the Order was either unwilling or unable to restrict Lithuanian settlement in the border region between Prussia, Livonia and Lithuania – the area that was called Große Wildnis by the medieval chroniclers. Recent research covering the entire region of the Wildnis establishes that different ethnicities – Lithuanians, Germans, Prussians, Poles and Ruthenians – participated in the colonization of the area to different amounts, with the Prussians largely assimilating within a few generations, to Polish language and culture in the South of the area.49 Even before having carried out the actual research, Forstreuter offered a satisfying solution to the problem of factual ethnic diversity

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by providing an explanation for the evidence of a sizeable Lithuanian population within the German state that in no way legitimized their presence. His use of the Latin terms natio and gens suggests both a historical continuity of medieval relations into the present and the possibility of the direct integration of the medieval concepts of group membership into the modern völkische theory of ethnicity. The direct translation of, or, better yet, projection of, modern concepts onto medieval times was crucial if medieval history was to be used to support modern territorial claims, and it was essential to the conservative historicism of the inter-war period. It was not until the 1970s, with the development of conceptual history as a method, that the possibility of this sort of direct translation was first questioned – and regarding medieval history, much remains to be done. One of the Ostforscher’s basic missteps was to take the medieval terms deutsch and undeutsch from the sources and use them as if they reflected a concept of race and culture equivalent to the contemporary one when, in fact, they were little more than concepts reflecting a certain legal status. Forstreuter differentiated being Lithuanian or part of a tribal society from belonging to the German nation, and even though he did not explicitly identify this concept of natione Germani with the existing national state, the distinction he drew served to establish an understanding of natio as a territory with an ethnically and culturally homogenous population. The Lithuanians, from his point of view, had undergone a process of assimilation into the German natio – that is, into German culture and the German state. A purely racist concept of nation would have been counterproductive in this instance, and it does not play a role in Forstreuter’s later publications either. What is essential in this case is the idea of Volksboden, meaning that a territory once inhabited by a well-established and ethnically and culturally homogeneous population bears this population’s imprint. Thus, regions such as the Klaipėda area have undergone Germanic acculturation that remained predominant even during periods when they were not part of the German nation state or when they were dominantly inhabited by non-Germans, and this imprint is so strong that it even affected ethnic Lithuanian settlements in the region. Forstreuter’s presentation of the ethnic groups in Lithuania Minor derives from the research tradition in which a construct of immutable cultures is actually more important than one of immutable races – the arrival of the Teutonic Knights was (and is) presented as the beginning of Prussian history, and the acculturation of the Prussians is interpreted as reflecting their ability to assimilate into the superior culture – an option the Lithuanians also had, in principle, but consciously rejected.

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That this conceptual framework provided useful arguments against the Lithuanian claim to the Klaipėda region was obvious to revisionist German researchers, even though it required them to project a struggle for national borders onto a period without national states. It also required a somewhat creative definition of Germanness. Still, one must admire the faith these historians had in the power of their research into events that had occurred eight hundred years earlier to legitimize modern political assertions of fact. Consequently, research on medieval topics was a major focus of the projects financed by the PuSte. Despite the financial support promised for research into Lithuania Minor, Forstreuter remained a full-time employee of the Königsberg state archive. When the director of the PuSte, Johannes Papritz, offered him a monthly stipend of 100 Reichsmarks instead of a one-time payment towards the publication of the work, he resigned, as he only wanted to work part-time on the study. The study was never finished, and he formally remained an unpaid fellow of PuSte. Around this point, three of his colleagues, Erich Weise, Hermann Gollub and Ernst Maschke, joined him as external research fellows. All of them were also archivists working on the premodern history of Prussia. The arrangements regarding payment for Forstreuter’s research and his use of the resources of both the PuSte and the Königsberg state archive indicate the initially harmonious relationship between the two institutions. It also shows Forstreuter’s commitment to the overall Ostforschung archival research programme; he even proved willing to sacrifice part of his vacation time to this end, combining private travel with archival work. Although an intense conflict regarding responsibilities and resources later developed among archives and research institutions, no political or ideological conflict was ever apparent. It does not appear that the assumption of the reins of power by the National Socialists in any way disrupted Forstreuter’s work for either the PuSte or the archive; his research was in no way restructured, nor was there any other change to his working arrangement. Besides his unpaid fellowship, Forstreuter also showed a general interest in other PuSte projects; in an October 1937 letter, he thanked Papritz for lending him documents regarding the school policy in Prussia held in the Berlin archives, apologized for not having contributed more to the Jomsburg journal and promised to deliver some articles about the question of the Klaipėda region in the future.50 That never happened. There is no information about Forstreuter engaging in any additional activities in the PuSte personnel file outlining his duties. Forstreuter threw himself into his work on Lithuania Minor. He made several trips to visit archives in the years 1932–35, and ordered

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the delivery of documents held in the Berlin archives to Königsberg. In 1933, he published an initial outline of his argument on the Lithuanian question in the Deutsche Hefte für Volks- und Kulturbodenforschung, a significant organ for revisionist humanities; the article consisted of the printed version of a lecture he gave at the annual meeting of Gesamtverein der deutschen Geschichts- und Altertumsvereine (the umbrella organization for all historical associations) in Königsberg, already announcing his major study on the topic in Brackmann’s publication series.51 Whether labelled as ‘cultural policies’, ‘church policies’ or any of the other aspects Forstreuter dealt with in connection to Lithuania Minor, his research always centred around the question of ethnic relations between Germans and Lithuanians and, ultimately, the German cultural dominance in the region. His work on the cultural policies of premodern Germans in the area is in line with other major research projects then being conducted into the Lithuanian question under the auspices of PuSte. He defended his main research paradigms – the Christianization of Lithuania in 1386 was a political decision, not a religious one; German language and culture were crucial for the Lithuanian development ever since the Middle Ages – also in reviews of Lithuanian research, which were divided into ‘deutschfeindliche’ (hostile to the Germans) and others.52 One interesting example is that of Gertrud Mortensen and her husband Hans, who was by that time a professor of geography, who were working on a three-volume study of the medieval settlement of the Prussian-Lithuanian border region – Forstreuter’s work had promised to be closely attuned to this study’s results but had been outlined in a way meant to provide additional conclusions about how German culture subdued Lithuanian culture. The Mortensens’ study, however, had a positive academic and political reputation even before work on it began. It was part of the PuSte’s own series, Brackmann was its main editor and volume 1 was welcomed enthusiastically. A conflict developed when volume 2 was about to be published, in 1938. The book included results about the relationship between German and Lithuanian settlement that did all but prove German domination of the area. Consequently, the Ministry of the Interior objected that the results were not conducive to the national interest. Bernhard Jähnig, another, later director of the Prussian Privy Archive, read the documents regarding this conflict and declared the Mortensens representatives of the resistance in favour of academic freedom.53 Considering their attachment to the PuSte and the generally positive comments about the National Socialist state in their correspondence with PuSte, it might be worth considering Ingo Haar’s interpretation of the ­conflict

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instead; he argued that the peaceful coexistence of German and Lithuanian people in the border regions was in accord with National Socialist propaganda in 1934 but that it was no longer the case by 1938. Forstreuter’s intended solution of the Lithuanian question, which never became target of National Socialist censorship, does not support Haar’s interpretation either. Forstreuter did indeed describe the cultural merging of Germans and Lithuanians in the Klaipėda region as a peaceful process, but already in 1933 he left no doubt of the direction of cultural exchange: German cultural politics in so called Lithuania Minor … will be considered under only one aspect … and only one question shall be answered: how did the Lithuanians turn into Germans under Prussian government.54

Another interpretation of this conflict might simply be that there was no politically correct way of describing Lithuania Minor from the point of view of the National Socialist state – it was not possible for any honest scholarship to gloss over the centuries-long coexistence and ethnic and linguistic intermingling. The conflict between the Mortensens and the National Socialist state arose not before they attempted to present their results regarding later periods, when the Lithuanian numerical dominance became apparent. Forstreuter, who was seen as a key expert on the question, was present at the first meeting to address the crisis involving the Mortensens, as were Johannes Papritz, as the representative of PuSte publications, and Bourwieg and Essener from the Ministry of the Interior.55 This is only one of the many meetings that Forstreuter attended as an expert in his field of work and research, and he proved himself to be a loyal servant of the National Socialist state and its institutions. He was, however, also appreciated for his calm and his diplomatic skills; he had reviewed the first volume of the series enthusiastically.56 The compromise suggested to Hans Mortensen was to expand the area of research chronologically until the seventeenth century in order to frame the period of purely Lithuanian settlement in the Wildnis area with periods of German influence before and after. Mortensen, however, argued that German influence in administration and culture was not visible before the eighteenth century. His results regarding the acculturation of Lithuanian and German population were largely the same as Forstreuter’s: the German upper class was culturally more advanced and thus more attractive, and the Lithuanian upper class adopted their language and culture. This aspect of the study seemed not to have been problematic; it was the issue of numerically superior Lithuanian settlement that stirred the National Socialist authorities’ protest.

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But their desire to censor research results regarding Lithuanian immigration into the Wildnis area in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries shifted, not only from year to year but also from publication to publication. For example, when Forstreuter published a small brochure entitled Memelland in 1939, presenting Lithuanian immigration as a historical fact, the authorities did not react. In response, Hans Mortensen wrote a letter to the Ministry of the Interior asking why his own research on the subject met with disapproval while Forstreuter could publish identical facts. It was PuSte that addressed the question, more or less diplomatically, in an August 1939 report, stating that it was not the fact of Lithuanian immigration, as such, that was dangerous, but rather its publication in the framework of Mortensen’s anticipated trilogy and its scholarly significance.57 This response says a lot about the flexibility applied to medieval historical research and once again suggests that ethnic relations in the Prussian border regions were too complex to be dealt with in black-and-white interpretations of race and culture. Unlike the Mortensens, Forstreuter steered clear of any conflict with either the PuSte or the National Socialist authorities. An announcement about his planned publication on Lithuania Minor for the Königsberg archives continued to be published until 1943, at which point Max Hein finally announced that as Forstreuter had been drafted into the Wehrmacht, it would unfortunately not be possible to complete it. Forstreuter also maintained good relations with Albert Brackmann. When he sent a copy of an article about the Teutonic Order in Southeastern Europe58 to Albert Brackmann, Brackmann responded, saying the NOFG had similar research plans, but they did not go ‘quite as far’ as Forstreuter did in his work.59 In a letter written in 1939, Brackmann also praised Forstreuter’s booklet about the Klaipėda region, in particular his resolution of the Lithuanian question.60 Forstreuter’s commitment as a PuSte fellow and as an occasional participant in NOFG activities is symptomatic for his commitment to National Socialist research institutions. His research interests were entirely in line with National Socialist reasoning, but his employment at the Königsberg archive created a financial and institutional situation that allowed him to eschew a greater formal affiliation with National Socialist research organizations. He could carry out his research in the spirit of National Socialist Ostforschung as a respected expert in his field, without becoming deeply entangled in their institutions. Even when the PuSte, the Prussian archival administration and the Volksdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaften, particularly the NOFG, had begun a vicious internecine struggle around resources and political

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status, Forstreuter remained a valued scholar who held clear positions about his own research but never enunciated a position about the institutions he did the research for. It was simply a matter of Forstreuter’s interests and those of the revisionist and National Socialist research institutions corresponding from early on; besides the ‘Lithuanian question’, the political correspondence of the Teutonic Order and several source editions and prosopographic studies of fifteenth-century East Prussian council members were explicitly part of the NOFG’s research program.61 Even before the war, both Forstreuter’s research and his daily duties as an archivist brought him into direct contact with the centres of National Socialist power and government. Within this framework, he pursued the same research topics and questions that he had before the Nazis came into power; namely, the ethnic relations in his home region as well as the history of the Teutonic Order in Prussia. His research interests and the political interests of the government and the archival institutions seemed to overlap perfectly. Forstreuter did not resist the radicalization of rhetoric and politics preceding the war; nor, however, did he participate in this radicalization – his articles remained generally moderate, with a polite tone, which served better to conceal than to unveil their political bias.

Preparing for Expansion (1932–39) The Prussian archival administration was a governmental institution, and that would come to mean that a thoroughgoing racial ideology determined its activities from 1933 on; at the same time, the increased significance of ‘family research’ and demographic history – that is, antisemitic studies of race – increased the archives’ political and economic standing. A number of the Prussian archival administration’s key protagonists would, in fact, use the changed political framework to strengthen the institution’s position. Albert Brackmann successfully argued for the education and employment of more archival staff to address the newly arising need for genealogical research, which had a major impact on archivists’ duties during the early years of National Socialism.62 At the same time, the archives aspired to be amongst the nation’s leading research institutions and, as a result, exercised increased control over their employees’ scholarly output. These were very productive years for Kurt Forstreuter. He published frequently in the AF and was the head of its editorial board for three years. He also worked closely with the HIKO, joining its board in 1936.

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The ties between the HIKO and the archive were so close that a number of archive staff members held offices within the organization and the commission’s activities were regular items in the archive’s annual reports. During this period, the journals published by the archive and the HIKO also occasionally received PuSte funding.63 (As a sidebar, it is worth noting that in the 1990s the German government paid 101,000 DM to reprint every volume of AF published between 1924 and 1943 including the openly National Socialist editorials and prefaces; the journal was considered ‘indispensable for scholarly research in this field.’64) In addition, beginning in 1932, Forstreuter joined Erich Weise to regularly review works by Polish and, to a lesser degree, Lithuanian scholars.65 This kind of monitoring was a key task of most of the revisionist institutions. The PuSte, for example, oversaw the translation of entire monographs in order to directly counterargue their results. Surprisingly, these translations are still seen as proof of the scientific impact that some of the Polish works had, and Marian Biskup has lately pointed out how surprisingly sober and positive some of the reviews by Forstreuter and Erich Maschke were66 – they argued vigorously against specific issues in the Polish works, using manuscripts the PuSte had illegally and secretly translated. Even though they gave the Polish scholars credit for some source work, they had a no-holdsbarred approach to Polish attempts to present certain aspects of the medieval history of Prussia in a different light.67 The effective exclusion of Polish scholars from the archives in Königsberg and Gdańsk before 1934, along with the Polish propaganda arguing in favour of Pomerelia’s Slavic character, led to a certain imbalance in the areas Polish and German scholars respectively worked on; the Polish side focussed on Pomerelia and the archives in Toruń, while the German side focussed on the Teutonic Order as a corporation, as well as on its state. Denied access to the Königsberg archives, the Polish historians worked primarily on the religious and spiritual aspects of the Teutonic Order, as well as on the organization of the Prussian estates. The key theory was that the Polish king had supported the estates’ alliance to guarantee peace between Prussia and Poland – a theory basically shared by the German scholars, who additionally saw the organization of the Prussian estates as ethnic treason. Forstreuter followed a strict guideline in his reviews: if a study was considered German-friendly, the work was reviewed positively, even if written by a Pole or Lithuanian; if not, it was described as unscientific and tendentious. While the tone of his studies was not necessarily entirely neutral, it was at least generally dispassionate. His reviews, on

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the other hand, displayed the entire range of anti-Polish resentments and rage. His 1933 review of Prusy wschodnie – przeszłość i teraźniejszość (East Prussia – Past and Present), edited by Marjan Zawidzki, a member of the Poznań city council, is characteristic. He portrays Zawidzki as ‘an outsider, to whom this country and its culture remain foreign at an emotional level.’ The Poles were said to function at a lower and ‘still East European’ level, while East Prussia ‘stood in defence of Central European culture.’68 Forstreuter’s argument clearly promotes the ideas of a superior German culture and a perceived threat from other cultures, as well as making Zawidzki by definition a ‘foreigner’ in East Prussia. Besides this monitoring activity, Forstreuter used his Polish, Russian and more basic Lithuanian language skills for independent study and publication in German journals for Slavic history and philology, primarily focussing on the relationship between Prussia and Russia. In the years 1929–34, among other things, he published articles addressing the emergence of Orthodox churches in Prussia, Russian scribes in the service of the Teutonic Order and prisoners of war in Russia. The research material Forstreuter was working with had a direct impact on the areas he chose to probe more deeply – during the early 1930s, he worked on the Preußisches Urkundenbuch, sifted through the archived Teutonic Order letters (OBA) and registered the holdings from the Gumbinnen district, all of which is reflected in his publications from that period. In 1929, for example, he worked on registering the Prussian Etatsministerium documents, drawing upon these holdings for his study of German language policies in Lithuania during the subsequent years.69 In September 1933, Königsberg hosted the annual convention of German archivists, the Deutscher Archivtag. Forstreuter participated in both the preparations for the conference and in the subsequent publication of documents related to the event.70 A few months after the fascist takeover, German archivists were assembled in the frontier region of the German Reich, where they heard a number of speeches about the importance of Ostforschung for the immediate future and the role they were expected to play in it. Several of the speeches delivered at this event would subsequently become notorious examples of the archivists’ openarmed welcome of the fascist system. Albert Brackmann opened the meeting with an enthusiastic endorsement of Adolf Hitler and his struggle to create the new Germany, stressing the centrality of Ostforscher in the new tasks the archives were to take on.71 Erich Weise lectured on ‘National Duties in the Frontier Lands’, admonishing his colleagues to cease their political wavering and embrace the pressing political tasks,

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particularly regarding the historical demography of areas important to the Reich. He presented the archivists as a united force at the service of the ‘Germany of the 30th of January,’ ready to work ‘in the spirit of the Third Reich, with the people and for the people.’72 Weise and director Hein expressed their unwavering professional commitment to the National Socialist state. In spite of his role in organizing the event, there is no documentation that indicates how Forstreuter perceived the outcome; he himself did not deliver a speech at the meeting. This meeting, as well as the next one, proved, however, the general political lines which the archival administration planned to take: unconditional support for the state and its needs, particularly regarding studies of demography and ethnicity; the increased personal commitment of individual archivists; and the extension of archivists’ expertise in the areas particularly important for the Nationalist Socialist state’s needs. One year later, Brackmann again opened the annual meeting of archivists, again waxing enthusiastically about the new Germany and preparing archivists for their new tasks, tasks that would also become central for those working in Königsberg. Brackmann pointed out the importance of Pflege von nichtstaatlichem Archivgut (Care of Nongovernmental Archival Material) as ‘a precondition for work addressing the racial corpus of the population’. Brackmann also announced a guest lecture by the Ministry of the Interior’s Sachverständige für Rasseforschung (Expert for Research on Racial Questions), A. Gercke, who introduced the archivists to the work of the Sippenamt als Träger des Familiengedankens (Sippenamt as a Carrier of the Family Thought). In 1934, archivists, who initially perceived Gercke’s organization as a competitor, were obliged to swear a collective oath of cooperation with the Sippenämter (agencies of the Ministry of the Interior which decided on a person’s race in difficult cases) sealed by a common statement read at the end of the meeting by Otto Grotefend, the director of the state archive in Hannover.73 The acquisition of non-governmental archival holdings of interest for the study of race was immediately applied to Jewish communities and their archives. The Königsberg archive seized the majority of the Königsberg Jewish community’s archives that same year and confiscated additional documents in 1937. Gaining control of the remaining documents would require negotiations with the Gestapo and the SD during the following years.74 This measure actually ended up saving the archived material from destruction, since it was shipped to the West along with the rest of the Königsberg holdings and thus was almost entirely preserved; today these documents are located in the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People in Jerusalem.

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Since the Jewish community in Königsberg was not established until the eighteenth century, this deposit had no direct connection to Forstreuter’s work on premodern Prussian Jews, but it does seem that the general increase in archival concern with the Jews played a role in shaping his written output – in fact, it was probably difficult for a German archivist to avoid addressing the issue of Jews during that period. The 1935 state archive annual report described Forstreuter as primarily occupied with ‘requests for family histories’ – in other words, with requests for Aryan certificates. And in 1937, he published his first article on Jews, a comprehensive survey of the extant sources addressing Jewish life in Prussia up to the early seventeenth century. A year later, he published a shorter article, essentially polemical in nature, addressing a controversy about the evidence of Jewish life in Tolkemit/ Tolkmicko. He argues that there could not have been Jews in the town in the Middle Ages, contrary to an entry about ‘gardeners, Poles and Jews’ paying ground rent there. Forstreuter sees this as a reading mistake and argues that the town was almost entirely German in the fourteenth century.75 These were Forstreuter’s only scholarly contributions to the debate about Jews. He would not address the topic again until he reworked his 1937 article in the late 1970s. Besides the increasing repression of German Jews, the Königsberg state archive also actively participated in and supported other political undertakings. In 1937, Forstreuter was assigned to a working group that changed the names of towns and villages in the province of East Prussia, especially in the areas neighbouring Poland and Lithuania and in the Klaipėda region. The PuSte and the NOFG were also involved in this process, and, after 1939, it was these institutions that claimed increasing responsibility for renaming the occupied territories.76 The change of town names in the German-Polish border regions is addressed by Victor Klemperer in his work Lingua Tertii Imperii. He points to the huge number of changes in the Gumbinnen administrative area as an example of the National Socialist obsession with appropriating things by naming them: a reminder of the repressive nature of a measure that today might simply be dismissed as ridiculous. However, at the time, Forstreuter and his colleagues spent an incredible amount of time and energy ‘Germanizing’ names, for example, the change from Wassantkehmen to Wildnisrode. Forstreuter, who had taken over the registration of Gumbinnen governmental documents in 1931, seemed an obvious candidate for this task. He was not, however, happy about this attempt of increasing the Germanization of the area; he considered it historically inappropriate, despite his otherwise fierce fight to prove the Germanity of the Klaipėda

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region. The reports of the Königsberg state archive present this process as a scientific task of rediscovering the ‘real’ historical German names; the only problem was that there were no such names to be found, so new ones had to be invented in a way that did not threaten the pseudoscientific aspirations at play. In the case of Lengwethen/Lunino/ Luninas, for example, a relationship with Austrian immigrants inspired renaming it Hohensalzburg. In his memoirs, Forstreuter describes this measure as one of the main National Socialist crimes he observed and became entangled in. He also describes his satisfaction about having been able to save the name of his home village Weedern.77 This example provides a peek into Forstreuter’s political perspective; although he was a fierce proponent of German aspirations in the Klaipėda region, he was too much of a historian to willingly accept the National Socialist historical falsifications expressed in these changes. The Nazis needed the new German names to support their claims to the region, in what was a wilful act of colonization. As Forstreuter saw it, German claims were valid, despite the fact that the population was ethnically mixed and had been for centuries. Whatever misgivings Forstreuter might have had about the project had no effect on his work; he was the main person responsible for the task during much of 1937.78 Forstreuter continued his personal travels during the early years of the National Socialist regime, taking at least one major trip per year: Rome in 1933; Belgrade, Istanbul and Athens during the spring of 1934; New York during the autumn of 1934; Switzerland in 1935. In 1936, there is only mention of a short trip to the annual archivists’ conference in Karlsruhe, but the following year, when the renaming of Gumbinnen took most of his time, interrupting his PuSte research, Forstreuter managed to travel both through Scandinavia (Sweden and Finland) and to the world exhibition in Paris. His last major trips before the war were by ship – the Njassa – to Antwerp, Southampton, Lisbon, Tangier, Algiers, Nice and Genoa; the ship would be claimed by the Wehrmacht before the war began. In August 1939, Forstreuter was in Gdańsk, but once Germany attacked Poland his leisure travel seems to have come to an end, but his travels in the service of the state archive began.79 The Klaipėda region remained a recurring theme in Forstreuter’s work during these years, a period when the source work for his major study was still on-going. In a 1937 article for MVGOW about Memel und Lübeck im Mittelalter, he pointed out the Hanseatic connections to Livonia, as well as differences between the Livonian branch of the Teutonic Order and the Prussian branch, which he chalked up to the different characters of the Germans in the respective organizations: coastal, sea-loving people from the Middle Low German area in Livonia

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versus mainland, mountain-loving people from the Upper German region in Prussia. In doing this, he made use of another key revisionist turn of thought in his interpretation of medieval Prussian history; when describing the attitude of the town Klaipėda during the period of uprising against the Teutonic Order in the mid-fifteenth century, Forstreuter expressed a certain regret about the support the Prussian towns offered to the rebels in the Preußischer Bund (Prussian Union, formed in opposition to the Teutonic Order in the fifteenth century) and assumed that the inhabitants of Klaipėda could not possibly have changed sides voluntarily.80 Underlying this assessment of the historical process that politically shaped the Prussian estates is the idea that they were dominated by the Polish knights and nobility, making the support they received from the towns a violation of the ethnic loyalty that should have existed between the German urban elites and the Teutonic Order. Even though there are no sources to support his perspective, Forstreuter’s personal attachment to Klaipėda and his assumption about ethnic relations in the Klaipėda region led him to conclude that Klaipėda must have been forced into an alliance with the Poles. It is worth noting that a similar, yet inverted, argument is visible in Polish assessments of the Bund as an uprising of native townspeople against an unjust and, at the end of the day, foreign landlord.81 Immediately after the German annexation of the Klaipėda region, Forstreuter published a small monograph in the Preußenführer series, simply entitled Memelland. A mere fifty-seven pages, including several maps, it is equal parts political pamphlet and historical summary, with the author focussing on the issue of the different nationalities in the Klaipėdos kraštas since the Middle Ages. His main arguments were that the Klaipėda region had once been an organic entity of a predominantly German character while the region claimed by Lithuania after World War I was an artificial formation, and that the Nemunas River had been important to East Prussia since the Middle Ages and not simply its eastern border. This was, to all intents and purposes, a popularization of arguments presented in his earlier publications about Klaipėdos kraštas. The 1422 Treaty of Melno, which determined relations between the Polish-Lithuanian Union and the Teutonic Order, is presented as the point when the natural and legitimate Prussian borders were violated, since the treaty settled the border according to a line of retreat, unfavourable for the Order since the land connection to Livonia was destroyed.82 This remained a recurrent argument in Ostforscher circles until long after the war; for no clear reason besides its long duration, this particular treaty, and not any others from the six hundred years in between,

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should remain valid for the modern nation states. The peace treaty had forced the Teutonic Order to accept the loss of Lithuania Minor and had defined the border north of the town of Klaipėda that remained in place until after World War I. Forstreuter pointed out that in 1422, the period of war ended for Memel and German Kulturarbeit (cultural work) started, even though Prussia in this period was ‘swamped’ with foreign immigrants.83 Fritz Gause praised this work in a review for MVGOW, pointing in particular to Forstreuter’s persuasive explanation of the acculturation of the Lithuanians by the superior German Volkstum.84 Forstreuter also presented his research in a lecture for the members of the Verein für ost- und westpreußische Landesgeschichte in May 1938, in which he elaborated on the development of the national and cultural border between Prussia and Lithuania, a topic that would turn into several articles in the following years.85 It was at this point that the Königsberg state archive had seized the holdings of the Seimelis (parliament of the Klaipėda region, 1929–39) from Klaipėda, as well as other minor holdings; the medieval town archives had already been lost by this point.86 This would later be followed by the transfer of related archival holdings from Białystok to Königsberg, a further manifestation of the German territorial and political claim. After the German attack on Poland, the Königsberg archive received practical help from members of the Landesstelle Ostpreußen der Zentralstelle für Nachkriegsgeschichte in assessing the holdings and ensuring that they were shipped from Klaipėda to Königsberg. In 1939, Forstreuter resigned from several of his scholarly tasks to concentrate on his more narrow archival work and the new tasks the Königsberg archive was facing. Theodor Schieder took over the leadership of the editorial board of AF, and only weeks after Germany attacked Poland, Forstreuter was sent to Poznań to take control of the state archive; this was the first in a long series of professional expeditions focussed on assessing, looting and destroying captured archives. He was forty-two years old, unmarried and childless. It remains unclear whether this shift in his professional focus was his choice. His post-war travel diary became a sort of a work diary outlining his activity during these years, but it is the Prussian archival administration’s documentation that reveals the full scope of archival looting and of Forstreuter’s involvement in war crimes.

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The Looting and Destruction of Archives Even though the looting of cultural goods during World War II has been addressed in numerous research areas and projects, the role of the archives has only recently become more clear.87 It is, however, highly relevant for an understanding of Kurt Forstreuter’s professional biography and his approach to archival holdings, since it throws light upon a politically informed treatment of the historical tradition as well as of the role of the archives for the preparation of the Shoah. As Stefan Lehr pointed out in his study of the General Governorate archival administration, when Germany invaded Poland in 1939, the Prussian archival administration already had a record of war-related looting. The Grenzmarkarchiv Posen-Westpreußen contained archives and registries, which the German archivists had transported from West Prussia and Poznań to Königsberg and Gdańsk towards the end of World War I in anticipation of territorial losses and to secure the files containing information about Prussian policies targeting the Polish population. Other files were taken from Gdańsk to Berlin to prevent future Polish access and claims to the holdings. By this point, political calculations already outweighed the professional standards for the handling of archives and their integrity.88 By 1935–36, the research unit responsible for the Prussian archives had been placed under Wehrmacht leadership and, as a result, had become a mixed military and civil administration.89 While the Wehrmacht, the SS and the SD were responsible for annexation, the immediate installation of a military government and comprehensive measures meant to terrorize the population, as well as for the deportation of both Jewish and non-Jewish civilians, the Prussian archival administration had a longer view. They seized the archives of the occupied territories, destroyed what they found uninteresting and transported whatever they considered important for the future of the Reich to Königsberg. This sort of planning for the future is characteristic of archival institutions in general: assessing what among the enormous quantity of available documents would be important to future generations for research or for governmental decision-making. The subjugation of all aspects of civil administration, scholarship and governmental planning, including the organization of the collective memory of future generations, to the needs of the National Socialist state and ideology meant an attempt to construct a purely German collective memory in which the populations of the occupied territories were nothing more than the objects of deportation, murder and relocation and sources of slave labour.

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The decision to loot archives – and libraries, museums and other institutions for the collection and preservation of cultural treasures – was taken at the highest level of National Socialist state administration. Military units initially competed in this looting with the archives and other institutions, including the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Main Security Office, RSHA), with its Sonderkommando Paulsen unit, the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), research units, such as the Landesstelle für Nachkriegsgeschichte, and the archives and libraries themselves. As a result, Reichsleiter Alfred Rosenberg published a memo in June 1942 establishing the Zentralstelle zur Erfassung und Bergung von Kulturgütern in den besetzten Ostgebieten (Central Department for the Catalogization and Securing of Cultural Goods in the Eastern Occupied Territories) – but by that point, many of these cultural artefacts had already been looted, partly in coordinated actions and partly through plundering. The items of interest to the ERR were not specified beyond being qualified as all things that might prove useful in the ‘intellectual battle with Jews and Free Masons, as well as against the ideological enemies of National Socialism, who join them as the architects of the present war’.90 This theoretically gave the ERR the power to intervene in the looting of archives, but in practice, although they also had archivists at their service and a special task force for the archives (Sonderstab Archive), the ERR was primarily interested in seizing art collections.91 Regarding the role of the archives, the Zentralstelle did not seem to have any particular influence on their daily workings; available documentation provides no evidence of any direct interaction between the ERR and the archival administration.92 In fact, Königsberg state archive documents make no mention of any interference from any other institution in its looting forays, including in cases when a collection had already been seized or an archival building emptied before the Königsberg archivists arrived. With the exception of valuable medieval manuscripts and the church books, which were deemed relevant for the catalogization of the Jewish population, the archives were responsible for cultural treasures no one else wanted to seize. As Torsten Musial pointed out in his study of the state archives under National Socialism, the policy was uniform; members of the archival staff were sent to all newly occupied territories to sift through and ‘secure’ the archival material. There were several stages to this ‘securing’ process. To begin with, the existing archives were seized by the Germans, and in most cases the Polish archivists were replaced by Germans. Those documents and holdings considered relevant to German history were removed and sent to Königsberg, and then the

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remaining documents were sifted through a second time, with many of them deemed irrelevant and destroyed or left in temporary storage. This led to the destruction of a large amount of material held by Polish archives already in 1939–40. Some of the secured documents were left in the newly formed archives, and others were sent to archives elsewhere. A limited number of the original staff of the archives was kept on for this time-consuming work – but the general principle was that the archives should be run by Germans, in spite of the fact that they often lacked the necessary language skills.93 For less skilled duties, such as packing and shipping the holdings, Jews were used – in most of the towns in the Warthegau district, the systematic persecution of Jews began during the first days of the occupation, and after October 1939, many Jews and Poles were forced to work for the military and the civil administration.94 Ernst Zipfel, the director of the Prussian archival administration and, after 1940, commissioner responsible for securing archives, had worked hard to centralize archival administration. During his interrogation by the U.S. military authorities on 8 July 1945, Zipfel made revealing claims about his control over broad areas of the archival administration.95 He was the key authority figure responsible for the systematic looting of archives in the occupied territories. There is, however, no evidence that he gave detailed instructions regarding the holdings of specific archives or locations; the sources instead indicate that he focussed on personnel decisions – he was obviously more concerned with finding the right staff for particular tasks than on controlling what they did on a daily basis. Thus, responsibility for the looting must be spread around; Zipfel was the head of the entire organization and was responsible for shaping and fleshing out the intended measures, and he had a clear interest in which archivist was to be sent where. In the occupied territories themselves, however, it seems the archivists had a lot of latitude in their decision-making – a fact that was implicitly acknowledged in the immediate post-war period when the Allies originally denied employing any archivist who had previously worked in the occupied territories.96 Assessing responsibility for the crimes of the archival administration is further complicated by the fact that the majority of archivists seized the opportunity to place the full blame on Zipfel – the result of ‘his position of Pooh-Bah of German archives’, to quote the U.S. interrogation protocol. He had joined the NSDAP by 1932, and he had centralized all of the posts. ‘“I was the leader”, he would dramatically state. “All the posts were held by me.”’97 Indeed, Zipfel was the director of the Institut für Archivwissenschaften, director of the Reichsarchiv Potsdam,

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Kommissar für den Archivschutz, Generaldirektor der Staatsarchive and Leiter der Archivabteilung im Preußischen Staatsministerium. On several occasions, the U.S. records point out that he lacked formal education for these posts but that he was a skilled administrator. Comparing his qualifications as historian with those of the former directors, including Brackmann, Zipfel’s academic output had been rather humble; his nomination for the post had been the result of a compromise in struggles between different factions of the NSDAP and SS.98 Zipfel described how much was seized, the replacement of staff and the extent of the destruction in a Denkschrift über Leistungen des Archivschutzes für die Wissenschaft from 1941. He mentions the ‘necessarily harsher interventions regarding personnel’ at the former Polish archives and refers to the work of his people as a reconstruction (Neuaufbau) rather than a takeover, which would better describe the extensive intervention into the structure, content and organization of the archives.99 Kurt Forstreuter played a major role in most places in the former Polish territories that he mentions as targets of archival measures: Poznań, Warsaw, Suwałki and Zichenau. Even though the connection between research results and practical politics of Ostforschung seems obvious from an ex post perspective, its planning and implementation was not all that systematic during the first months of the war, making it impossible to estimate to what extent the archival administration had foreseen and planned its ideologically predetermined expansion. The annexation of Poland led to the sudden integration of large and heterogeneous areas into the Königsberg state archival district, and as happy as many of the staff might have been about that, it posed a number of serious practical problems. There were not enough archivists with Polish, Lithuanian, Russian and Baltic language skills – a problem that had been a matter of discussion since the 1930s. A number of the younger archivists were encouraged to study Polish during their work hours, but there simply weren’t enough of them when it came time to sift through the archives. With some of its staff reassigned to Wehrmacht duties, the remaining archivists had to assess the material from numerous local archives and holdings, in addition to their usual duties in Königsberg. Furthermore, cooperation with military units, with the Gestapo and with the SD in the occupied territories in the period preceding the establishment of a civil administration presented new and untested waters. It seems unlikely that the historians dreaming of broadening the German sphere of influence in the East before the war had foreseen these particular practical problems. Their handling of individual archives also testifies to their lack of any post-war vision for these areas.

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Stefan Lehr has investigated the organization, structure and staff of the General Governorate’s archives at its main seat in Warsaw.100 This department was distinct from the others insofar as it was a new administrative district managed by a newly established unit. The delegation of state archivists to the occupied territories was quickly systematized to ensure that their salaries were paid by the right offices in a timely fashion and that their extensive travel and work at other archives did not disrupt the archival administration, which, in fact, does appear to have continued working smoothly throughout the war.101 The archivists immediately began a comprehensive process of breaking down and reorganizing the existing archives, sometimes arguing that they were simply restoring the holdings to their pre–World War I status and sometimes just because certain files seemed to suit a specific collection – for example, the Teutonic Order’s diplomas.102 It was the Königsberg archivists who prepared the lists of both individual documents and entire holdings from the former Polish archives that were to be transported elsewhere. This information was forwarded to the archives in Gdańsk, Königsberg and Warsaw; if none of the directors was opposed, the transfer was completed. Besides the transfer of holdings, the Königsberg archivists had nothing to do with the archival administration of the General Governorate. The decision was taken not to install autonomous administrative structures in Warthegau, Zichenau, East Upper Silesia and Gdańsk-West Prussia; instead, they were integrated into the existing ones, effectively creating a colonial relationship under Prussian administration, with the archivists becoming the colonialists of history and documentation. From a German point of view, the area surrounding the Corridor in West Prussia, in particular, was an area the Reich had been wrongly deprived of; beyond that, this was an area where Polish nationalist propaganda had played an important role in countering German Ostforschung. The sudden access to the archives that had been closed to German scholars for almost two decades must have felt like the final victory in a battle fought in the numerous publications and associations in Gdańsk and Königsberg ever since the Treaty of Versailles. The situation was slightly different in the Eastern areas of Warthegau and Zichenau, which were largely perceived to be a foreign country by the newly established German administrations. The replacement of Polish administrative structures and staff in the archives was but one aspect of the imposition of minority foreign rule; in Warthegau, for example, 92 per cent of the district officials were Germans from the Reich.103

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‘A Specific Kind of Historian’: The Archives as Protagonists of Ostforschung The looting of archives in the occupied territories was one pillar of the Prussian archival administration’s work; its research activity was the other, and the two were intimately connected. The abundance of research institutions created under the Prussian archival administrations makes it difficult to assess which ones a particular historian participated in, to what extent, and what amount of ideological commitment this meant. The Volksdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaften, the NOFG, the Zentralstelle für Nachkriegsgeschichte, and the PuSte have all been identified as central institutions for the development of research activities and results justifying Germany’s expansion, and as promoting themselves as informants for every day politics in the East. The research plans of the Prussian archives themselves were a bit less proactive in this, at least until 1941. Eventually, however, relations between the Prussian state archive and the NOFG, as well as between the archive and the PuSte, declined, with Zipfel in particular being involved in intense conflicts with both individuals and entire institutions. In a process of conflict with the NOFG and PuSte research institutions, with professional domain playing a central role, the Prussian archival administration under Ernst Zipfel moved to position itself as the third major player in the field. This conflict would come to a head in 1940–41. Max Hein, the director of the Königsberg state archive, made sure that the holdings seized by the SD or other units in the occupied territories were later made available to the Königsberg archive for preservation as well as research.104 Even before the war, a number of different institutions that both cooperated and competed had been created to provide an institutional framework for the many Ostforscher who were willing and able to help provide the ideological framework for Germany’s eastward expansion. In the negotiations for funding and institutional support, it becomes clear that the archivists perceived themselves not only as caretakers of sources but also as the gatekeepers of the knowledge to be drawn from these sources. They belonged, just like the knight brothers of the Teutonic Order who were a mixture of knight and monk, to two different orders; namely, scholars and administrators, both of these roles united in the care and knowledge of the sources. Historians have argued about the connection between reports and communications published by historians and their use for the National Socialist state. Ingo Haar, Michael Fahlbusch and also Götz Aly see the contents of these texts already as indication for their use in ­political

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decision-making, while, for example, Dietrich Beyrau calls for a distinction between the research results and the politics, even though both often followed a similar reasoning and logic.105 Despite the need for the results that Ostforschung would provide, National Socialist Germany was not immediately willing to waste money on historians; in many cases historians had to convince the authorities of the political value of their work. Like many professional groups, it was the archivists themselves who came forward to offer their knowledge – they recognized the growing need for, as Forstreuter put it, a ‘scholarly arsenal’ at the service of the new system. Albert Brackmann was the first person to recognize the need for the proactive pursuit of funding to create new research institutions. For Forstreuter and the staff of the Königsberg state archive, this meant, on the one hand, constant control of their research activities, with certain topics and projects receiving support and others being suppressed. On the other hand, it also meant the privilege of financial and infrastructural support for research trips and the possibility of requisitioning sources from other archives. Brackmann, as the director of the Privy State Archive, had already made this department a key political advisor to the Foreign Office, the Ministry of the Interior, the Army High Command, sections of the Ministry of Propaganda and a number of SS departments on issues related to the annexation of Poland106 – whether or not this advice was actually followed is a separate discussion. What is important is that the archives sought to actively encourage and produce research that would be useful for providing political advice. Ingo Haar has described the formation and work of Landesstelle für Nachkriegsgeschichte and the Institut für Osteuropäische Wirtschaft as two important Abwehreinrichtungen (institutions of defence) that made Königsberg an important garrison of Ostforschung (with Wrocław being another). He mentions the archive only in the context of cooperation with the völkische research institutions in looting trips. While the Landesstelle was clearly a subdepartment of the Prussian archival administration, to date little research has yet been conducted into Zipfel’s and Hein’s efforts to maintain the archives as research institutions – a role that they had already shouldered in the 1920s during the revisionist struggle around the Corridor and Polish and Lithuanian land claims. A focus on the foundation of the National Socialist institutions ignores the fact that university, museum, library and state archives in Königsberg had formed a functioning front line as Abwehreinrichtungen years before the Nazis came into power. The changed political framework not only increased funding but also competition, which primarily developed between the PuSte, the Prussian archival administration and the NOFG – in this context, it is difficult to determine the degree to which

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the Landesstelle Ostpreußen für Nachkriegsgeschichte was perceived as part of the archival structure as opposed to an independent institution. Schieder, who led the Landesstelle beginning in 1934, and his employees Ernst Keit and Burchard Sielmann played an active role in looting the archives in the Danzig-Westpreußen and Białystok areas. The Landesstelle’s research activities were seamlessly interwoven with those of the archive. For example, Schieder, who was himself a member of the HIKO, proposed that a major Landesstelle work, a study of the administrative history of the Zichenau district and the historical borders of Masovia, be edited and issued under the auspices of the HIKO. The Landesstelle had only employed a few historians, so it was perceived more as an appendage than as a competitor.107 As well as the political and economic reasons for the lack of competition between the Landesstelle and the other protagonists of Ostforschung, the question of age and hierarchy is also pertinent; Schieder (born 1908) was more than twenty years younger than Hein (born 1885) and Zipfel (born 1891), which might have meant that the older men perceived each other as potential sources of competition while considering Schieder benign. Be that as it may, in the long run, Schieder’s services to both the PuSte and the archive fed an evolving conflict. The Festschrift planned for Albert Brackmann’s seventieth birthday in 1941 became a major focal point in this conflict. It was, in fact, fuelled by personal hubris and hostility rather than by any actual political disagreement. Zipfel was enraged at Johannes Papritz (leader of the PuSte) and Erich Randt (leader of the General Governorate’s archival administration and Zipfel’s predecessor as the Kommissar für Archivschutz) because Zipfel had been asked to write about a historical topic related to his brief career as a military historian, while Randt was to produce an article describing the achievements of the archival administration in the East. Zipfel flew off the handle – he felt that he was the one responsible for these achievements and that he (as director general) was further up the civil service hierarchy. He therefore refused to take orders from Papritz (director of a state archive), whom he perceived as an underling. There were a number of letters between Königsberg and Berlin addressing the matter. The conflict between the institutions was not limited to the upper echelons of the hierarchy – other archivists found themselves dragged into it as well. Forstreuter himself gave a speech about the on-going struggle with the NOFG at a meeting in March 1941; Max Hein, director of the Königsberg state archive, was also the formal Gebietsleiter of the Königsberg NOFG, but he had not been invited to an October 1940 NOFG-organized conference dealing with the Zichenau district

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as a part of East Prussia.108 Zipfel effectively transformed interpersonal irritation into an institutional conflict. He claimed that the fact that the NOFG and the PuSte had invited archivists to conferences without informing him was evidence of their desire to monopolize archival brainpower. As has been noted, Zipfel explicitly demanded Hein’s support in this conflict, as well as in an effort to secure control of the Prussian archival administration, to allow them to fulfil the Ostprogramm entirely without the participation of the NOFG and the PuSte.109 The tone was harsh, and Hein seemed to agree with Zipfel. In the end, it took several months to more or less pacify the conflict. Brackmann was presented with a collection of his own essays as a Festschrift, and Hermann Aubin, Otto Brunner, Papritz and Wolfgang Kohte went on to edit two volumes of Deutsche Ostforschung: Ergebnisse und Aufgaben seit dem Ersten Weltkrieg (German Ostforschung: Results and Tasks since World War One) in 1942 and 1943. The Prussian archival administration’s publication of an Ostprogramm for archival research activities was Zipfel’s most obvious attempt to position the archives as research institutions – but this did not go unchallenged by German archivists. Brackmann had already in 1931 presented a draft of an Ostprogramm for the scholarly production of the archival administration, but it had disappeared under the weight of the many series and publications in the entire field of Ostforschung.110 Following the publication of Zipfel’s Denkschrift in 1940, in which he addressed the looting, the restructuring and the formation of a new archival landscape and administration in the occupied territories, a number of other documents, open letters and the like circulated among the directors of the Prussian state archives regarding research activities and presenting general reflections on the role of archivists in the National Socialist state – during the war, in particular. Many pointed out the difficulties posed for the archivists who were supposed to somehow continue to carry on their scholarly research while at the same time finding themselves obliged to spend much more time addressing sippenkundliche Anfragen (requests of family history) with the users of the archives than had previously been the case (the fact that producing Aryan certificates had overextended the capacity of many archives was a subject frequently touched upon in the communication between German archivists at the time), even though the staff had been increased by 225 per cent compared to the number of employees the Prussian archival administration had in 1933.111 The extensive professional travel is another problem that is mentioned – Forstreuter’s career, and that of other archivists who spent more time abroad than at their own archives, attests to this problem. The fact that the Königsberg

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state archive was the only department still producing a substantial number of research publications arose on several occasions in this context – it was, in fact, the unlikelihood of much publishing beyond this that posed a serious threat to Zipfel’s aspirations to turn the Prussian archival administration into a leading institution for Ostforschung. A 1940 resolution (Zipfel was a signatory) argued that the Ost­ programm required stronger management and direction of the research performed by archivists and more trained staff at the lower levels to address user requests, leaving the archivists free to concentrate on their research. This programmatic proposal is interesting insofar as it presents archivists as ‘a specific kind of historian’. As the Ostprogramm frames it, archivists should spend more time on scholarly pursuits and less on administrative tasks, and there should be a common thread to their research shaped and decreed by a central organ – Zipfel himself, presumably. The combination of a highly skilled scholarly staff at the archives and a strong regulation of research topics and subject matter is a specific feature of archival work during this period, as well as a reflection of the role civil servants in the National Socialist state understood themselves to play. The fact that, at a certain point, they had consented to act in the service of the state was seen as justifying access to and control of their research throughout their careers. It also seems that being an archivist in Prussia meant participating in either the looting of archives or the archival administration’s research program, or both, and, therefore, participating to no small degree in the practical and ideological implementation of the National Socialist state’s principles and later in its genocidal war in the East. Medieval sources were key to the Ostprogramm, which in its 1940 version did not consist of much more than ten research projects, some of them already begun, and a description of their political relevance. The late medieval period, with the recurring conflicts between the Teutonic Order and the Polish-Lithuanian union, was in focus, and the history of the areas bordering East and West Prussia: Pomerelia, Poland, Lithuania. Das “Ostprogramm” der Preußischen Archivverwaltung (die + ange­ kreuzten Themen sind in Arbeit)  1) Regestenwerk, das die polnische Kronmetrik für die deutsche Volkstums- und Landesgeschichte auswertet. (Frederichs)  2) Die preußische Verwaltung in Süd- und Neuostpreußen 1793–1806 (Dülfer)  3) Die politische Korrespondenz des Deutschen Ordens im 15. Jh. (Forstreuter) +

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 4) Pommern und Polen bis zum Anfang des 15. Jh. (Morré) +  5) Auswanderung aus Pommern nach dem Osten insbesondere nach Polen (Seeberg-Elverfeldt) +  6) Verwaltungsgeschichte der Provinz Posen (Kohte) +  7) Herausgabe der Grodbücher von Dt. Krone (Gollub, Sandow und Böhm) +  8) Herausgabe der ‘Schadensbücher’ des Deutschen Ordens (Gollub)+  9) Listen der Bürgermeister, Ratsherren und Schöffen im Wartheland bis etwa 1400 (Sandow) 10) Geschichte des deutschen Zunftwesens im Wartheland (Gollub).112

The overall goal to present ‘die Leistungen des Deutschtums im Osten’ (the achievements of Germanity in the East) informed even the edition of source collections, as the example of the Grodbücher (town books) of Deutsch Krone/Wałcz shows: planned as part of the Ostprogramm at the beginning, their edition was aborted only a year after since the material did not contain the expected German dominance. Forstreuter planned to contribute substantially to the Ostprogramm. There is mention of him spending two to three years studying the political correspondence of the Teutonic Order. The study was considered relevant because it addressed a historical period when the Germans were still able to defend themselves against the collective assault of the Poles and the Lithuanians. It was also a period during which the Teutonic Order’s state cooperated closely with Emperor Sigismund, who is described as having had more empathy and understanding for Prussia’s feelings than any other emperor before or since.113 Interestingly enough, the peaceful subjugation of the Lithuanians promoted by Forstreuter in his 1933 study for the PuSte was now replaced by a rhetoric of war and violence that drew upon the relationship between the Teutonic Order and the Poles and Lithuanians, but the official parameters of Forstreuter’s planned work remained unchanged throughout. By 1941, the conflicts between Zipfel, Brackmann and Papritz had been resolved, and Zipfel enthusiastically employed his archivists to support the NOFG’s research programme. This resulted in common access to the newly acquired sources and cooperation in the work on studies about demographic developments in the East as a whole.

The Prussian State Archives and the Administration of the Holocaust Before the Nazis came to power, the Jewish populations of Prussia, Poland, Lithuania and the Baltic had not been the subject of much

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archival research by non-Jewish scholars and archivists. Once the National Socialist state was in place, its antisemitic policies permeated the archives and were put into action. Already under Brackmann, Polish users had been controlled, monitored, their access to certain files which were considered politically relevant restricted.114 Researching and producing Aryan certificates was one of a number of areas in which archivists implemented antisemitic laws – in post-war memoirs, many archivists mention the production of Aryan certificates, documents that served to ban numerous people from public life and might even have led to their arrests and murders, as a particular professional burden during these years, but few of them acknowledge the implications of their direct personal involvement in the process.115 It is difficult to determine what if any possibility there was for archivists to engage in civil disobedience to address their grievances about these certificates, but it speaks volumes that they do not discuss such issues, instead bellyaching about their professional dissatisfactions, apparently without giving a thought to the suffering these documents caused. The function of the archives as collective memory was essential to the way documents related to racial matters were catalogued. The Prussian Privy State Archive was assigned the task of collecting all Judaica held by German cultural institutions. All of the Prussian state archives were assigned the task of summarizing the information in their registries regarding the Jewish population. By the time the November pogroms of 1938 occurred, archivists had received a number of directives concerning Jewish community archives, as well as other documentation concerning the Jewish population, particularly church records. In 1937, the first call was issued for all German archivists to locate any Jewish family registers among their holdings and forward them to the Gesamtarchiv der deutschen Juden in Berlin, an institution founded in 1905 by the B’nai B’rith organization and taken over by the Reichssippenamt in 1938, following the November pogroms. This order was part of an increased effort to centralize indexes of Jews, but it did not meet with much initial success, because even locating these records in the state archives seemed to exceed what the archival staff could realistically do. On 18 January 1937, these duties were further expanded; not only were family registers to be located and forwarded but so were copies of those parts of the archival indexes that concerned Jews in general. The Prussian archival administration, which had made these demands and set October of the same year as a deadline for fulfilling them, gave no clear guidelines about which sections of the archival literature were to be copied, leaving that instead for each archivist to determine

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as he or she saw fit. Several copies of these records were to be made: three for the Forschungsabteilung Judenfrage des Reichsinstituts für die Geschichte des neuen Deutschlands and one for the central registry of the Prussian archival administration, with the goal of creating a central register containing the location of all archival records concerning Jews held in Prussian archives.116 It was also requested that archivists support the research work being performed by the Reichsinstitut zur Erforschung der Judenfrage. There were also regular requests for archivists to fill out forms providing information from their archive’s holdings as part of a statistical survey of Jewish-Christian intermarriage. Between 1939 and 1944, the Königsberg state archive provided several inventories of the Jewish population in East Prussia, lists of synagogues and charts with demographic figures. In 1938, all name changes by Jews performed after 1933 were annulled, with requests made to all archives that they check their registers and provide the Ministry of the Interior with information about such name changes – another step in cataloguing Jews in preparation for the Shoah.117 The fact that the inventories of the archives included only references to governmental and municipal holdings meant that the majority of files containing information about German Jews remained untouched by these requests. Thus, Zipfel advised the state archives at the same time to asses and secure archives from town administrations, law courts, synagogues and Jewish communities and, as far as possible, force them to transfer their holdings to the state archives.118 After the November pogroms, following a proposal from Zipfel, Reinhard Heydrich requested that all Jewish archives and valuable historical documents be secured from destruction. Not only were the archives of the Jewish communities to be taken over to the state archives but also those of Jewish schools, associations, businesses and foundations. The Prussian archival administration struggled with Sippenämter and security units for complete control of Jewish archival holdings, but they did not succeed.119 These collections were not only used to create deportation lists – many of the requests of the National Socialist institutions were also part of documenting a soon-to-be extinct race and its culture,120 a process in which reports about the historical development of Jewish settlement and legislation relating to Jews played a particular role. On 4 June 1937, Erich Weise provided the Ministry of the Interior with two reports of this sort that he had written about Prussian Jews in the nineteenth century. He specifically mentioned the search for the 1812 Jewish family registers and the differences in legal status for Jews on the left side of the Rhine River.121

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Having already succeeded in blocking Polish and other Slavic researchers from accessing the Prussian archives or conducting any archival research, the Prussian archival administration now turned its attention to restricting Jewish researchers’ access to the holdings. By 1937, at the latest, several of the Prussian archives were keeping lists of non-Aryan users. When Jews began being banned from all areas of public life, the directors of the state archives sent individual requests to the Ministry of the Interior requesting specific restrictions to prevent Jews from using the archives or conducting research into German history.122 In 1938, Zipfel requested that the Arierparagraph (Aryan paragraph) be expanded to the use of archives.123 The seizure of archives and the purpose of the research carried out with the sources gathered in these raids have complex political implications for that research, and different scholars have different interpretations. For Ingo Haar, it was a carefully orchestrated master plan involving the archives, the research institutions and military organizations. Christoph Nonn, on the other hand, sees the looting of cultural treasures and their use by the National Socialist state as a chaotic process in which the individuals involved had considerable freedom and agency. In the case of the Prussian archival administration, and especially the Königsberg archive, arguments can be made for either point of view, particularly as regards the conflicts between the archives and the other research organizations described above. The most striking thing, however, is the personal commitment and initiative individuals showed in this process. The archivists quickly grasped the extent of the task they faced. By October 1939, Max Hein124 – not Zipfel, the usual suspect when it comes to master plans – already had a theoretical overview of the archives to be seized in Suwałki, Warsaw and Białystok, and he clearly saw this as the given task of the Königsberg archivists. By this point he was not talking in terms of seizure but of ‘negotiations with the local authorities for the handover of certain holdings’. He also anticipated the ‘handover of holdings’ from Lithuania and Russia.125 Like most people at his level of the civil service, Kurt Forstreuter had no say in any of these matters. He is, however, mentioned frequently in the correspondence of his superiors as a skilled archivist and often as their first choice for important tasks in the occupied territories. There is also evidence of his involvement to various degrees in archival activities to catalogue Jews prior to the war. The documentation in the Königsberg state archive is not detailed enough to allow us to determine whether or not he personally worked on the preparation of lists of Jewish inhabitants or of families of mixed religious confession, etc. He was definitely involved in the production of Aryan certificates,

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and, like many of his colleagues, he recalled it as an annoying and slightly ridiculous task that filled up his days, and nothing more.126 We lack the information necessary to reconstruct Forstreuter’s views on the measures he was involved in with regards to cataloguing the Prussian Jews and centralizing their archival holdings. Nor is it entirely clear whether or not he and the other archivists were aware of the goal of these measures. What is clear, however, is that he was confronted with the implications of National Socialist racial policies on a daily basis.

Notes 1. See for example H. Gollub, Die Salzburger Protestanten (Wien: Luser, 1939); and several publications commissioned by the Landsmannschaft Ostpreußen. 2. Forstreuter was asked to write a history of his former school by the Kreisgemeinschaft Tilsit-Ragnit, which, among its functions, commemorated the high school. His contribution was printed in 1972. GStA, XX. HA, Nl Forstreuter, no. 92 and 102. 3. ‘1.12.1916–20.12.1918 Kriegsdienst, Frontkämpfer 1917–1918 zwischen Kumbi und Dudica’, GStA, I. HA, Rep. 178, no. 238, Personalblätter 1943.’ Meine Reisen [s.p], ibid., no. 10. 4. Theodor Oberländer was also in Berlin at this point, but in a different department; Theodor Schieder was considerably younger than Forstreuter and only began his studies in 1926. 5. M. Grüttner, ‘Die Studentenschaft in Demokratie und Diktatur’, in Geschichte der Universität Unter den Linden: 1810–2010, 3 vols, ed. H. Tenorth (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2011), 2:212. 6. The dissertation was reprinted in 1967 by Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft and is still quoted today, since Forstreuter was obviously the first person to provide a consistent theory of this kind of novel. 7. P. Boden, ‘Petersen, Julius’, Neue Deutsche Biographie, 25 vols. (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2001), 20:252–54. 8. M. Grüttner, ‘Der Lehrkörper 1918–1932’, in Tenorth, Geschichte der Universität, 150. 9. Lehr, Osteinsatz, 66. 10. Weise had been captured as a ‘hostile foreigner’ during his summer holiday at his grandparents’ home in Latvia and spent two years (1914–16) as a prisoner of the Russians. Ibid., 63. 11. R. A. Ross, ‘Ernst Posner: The Bridge between the Old World and the New’, American Archivist 44(4) (1981): 304–12. 12. M. Burleigh, ‘Albert Brackmann (1871–1952) Ostforscher: The Years of Retirement’, Journal of Contemporary History 23(4) (1988): 575. 13. Forstreuter, ‘Vom Blickpunkt’, 411. 14. S. Kriese, ‘Albert Brackmann und Ernst Zipfel: Die Generaldirektoren im Vergleich’, in Kriese, Archivarbeit, 32.

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15. On the Prussian archival administration under Kehr, see J. Weiser, Geschichte der Preußischen Archivverwaltung und ihrer Leiter: Von den Anfängen unter Staatskanzler von Hardenberg bis zur Auflösung im Jahre 1945. (Köln: Böhlau, 2000), 89–110. 16. Jaworski and Petersen, ‘Biographische Aspekte’, 54. 17. Grüttner, ‘Die Studentenschaft’, 213. 18. Eckert, ‘Archivare’, 58. Despite this assessment, Posner himself maintained friendly relations from his exile in the United States with those of his former colleagues who had not openly supported National Socialism, among them Forstreuter. See below chapter 3. 19. ‘Archivhilfsarbeiter 1.7.1927, Staatsarchivassessor 1.7.1928, Staatsarchivrat 1.10.1931’. GStA, I. HA, Rep. 178, no. 238, Personalblätter 1943. 20. Forstreuter, ‘Vom Blickpunkt’, 410. 21. Nonn claims that the archival career track was seen by some historians as a way not only of avoiding a socially insecure university career but also as an option that allowed for job security with less formal commitment to the National Socialist state. Nonn, Theodor Schieder, 56–57. 22. The uncritical treatment of people like Hein by the subsequent generation of scholars working on Prussia is symptomatic in the article about him by K. Neitmann. ‘Hein, Max’, Kulturportal West-Ost, http://kulturportalwest-ost.eu/biographies/hein-max-2/. 23. Forstreuter to Buttkus, Göttingen, November 1960. GStA, XX. HA, Nl Forstreuter, no. 120. 24. GStA, I. HA, Rep. 178, no. 2420. 25. D. Furber, ‘Near as Far in the Colonies: The Nazi Occupation of Poland’, International History Review 26 (2004): 541–79. 26. Eckert, ‘Archivare’, 59. 27. ‘Hauptversammlung des Gesamtvereins’, Korrespondenzblatt des Gesamtvereins der deutschen Altertumsvereine 81(3) (1933): 190. 28. Werner, ‘Zwischen politischer Begrenzung’, 282. For a documentation of the HIKO’s work between 1923 and 1945, only the commission’s own publications and some later published memories are available – the registry of the commission itself was destroyed in the war. Only a few annual reports are preserved. See B. Jähnig, ‘Zum Geleit’, in 75 Jahre Historische Kommission für Ost- und Westpreußische Landesforschung: Forschungsrückblick und Forschungswünsche, ed. B. Jähnig (Lüneburg: Verlag Nordostdt. Kulturwerk, 1999), 10. 29. Arnold, ‘Ostdeutsche Landesforschung’, 42. 30. Membership lists, statutes and other material are documented in Jähnig, 75 Jahre Historische Kommission. 31. Werner, ‘Zwischen politischer Begrenzung’, 296–97. 32. K. Forstreuter, ‘Die Bekehrung Gedimins und der Deutsche Orden’, AF 5 (1928), 239–61. For a more recent discussion of the Christianization of Gediminas and the situation of the Lithuanian nobility caught between Catholic and Orthodox Christianity, see H. Boockmann, Der Deutsche Orden: Zwölf Kapitel aus seiner Geschichte, 4th ed. (München: C. H. Beck, 1994), 152–54. For an overview of older German, Polish and Lithuanian

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research, including a post-war controversy between Forstreuter and Herbert Spliet, see M. Hellmann, ‘Über einige neuere polnische Arbeiten zur Geschichte Litauens’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 21(4) (1973): 588–89. 33. S. C. Rowell, Lithuania Ascending: A Pagan Empire within East Central Europe, 1295–1345 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 29. 34. Forstreuter, ‘Bekehrung Gedimins’, 239. 35. ‘Diese Kuren, die sich zum Teil noch heute der lettischen Sprache bedie­ nen, sind ein Fremdkörper auf ostpreußischem Boden … desto klarer mußte dem Kuren der Vorzug der deutschen Sprache werden, die unvergleichlich mehr Kulturwerte vermittelte als die litauische Sprache … ohne Zweifel werden neben und gegenüber den Maßnahmen der litauischen Regierung die Kulturwerte der deutschen Sprache weiterhin von Einfluß sein.’(These Curonians, who partly use the Latvian language until the present day, are an alien element on East Prussian soil … the clearer the Curonians had to see the preference of the German language, which transported incomparably more cultural values than Lithuanian … doubtlessly the cultural values of the German language will continue to be influential besides and in opposition to the measures of the Lithuanian government.) K. Forstreuter, ‘Die Entwicklung der Nationalitätenverhältnisse auf der Kurischen Nehrung’, AF 8 (1931): 46, 62–63. 36. ‘Russische Schreiber beim Deutschen Orden’, Zeitschrift für slawische Philologie 6 (1931); ‘Die Herkunft der preußisch-litauischen Reformatoren’, Zeitschrift für slawische Philologie 7 (1933). 37. GStA, I. HA, Rep. 178, no. 2420. 38. K. Forstreuter, Die Memel als Handelsstraße Preußens nach Osten (Königsberg: Gräfe & Unzer, 1931). 39. G. Kessler, ‘Rezension zu Forstreuter, Die Memel als Handelsstraße’, AF 9 (1932): 165–66. 40. On the foundation of PuSte and NOFG in the framework of the Prussian archival administration and its orientation towards Ostforschung under Brackmann, see Weiser, Geschichte, 113–15, and latest several of the contributions in Kriese, Archivarbeit. 41. Szukała, Pruskie archiwa, 179–80. 42. J. Tauber, ‘Das Memelgebiet in der deutschen und litauischen Historiographie nach 1945’, in Im Wandel der Zeiten: Die Stadt Memel im 20.  Jahrhundert, ed. J. Tauber (Lüneburg: Verlag Nordost-Institut, 2002), 17. 43. The Große Wildnis was the land strip south and east of the area which the Teutonic Order had colonized in the thirteenth century, bordering Lithuania. Due to its scarce population and large swamps and woods, the chroniclers called it the ‘Great Wilderness’. 44. A. Hermann, ‘Die Besiedlung Preußisch-Litauens im 15.–16. Jahrhundert in der deutschen und litauischen Historiographie: Ein Forschungsbericht’, ZfO 39 (1990): 321–41. 45. A. Matulevicius, ‘Zur nationalen Identität der Preußisch-Litauer’, Annaberger Annalen 9(9) (2001): 262–72.

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46. Jahreskonferenz, 25 October 1933. BArch, R153/1543, 13. 47. ‘Niemals war Preussisch Litauen, oder ein Teil davon, bis zur Abtrennung des heutigen Memellandes, ein Teil des Staates Litauen. Preußisch Litauen war auch nicht ursprünglich litauisches Stammesgebiet, denn bei Ankunft des Ordens wohnten dort nur preußische Stämme, im Norden Kuren. ... Man wird das sogenannte Preussisch Litauen verstehen als jenen preussischen und deutschen Kulturraum, in den sich ein litauischer Kultureinbruch ergoss, der wieder zurückebbte. Dieses Werden und Vergehen des Litauertums in Preussen ist darzustellen. Die ältere, höhere, auch gesellschaftlich höher gestellte deutsche Kulturschicht, die zeitweilig von den Litauern unterwandert wurde, ist teils durch deutschen Zuzug, in der Hauptsache aber durch die Anziehungskraft, die von ihr als der kulturellen Oberschicht ausging, der litauischen Kulturschicht Herr geworden.’ 22 July 1931, Forstreuter to [Johannes] Papritz, with ‘Plan zu einer Kulturgeschichte von Pr. Litauen unter dem Gesichtspunkt der deutschen Kulturpolitik’. BArch, R153/1113. 48. Quoted from Hermann, ‘Besiedlung’, 326. 49. G. Białuński, Bevölkerung und Siedlung im ordensstaatlichen und herzoglichen Preußen im Gebiet der ‘Großen Wildnis’ bis 1568 (Hamburg: Verein für Familienforschung in Ost- und Westpreußen, 2009), 411–15. 50. 27 October 1937, Forstreuter to Papritz. BArch, R153/1113. 51. K. Forstreuter, ‘Deutsche Kulturpolitik im sogenannten Preußischen Litauen’, Deutsche Hefte für Volks- und Kulturbodenforschung 3 (1933): 259. 52. ‘Der Verfasser sieht alles durch sein litauisches Temperament und durch eine ganz moderne Brille, ist aber nicht unbedingt deutschfeindlich’, K. Forstreuter, ‘Rezension zu V. Kaupas, Die Presse Litauens: Unter Berücksichtigung des nationalen Gedankens und der öffentlichen Meinung’, AF 13 (1936): 178–80. 53. B. Jähnig, ‘Deutsche und Balten im historisch-geographischen Werk der Zwischenkriegszeit von Hans und Gertrud Mortensen’, in Zwischen Konfrontation und Kompromiß: Oldenburger Symposium: ‘Interethnische Beziehungen in Ostmitteleuropa als historiographisches Problem der 1930er/1940er Jahre’, ed. M. Garleff (München: Oldenbourg, 1995), 109–32; B. Jähnig, ‘Litauische Einwanderung nach Preußen im 16. Jahrhundert: Ein Bericht zum ‘dritten Band’ von Hans und Gertrud Mortensen’, in Zur Siedlungs-, Bevölkerungs- und Kirchengeschichte Preußens, ed. U. Arnold (Lüneburg: Institut Nordostdeutsches Kulturwerk, 1999), 75–94. 54. ‘Die deutsche Kulturpolitik im sogenannten Preußischen Litauen wird … im Folgenden nur unter einem Gesichtspunkte betrachtet werden … und nur eine Frage soll dabei beantwortet werden: wie sind unter preußischer Regierung die Litauer zu Deutschen geworden.’ Forstreuter, ‘Deutsche Kulturpolitik’, 259. 55. Ibid., 129. 56. K. Forstreuter, ‘Rezension zu Mortensen, Beiträge zu den Nationalitätenund Siedlungsverhältnissen in Pr.-Litauen, und Ganß, Die völkischen Verhältnisse des Memellandes’, AF 6 (1929): 134–36. 57. Jähnig, ‘Deutsche und Balten’, 131–32.

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58. K. Forstreuter, ‘Der Deutsche Orden und Südosteuropa’, Kyrios 3 (1936): 245–72. 59. Brackmann to Forstreuter, 5 February 1937. GStA, VI. HA, Nl Brackmann, A. no. 8. 60. Brackmann to Forstreuter, 17 May 1939. Ibid. 61. Fahlbusch, Wissenschaft, 504. 62. W. Ernst, ‘Archival Action: The Archive as ROM and Its Political Instrumentalization under National Socialism’, History of the Human Sciences 12(2) (1999): 17. 63. Jahresbericht PuSte 1941. BArch, R153/1540. 64. Antwort der Bundesregierung auf die Kleine Anfrage der Abgeordneten Ulla Jelpke und der Gruppe der PDS/Linke Liste, Drucksache 12/8254, 12 September 1994. 65. GStA, I. HA, Rep. 178, no. 2420. 66. M. Biskup, ‘Polnische Geschichtsschreibung zum Deutschen Orden’, in Garleff, Zwischen Konfrontation, 92. 67. Janusz Małłek also differentiates the reviews in AF; he sees those by Maschke as particularly harsh and unjust, but he generally appreciates the attempts of Maschke, Weise, Forstreuter and Schieder to read and review Polish research. The political framework of the reviews in AF is not mentioned in his assessment of the journal at all. J. Małłek, ‘Die “Altpreußischen Forschungen”: Das Kommissionsorgan im polnisch-deutschen National­ itäten­streit’, in Jähnig, 75 Jahre Historische Kommission, 183–204. 68. K. Forstreuter, ‘Rezension zu Prusy wschodnie, Marjan Zawidzki, Posen 1932’, AF 10 (1933): 165. 69. GStA, I. HA, Rep. 178, no. 2420. 70. K. Forstreuter, ‘Die deutsche Sprache im auswärtigen Schriftverkehr des Ordenslandes und Herzogtums Preußen’, in Altpreußische Beiträge: Festschrift zur Hauptversammlung des Gesamtvereins der Deutschen Geschichtsund Altertums-Vereine zu Königsberg Pr. vom 4. bis 7. September 1933 (Königsberg [Hamburg]: Gräfe und Unzer [Verein für Familienforschung in Ost- und Westpreußen], 1933 [1994]). 71. ‘Bericht 24. Deutscher Archivtag’, Korrespondenzblatt des Gesamtvereins der deutschen Geschichts- und Altertumsvereine 81(3) (1933): 188–90. 72. T. Musial, Staatsarchive im Dritten Reich: Zur Geschichte des staatlichen Archivwesens in Deutschland 1933–1945 (Potsdam: Verlag für BerlinBrandenburg, 1996), 30–31. 73. ‘Deutscher Archivtag und Hauptversammlung des Gesamtvereins der Deutschen Geschichts- und Altertumsvereine in Wiesbaden vom 2. bis 6. September 1934,‘ Korrespondenzblatt des Gesamtvereins der deutschen Geschichts- und Altertumsvereine 82(2/3) (1934): 121–22. 74. K. Forstreuter, Das Preußische Staatsarchiv in Königsberg: Ein geschichtlicher Rückblick mit einer Übersicht über seine Bestände (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1955), 86. 75. Forstreuter, ‘Die Frage der Juden’‚ 61–63. 76. BArch, R153/1540. 77. Forstreuter, ‘Vom Blickpunkt’, 409.

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78. GStA, I. HA, Rep. 178, no. 2420. 79. Forstreuter’s post-war diary is the source for this list of trips. Meine Reisen [s.p.], GStA, XX. HA, Nl Forstreuter, no. 10. 80. K. Forstreuter, ‘Memel und Lübeck im Mittelalter’, MVGOW 11(4) (1937): 50–55. 81. See, for example, the popular treatment of Gdańsk mayor Konrad Leczkaw, who was murdered by the castle commander in 1411. See C. Heß, ‘Nigra Crux Mala Crux: A Comparative Perspective on Urban Conflict in Gdansk in 1411 and 1416’, Urban History 41 (2014): 565. 82. Forstreuter, Memelland, 13. 83. Ibid., 19. 84. F. Gause, ‘Rezension zu Kurt Forstreuter, Memelland’, MVGOW 14(1) (1939/40): 15–16. 85. ‘Die Entstehung der Landes- und Kulturgrenze zwischen Preußen und Litauen, Vortrag von Staatsarchivrat Dr. Forstreuter, 9. Mai 1938. Jahresbericht für das Jahr 1939’, MVGOW 13(4) (1939): 54–55. 86. Forstreuter, Das Preußische Staatsarchiv, 89. 87. A. M. Eckert, Kampf um die Akten: Die Westalliierten und die Rückgabe von deutschem Archivgut nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2004), 121. 88. Lehr, Osteinsatz, 48–49. 89. Fahlbusch, Wissenschaft, 499. 90. The Zentralstelle was meant to coordinate the activities of the civil institutions involved in the ‘extrication’ of cultural artefacts, and in this light one of its main goals was to redefine the role of its leader Gerhard Utikal, expanding his responsibilities eastward. This also included defining fairly far-reaching duties for its operational branch, the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), which was given permission to search cultural institutions and collections in the East at will (with the exception of the those of the General Governorate) in order to collect items that seemed useful for the Hohe Schule, the central university the Nazis planned to set up after the war. Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg may search libraries, archives, lodges, etc., and confiscate material for the research to be performed at the Hohe Schule for the ‘geistigen Bekämpfung der Juden und Freimaurer sowie der mit ihnen verbündeten weltanschaulichen Gegner des Nationalsozialismus als den Urhebern des jetzigen Krieges’. Abschrift: Rosenberg an die Reichsbehörden, Berlin 5. Juli 1942. GStA, I. HA, Rep 178, no. 171. 91. Eckert, Kampf um die Akten, 126. 92. Abschrift: Rosenberg an die Reichsbehörden, Berlin, 12. Juni 1942. GStA, I. HA, Rep 178, no. 171, AV 3427/199. 93. Brackmann made Polish a compulsory part of archival training soon after he founded the archival school at the Privy State Archive in 1931. Lehr, Osteinsatz, 48. 94. Musial, Staatsarchive, 130. 95. The material that the U.S. interrogation authorities used to locate German archives and archivists was provided by Ernst Posner. In 1944, following

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a difficult escape to the United States, he provided a list entitled ‘Archival Repositories in Germany’. Ross, ‘Ernst Posner’, 304–12. 96. Eckert, Kampf um die Akten, 136–37. 97. Report on an interview with Dr. Zipfel, Director of the Reichsarchiv, 8 July 1945, U.S. National Archives, Roberts Commission, Protection of historical monuments, General Records. 98. Weiser, Geschichte, 145. 99. Ernst Zipfel, Denkschrift über Leistungen des Archivschutzes für die Wissenschaft: Archivische Maßnahmen in den eingegliederten und besetzten Gebieten. Undated. BArch, R1509/1512a. 100. Lehr, Osteinsatz. 101. Regarding the mechanisms of payment of the delegated archivists, see ‘Anlage zu St.M.a.v. 1536/40’. GStA, I. HA, Rep 178, no. 171. 102. For a complete description of the ‘repatriation’ of files that had ended up in Polish archives as a result of various bilateral agreements, see Weiser, Geschichte, 181. 103. Furber, ‘Near as Far in the Colonies’, 551. 104. Haar, Historiker, 340, describing Hein directly approaching Herman Bethke on the matter. 105. Beyrau and Keck-Szajbel, ‘Eastern Europe as a “Sub-Germanic Space”’, 696. 106. Ernst, ‘Archival Action’, 23. 107. 25 April 1940, Königsberg, Hein to Zipfel. GStA, I. HA, Rep 178, no. 2770. It should be noted that Kurt Forstreuter was the first archivist to use the Landesstelle holdings, once they became available at the Archivlager in Göttingen. He kept the files for almost a year, from 22 October 1953 until 25 September 1954. 108. Bericht über Besprechung 19. März [41]. GStA, I. HA, Rep 178, no. 333, Bd. 16. 109. Zipfel an Hein, Berlin, 11 November 1940. Ibid., no. 1174, AV 6657. 110. Weiser, Geschichte, 117. 111. Ibid., 188, 197. 112. GStA, I. HA, Rep 178, no. 590, Anlage 5. 113. ‘Dem ersten damals noch abgeschlagenen Ansturm der vereinigten Polen und Litauer gegen den Ordensstaat ... in engster Zusammenarbeit mit dem Reiche, wo Kaiser Sigismund den Bedürfnissen des Ordensstaates in Preußen mehr Verständnis entgegenbrachte, als irgendein anderer Kaiser vor ihm oder nach ihm.’ (The first attack of the unified Poles and Lithuanians, then still pushed back … in closest cooperation with the Empire, where Emperor Sigismund had been more understanding towards the needs of the Order’s state as any emperor before or after him.) Ostprogramm der Archivverwaltung [1940]. Ibid. 114. Stefan Lehr has counted and analyzed the applications for the usage of files from Prussian archives in the years 1928–39. Of the ninety-six applications from Polish scholars, 69 per cent were allowed access. The restriction of usage was thus not a general anti-Polish measure but followed political arguments and most of all the research topics of the scholars. Studies of

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German-Polish relations during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were most likely to be rejected. Also a potential Jewish background of the scholars was investigated and played a role for their application. S. Lehr, ‘Restriktionen für polnische Historiker in preußischen Archiven? Die Behandlung der Benutzungsanträge polnischer Staatsbürger (1928– 1939)’, in Kriese, Archivarbeit, 221–58. 115. B. Poschmann, ‘Anneliese Triller zum 80. Geburtstag’, Ostpreußenblatt 37 (10 September 1983): 23. In this article, Poschmann mentions that an interview with Frombork archivist Anneliese Triller indicates that Triller had developed a particular filing system for the information contained in the church records to make the production of the Aryan certificates quicker and smoother. 116. Mitteilungsblätter 1937. no. 1, 1 January 1937; no. 2, 18 January 1937. GStA, I. HA, Rep. 178, no. 59. 117. Musial, Staatsarchive, 49. 118. Weiser, Geschichte, 163. 119. Ibid., 164. 120. Ernst, ‘Archival Action’, 24. 121. Mitteilungsblätter 1937. Beilage zu Mitteilungsblatt 7, 4 June 1937. GStA, I. HA, Rep 178, no. 59. 122. Ernst, ‘Archival Action’, 24. 123. Weiser, Geschichte, 166–67. 124. The U.S. authorities hoped Hein would be able to provide information about the looted archives in Warsaw, Płock and Suwalki, but there is no interrogation protocol for him in the files. U.S. National Archives, Roberts Commission, Personnel Cards, 331. 125. Hein to Zipfel, Königsberg, 26 October 1939. GStA, I. HA, Rep. 178, no. 334. 126. Lehr, Osteinsatz, 58–59.

Map 1 Germany and the occupied territories in Poland and Lithuania 1939–43

2 Chapter 3 Archives at War

During the war, Kurt Forstreuter’s scholarly output decreased in comparison to what it had been up to 1939. Beginning then, his days were increasingly given over to trips to assess the archives in the occupied territories. His scholarly production did not entirely cease, however. His superiors valued his contributions to the various Ostforschung efforts and tried to strike a balance between his travels and his work for publication. While the topics of borders and ethnicity remained central to his research, the impact of the particular holdings he seized or worked on in Königsberg became increasingly tangible; for example, immediately after assessing the archives seized in recently occupied Lithuania and the Suwałki area, he published work on the medieval border between Prussia and Lithuania and on the ‘German origin’ of Kaunas, effectively providing historical scholarship that advanced a specific political position relevant to contemporary politics. His writing during this period included nothing new about the Jewish population of Prussia – his daily work, however, increasingly confronted him with the destruction of the Jewish communities in Poland and Lithuania. Wherever he went, Forstreuter searched for politically significant archives that included information about Jews and about Polish political groups. Forstreuter’s reports consistently reflected the National Socialist state’s need to catalogue Jewish populations. Unlike his colleagues, he did not restrict his comments in his reports to the status of the synagogue archives he had been assigned; he also clarified the size and location of the Jewish population – it is perfectly clear that the files he gathered were used to produce deportation lists, and that once these lists were completed, Forstreuter was free to collect the files. He understood that these files were to be used for ‘person-related research’ and did not want this kind of research to be conducted in Königsberg, where it would have been a drain on archival resources. The files documenting Kurt Forstreuter’s itinerary do not support the post-war claim that Ernst Zipfel was solely responsible for the crimes perpetrated by the archival institutions. Letters between Forstreuter’s direct superior, Max Hein, and Zipfel suggest that while

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there was a general plan and overall guidelines for the archival work in the occupied territories – i.e., those outlined in Zipfel’s Denkschrift – on a day-to-day basis, the details were left to the expertise and discretion of the archivists on site. The conclusions arrived at in research into the workings of the administrative units in the occupied territories in general, and in Poland in particular, support this – the focus was largely on finding committed and skilled people for the fieldwork rather than on providing a detailed summary of the necessary measures. This principle held across a spectrum that ran from mass murder to archival work. From the perspective of archival studies, the issue of the principle of provenience in times of war raises interesting questions that should be reassessed in light of the wartime activity of the Königsberg state archive. In post-war Germany, such debates have focussed exclusively on the archives, cultural treasures and libraries of the Germans who were expelled from East and West Prussia, Silesia and the Balkans, while obvious parallels to the equivalent looting carried out by the Germans remain largely unacknowledged – an exception is the recent anthology edited by Sven Kriese, Archivarbeit im und für den Nationalsozialismus, which repeatedly discusses the violations of archival principles. In the case of the Prussian state archives, Forstreuter himself outlined the wartime ‘acquisition’ of the holdings in Das preußische Staatsarchiv. He defended maintaining the Königsberg state archive in West Germany as follows: The principle of provenience, whereby an archive is tied to the country where it was created requires some adjustments in the light of the experiences of the last war. An important aspect of any country is its population. … The complete separation of a people from their country creates a new situation that the archivist must address. The only possible conclusion is that in such a case, the people must be seen as the essence of a historical country and the bearers of its tradition.1

As is so often the case in Forstreuter’s writing, the ‘experiences of the last war’ refers exclusively to the suffering of the Germans, especially the Heimatvertriebene (expellees). The expulsion, resettlement and mass killing of Polish, Lithuanian, Russian and Baltic people, both Christian and Jewish, did not lead him to a similar assessment of the correct archival measures or the rights of the people affected to their history and archives. For example, he described many of the restitutions from the Archivlager Goslar to the Polish state in 1947 (e.g., the Elbląg town archive, holdings from Olsztyn/Allenstein and the remains of the Frombork/Frauenburg diocesan archives) as ‘terrible losses’ for the Königsberg archive, although he refrains from offering his opinion of the restitution of the remainder of the Płock archives. He wastes no

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words of regret on the numerous Jewish archives seized in Masovia and Suwałki or the many holdings he ordered destroyed. Astrid Eckert has reflected upon the insight of the German archivists into their personal and professional involvement in the crimes of the National Socialist state, including whether or not they in any way recognized their guilt. She has concluded that any insight was primarily expressed in personal correspondences about the de-Nazification processes, with colleagues advising each other to remain silent about their whereabouts during the war or perhaps accusing others of much more serious crimes.2 Forstreuter’s correspondence, however, lacks reflections and insights of this kind. Both professional networks and research topics and institutions of Forstreuter and other Ostforscher show a remarkable continuity stretching from the inter-war period over the first decades of the Federal Republic. Forstreuter, as the head of the exiled Königsberg archive, became more of a leading figure in these circles than he had been before. Again, the access to the archives emerges as the central aspect for the potential to create and promote a specific version of Prussian history, in which the perceived struggle between German and Slavic culture and population remained central – now from the perspective of the exiled.

Archivist in the Occupied Territories Even before the German attack on Poland, the Königsberg state archive had anticipated an increase in its responsibilities. The dissolution of the Polish national archives and their incorporation into the German administration placed serious strain on the available resources.3 The dynamics among Hein, Zipfel and Forstreuter, and the way they shared responsibility, became apparent when, in October 1939, Zipfel demanded that Forstreuter be sent to Poznań to ‘restructure’ the Polish national archive. Forstreuter was apparently reluctant to go, and Hein supported his wish to remain in Königsberg. Even in his post-war diary, Forstreuter is eager to point out that he did not want to be part of the occupying forces in Poznań ‘because of the prevailing opinion’ and because he would have preferred to become a soldier – he subsequently mentions on several occasions that the Germans did not receive a warm welcome on their way east and that he feared anti-German attacks.4 Max Hein wrote several times to Ernst Zipfel, asking him to let Forstreuter stay in Königsberg because he could read Russian and Lithuanian, language skills not really necessary for the Polish national

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archives but, by this time, crucial to daily work in Königsberg given the formation of the Warthegau and Zichenau districts. Hein had immediately understood the amount of work facing the Königsberg archivists if they were to ‘secure’ the regional archives in Grodno and Warsaw, as well as those of the voivodeships of Białystok and Warsaw. In October 1939, Hein had already chosen Forstreuter to travel to the new districts and assess the archives.5 Zipfel responded that the comprehensive task of archival reorganisation had come as a bit of a surprise to him as well and that every man was required for the job. He asserted that the task of building a new central archive in Poznań was the major focus for the Prussian archives at that point and that he could not do without ‘an experienced archivist with good language skills, such as Dr. Forstreuter’. Additionally, he asked for ‘close and confidential cooperation with the offices of the Gestapo and the SD’ in all tasks to be performed in the former Polish territories.6 Hein was already aware of several specific collections that he wanted to transfer to Königsberg, while Zipfel was focussed on establishing new administrative structures. Despite Hein’s intervention, Forstreuter was in Poznań from October 1939 until January 1940. Since there was no civil administration at that point, he received a document declaring him a member of the Wehrmacht. At the same time, the deportation of the Polish population was picking up speed. The director of the Polish national archive, Kazimierz Kaczmarczyk,7 who would survive the war and be reinstalled in his position as director, was deported to the General Governorate and replaced by a German, Erich Sandow. The University of Poznań, founded in 1919 as a Western outpost, had been the most important centre for Polish historical research about the region, with increasing political significance assigned to the study of medieval Prussia, and with a number of scholars receiving their education at Kazimierz Tyminiecki’s seminars. Publications produced by this Polish nationalist circle were monitored by the PuSte, and the Poles proved to be extremely able intellectual opponents. As such, Forstreuter found himself somewhere where he had no personal contacts – neither the Poles nor the Germans had done anything to encourage that sort of contact during the inter-war period – in an area which he most likely perceived as enemy territory. After the war, Forstreuter, who witnessed deportations of the Polish population, wrote, When I returned home one evening, I found the door to my room open, but the rest of the apartment sealed off. The apartment had been confiscated and Mrs. K. had been deported and disappeared. It was not a good idea to stay in the apartment, which from that point on would

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be regularly visited by Germans … the deportation of the Poles was an outrageous action, which many Germans also disapproved of. However, compared to the deportation of the Germans in 1945 and thereafter, it was performed much more humanely. … By comparison, life in Posen was more comfortable than in Königsberg. One could buy anything, by which I mean Germans could. … For me, it was not a lost time, this life at the edge of the war.8

Mrs. K. is the only victim Forstreuter names; he never mentions the sweeping deportations of Polish Jews or the violent attacks they had to endure from the earliest days of the occupation. He does not specify the date on which his landlady was deported, but she may well have been part of the ‘First Short-Term Plan’; between December 1 and December 17, 87,833 Poles (some of whom were Polish Jews) were deported to the General Governorate via a transit camp in Głowno. Most of their belongings were left behind in their homes, which were turned over to the German settlers.9 What Forstreuter describes here as ‘much more humane than the deportation of the Germans in 1945’ was, in fact, the elimination of the Polish intelligentsia and the deportation of thousands of people to concentration camps and forced labour, with many inevitably dying and others being intentionally killed. The measures taken immediately after the occupation and the establishment of the Warthegau district have been characterized as training for the Holocaust and for the comprehensive resettlement plans and the ethnic cleansing of the entire East. Between 30 October and 5 December 1939, the Reichsführer-SS Himmler wanted to house 7,500 Volksdeutsche in Poznań alone. For this task, two special bureaus were created: the ‘Staff for the Local Housing and Occupational Accommodation of the Baltic and Volhynian Germans’, as part of the civil administration, and the ‘Staff for the Evacuation of Poles and Jews to the General Governorate’, which was placed under SD control.10 Gauleiter Arthur Greiser accepted a tremendous number of Germans from the Baltic countries into his district, expanding the initial waves of occupation of Jewish and Polish property into full-scale ethnic cleansing in the process. Resettlement and deportation were two aspects of the far-reaching plans for the Germanization of the region. The ‘indirect elimination’ (zagłada pośrednia) meant that all measures taken by the German administration and the Wehrmacht aimed to indirectly kill off the Polish population to make space for Germans. The Jews in the area were also immediate targets, since it became obvious that killing was actually more practical and quicker than deportation.11 The details of Forstreuter’s three months of duty in Poznań remain unknown; his major task was to restructure the Polish state archive into

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a central archive for the newly created Posen district. Since he says that ‘it was not a lost time for me, this life on the edge of the war’, it seems that he must have enjoyed whatever it was he was doing. In any case, he did not publish anything in 1939. In January, Forstreuter transferred his tasks to Erich Sandow and moved back to Königsberg. Sandow became director of the Posen archive in 1941, followed by Erich Weise in 1942; the latter allowed a substantial amount of archival material to be packed and shipped to the West in 1943 and 1944. Most of the remaining documents were burned in January 1945, as the Germans fled the Red Army.

Płock, Masovia and Suwałki When Forstreuter returned to Königsberg, he found his skills much in demand at the archives in the other newly acquired districts. 1940–42 were extremely busy years for him. Due to his Lithuanian language skills, he was initially assigned the task of renaming villages and other sites in the Zichenau and Memel districts, as he had previously done in Warthegau, but when he was subsequently sent to Płock on several trips that were considered key priorities, the renaming project was postponed until the autumn of 1940.12 Płock attracted the particular attention of the Königsberg archive and a number of other institutions because of its rich medieval collections. Max Hein had already visited in December 1939, when Forstreuter was still in Poznań, and, with the help of Theodor Schieder, had assessed the collections in the town and in the surrounding areas.13 After the war, Forstreuter presented this extensive and carefully planned plundering as purely a conservation measure, because the archives’ rooms were needed for other purposes.14 In January 1940, he travelled to Płock and Czerwińsk with Max Hein. Their targets were the Płock state archive, the Bischöfliches Archiv (episcopal archive) and the Geistliches Archiv at the priests’ seminary. Hein noted in his report that the Geistliches Archiv had already been occupied by the SS (9 December 1939), who had shown a full understanding of the importance of this archive, which was to be transferred to Königsberg as quickly as possible. He failed to mention the presence of a third expert, Rudolf Diesch, director of the Königsberg university libraries, who was also interested in the collections in Płock. Diesch had been a member of a commission of German scholars that had travelled through Poland before the war and investigated the treasures in Polish libraries for later requisition. In summer

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1939, they had visited Płock, where the priests had happily shown their guests their treasures. The journalist Włodzimierz Kalicki has described the looting of the Płock archives and collections in detail. Both the treasures of the cathedral and the manuscript collection at the priests’ seminary in Płock – which dated back to the twelfth century – were plundered. Kalicki mentions Forstreuter’s post-war correspondence about this event with the director of the University of Göttingen, which had received one of the Bible manuscripts. Forstreuter chose to present himself as the person who had saved the medieval collections from the plundering and destruction of the SS, but his actual role was a more complicated one. The SS-Totenkopf division housed at the priests’ seminary wanted to throw out the remaining books, an action that Forstreuter, Hein and Diesch did, in fact, prevent during their first visit a few days after the unit received its lodgings. They took possession of this collection of medieval manuscripts for the archive and library in Königsberg. Most of the bishops and priests were arrested and then tortured and killed at a local concentration camp, and the SS searched the cathedral for its treasures. After the war, a large amount of the material from the archive was sent to Göttingen, along with the holdings of the Königsberg archive, and a painful process of restoration began. Some of this treasure from the cathedral has never been found.15 The reports Forstreuter wrote for the Königsberg state archive were more than enthusiastic about the help he received from the SS. When he, Hein and Diesch visited on 18–19 January 1940, the Germans were still searching for the treasures of the Płock cathedral, which included high medieval Bible manuscripts and a reliquary containing the skull of Saint Sygmunt. Forstreuter claimed that the most valuable Bible, an illuminated Old Testament from the twelfth century, was stolen by the SS and presented to Himmler as a gift – the book has never been found, and there are no contemporary sources that address Forstreuter’s personal role in this extensive plundering. What is, however, obvious, even from his own reports, is that the Prussian archival administration did not, for the most part, compete with the SS but cooperated closely with both that organization and the ERR,16 who had been the first to loot the Płock archives. The archivists made the arrangements with the head of the SS dispositional division, which by this point was housed in the seminary; the SS agreed to provide trucks for the transport as long as the archive paid for the fuel.17 Shortly thereafter, from 5 February until 9 February, Forstreuter returned to Płock alone to preside over the packing and shipping

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of the holdings of the episcopal archive. The SS provided two men to pack the manuscripts and ten more to load them, giving some idea of the enormous amount of material removed from this archive alone, only one of three in Płock that were looted. The room housing the archive was completely emptied, with the exception of approximately 120 folio books, which Forstreuter recommended be sent to the Königsberg library instead. He also refused to take the church records with him to Königsberg, instead recommending leaving them in Płock since ‘the Jews make up about one third of the population in the towns, and since Jews and Poles are treated differently, a large variety of Aryan research could evolve. It would be best to establish a Sippenamt in Płock, where all research related to individuals could be conducted.’18 Some of the holdings seized from the Płock archives were sent to Grasleben in 1944, stored at the Archivlager Goslar and returned to Poland in 1947; others remained in East Prussia and were destroyed.19 On this short visit to Płock, on his way to Warsaw, Forstreuter finally met a Jew, the Judenälteste (Jewish Elderman) Salomon Bromberger of the ghetto community, which to Forstreuter’s surprise at the time ‘still exists’ – in fact, the ghetto in Płock had been established only a week before Forstreuter’s arrival, on 1 September 1940, and it was to be home not only to the approximately seven thousand Jews of Płock but also to some three thousand refugees from other towns. The deputy mayor and Forstreuter had the Judenälteste come to the office and account for the remains of the archives – of which he knew nothing, ‘since he has been in office for only a year’.20 Forstreuter seems to have believed that the Judenälteste was an actual and traditional role in Jewish communities. The Judenrat (Jewish Council) of Płock had been established at the end of December 1939 and was obliged to organize forced labour for the Germans. In Płock, Forstreuter dealt directly with victims of the German occupation. Polish Christians and Jews were forced to work registering, packing and shipping documents. Forstreuter made mention of the great number of these workers, as well as of the lack of German supervisors;21 a Polish archivist was responsible for the registration of the documents being seized. In all of his reports, Forstreuter provided an assessment of the skills of his non-German colleagues and a recommendation about how they should be handled. For example, he requested that the Płock archivist, Mr. Witkowski, be locked up between his work shifts. However, the Germans at the district administrative office refused the request, since they were working with a number of Polish civil servants who were allowed free movement

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when they were off duty and were even, to some degree, permitted to work on their own projects.22 Forstreuter’s reports clarify how he saw his non-German colleagues – he unquestioningly accepted that they were Untermenschen (subhumans) by definition, and therefore untrustworthy and dangerous, and made a point of his superior position over his former colleagues. Between his travels, Forstreuter conducted his work in Königsberg as usual. He worked with the inventories, and he gave a lecture, which he subsequently turned into an article in AF, about ‘the war ships of the Teutonic Order’ at the Verein für Geschichte Ost- und Westpreußens.23 A month after his first visit to Płock, Forstreuter was sent on a trip through Masovia to take an inventory of the Ostrołęka, Maków Mazowiecki, Pułtusk, Przasnysz and Ciechanów archives. In just four days, he assessed the communal archives, the church archives and the archives of the Jewish communities in the entire area, noted their location and degree of interest to the Königsberg archive, and provided recommendations about whether to send documents to Königsberg or to leave them where they were. The new district of Zichenau had been incorporated into the Reich despite the fact that Germans made up only about 10 per cent of the population. Another 10 per cent were Jews, but most of the population were Polish Catholics. This created quite a problem for the German administration, because it meant the majority was defined as undesirable. In addition, many of those considered to be Reichsdeutsche (ethnic Germans who resided within the territories of the Reich as it was founded in 1871) had, after several generations, begun to speak Polish and to identify as Poles. The NOFG was not the least among the German organizations dealing with this fact – the research institution presented four reports about the Zichenau district during the second half of 1940, with statistical data and historical information about the ethnic groups in the district; the upshot was that there were simply too many Poles in the district for complete annihilation to be a realistic option.24 Still, the extermination of the Polish elite was particularly brutal and thorough in Zichenau.25 In many of the towns in the district, the tiny minority of Reichsdeutsche actively plundered and destroyed Jewish property.26 Given that the German civil administration had been in place since October of the previous year, Forstreuter was quite late in arriving to assess the archives, and many anti-Jewish measures had already been enacted on the basis of the documents he was supposed to collect. Forstreuter was well aware of the disappearance of the Jews and the key role of the archives in that process, but he seems to have

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believed that at least some of them had voluntarily disappeared, for example from Ostrołęka. Regarding the Jewish files – the old synagogue has been burned down, and the new one serves partially as a garage and partially as a storage room. … There are no longer any Jews present in the district. They joined the Soviet troops that had briefly occupied Ostrołęka in October when they retreated.27

The reality was that the Germans had expelled the entire Jewish community from Ostrołęka on October 4, 1939, initially pushing them in the direction of the Russian border at Łomża. Those who returned were shot, and the five hundred Jews remaining in the town were executed later that month.28 Forstreuter continued his travels to Maków Mazowieki, where he found no Jewish files. Later that year, many of the approximately four thousand Jews of Maków Mazowiecki were deported to a labour camp; late in 1940 the ghetto was established, and in 1942 the majority of its inhabitants was deported to Treblinka and killed. Forstreuter continued his travels in the wake of the Holocaust: Pultusk … the mayor was unable to provide any information about the Jewish files. The Jews were all dragged across the Narew in September. No Jews remain in the district. … Praschnitz … the Jewish files have not been found. The synagogue has been burned down. There are only 170 Jews left in the town.29

Repression in Przasnysz took particularly humiliating forms. The synagogue and the rabbi’s house were set on fire, and those who survived the first pogroms fled to nearby towns. The town was judenfrei by the autumn 1939. Forstreuter’s travels on behalf of the state archive also serve as a record of the disappearance of the Jewish communities. There were about eighty thousand Jews in the Zichenau district prior to the occupation; twenty-six thousand of them were deported to the General Governorate, and the rest were expelled to Lithuania and Russia, where most of them fell victim to the next stage of German expansion. Of the Jewish population of Warthegau and Zichenau, only a few hundred survived. Forstreuter knew that the Jewish communities would soon face additional measures. This is clear from the conclusion of his first report of 1940: It was also necessary to inventory the written records of the Jewish ­communities at this point, since it was to be feared that this material, which is especially important regarding the study of race, could be lost during the retreat of the Jews; something that has unfortunately already happened.30

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Forstreuter recognized that the primary goal was to cleanse the region of Jews. The communities’ archives were not being saved for their own sake, but to facilitate future race studies – it was effectively the implementation of National Socialist research on Jews at the level of archival administration. In this region, Forstreuter and the Prussian archives were the first to loot the Polish archives, but the Jewish communities’ archives had generally already been looted by the time they got there. Forstreuter noted any holdings relevant for the cataloguing of Jews found in the Polish archives and took measures to ensure that these documents were transferred to Königsberg as quickly as possible. It was usually the SS or the Gestapo who were in control of the Jewish communities’ archives during the early months of the occupation, but it was clear that these holdings were considered crucial to the Prussian archival administration’s overall goal and were eventually to be turned over to them. During his early travels, Forstreuter’s general focus was on the larger institutional archives – town archives and that sort of thing – and on the Jewish communities’ archives. He was sent to most of the places he visited in early 1940 a second time later the same year to take care of the minor institutional archives. For example, he visited Suwałki for a second time from 27 May until 2 June and Ostrołęka and the surrounding area from 15 July until 23 July. In some cases, his search for the Jewish archives was more successful the second time, and in other cases, he returned to searching and looting other archives. In Pułtusk and Ostrołęka, the goal of the second visit was both to continue the search for the Jewish archives and to sift through the archives of the Landratsämter (administrative district offices), the towns and municipalities, the courts and the forestry commission offices.31 The incorporation of the Zichenau district eventually became a burden for the Königsberg archive, as the notes from a meeting between Max Hein and Ernst Zipfel in Berlin in January 1942 make clear. Hein complained that the newly acquired holdings were enormous, while the public and administrative interest in them was minimal. The archivists in Königsberg were spending all of their time organizing and registering these holdings, but no one was requesting them. He reported that the staff in Königsberg had decided to destroy more than two-thirds of the holdings from Zichenau, since the work they would require was considered a waste of time – even though, as Hein mentions, the Deutschtum in the Zichenau district had been relatively large. In the case of the Białystok district, where he assessed the Deutschtum to be almost non-existent, the archives were of even less interest to Königsberg, and it is likely that the destruction was even more extensive.32

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Suwałki (Sudauen) was on Forstreuter’s travel itinerary, beginning with a December 1939 visit in the company of Max Hein.33 The Polish administrative districts Augustów and Suwałki were given to Germany in a German-Russian agreement, and in October 1939 they were incorporated into the newly formed Zichenau district as part of the province East Prussia. The so-called Suwalki-Zipfel was administered as part of the Gumbinnen district, which had already been in Forstreuter’s area of responsibility for some years. Forstreuter clearly expressed his pleasure about this development in an article he wrote for AF, publishing the initial results of the on-going study he was conducting of the Prussian-Lithuanian border area. He described the annexation of the Klaipėda region in spring 1939 as a ‘corrective’ restitution of the 1422 border. Annexation and war – these become ‘the storms of our time’ in Forstreuter’s enthusiastic praise for what he sees as a return to the historically correct status quo. The annexation of Poland, particularly the founding of the Suwałki district, is described as ‘a small correction of the existent border in favour of the German Reich’. Forstreuter finds the new borders in the Suwałki region interesting ‘from a historical, geographical and völkische perspective’ and welcomes the fact that ‘a piece of old Prussian soil has again washed up onto the shore of the Prussian borders’.34 From a historical point of view, the article primarily deals with sixteenth-century border conflicts between Prussia and Lithuania after the Teutonic Order’s state had lost control to Lithuania of the area north and east of the town of Klaipėda in 1422 – Klaipėdos kraštas/Memelland, the strip just north of the town, was given to Prussia, while the rest of Žemaitija, or Lithuania Minor, was given to Lithuania. While this border had been intact for more than five hundred years, Forstreuter was able to produce evidence of Prussian attempts to regain control of smaller pieces of land after 1422 – which eventually led to the devastating peace treaty of 1466, in which the Order lost even more of its territory. The article is filled with Lithuanian, Prussian and German Volkstum constructs and their alleged convergences and divergences over the centuries. He concluded that the German and Prussian Volkskraft had declined after the fifteenth century wars, making it necessary to accept Lithuanian immigration into Prussian territory in the northern part of the contested area, as well as Masovian immigration into the southern region. Forstreuter presents his findings about these migratory movements as revolutionary and novel, and it is interesting that he does not follow the well-established line about Kulturboden (cultural soil, meaning the völkische idea that a territory adopts characteristics of the people living upon it) but instead relies on a different and more

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mysterious ideology. Even though Lithuanians had been settling on Prussian land for centuries, Forstreuter concludes on the basis of his research that the 1919 Lithuanian claims were claims on ‘something they had never owned’. Considering that this article is based on a study Forstreuter had been pursuing for close to ten years by this point, the results he presents and arguments he makes are surprisingly fuzzy. It can further be presumed that given that this article was published in the immediate aftermath of his travels in the Suwałki region, his conclusions must have been in some ways influenced by his exposure to a region experiencing a period of massive deportation, pogroms and resettlement. The connection between Forstreuter’s work for the state archive and his research becomes even clearer in a 1941 article in MVGOW, which was based directly on material gathered during his looting trips. In his description of the origins of the Protestant community in Suwałki, he commented that the accessibility of Polish archives has now considerably improved, which will mean that new facts about German settlement in Poland and Lithuania are to be expected. When writing his article, he had access to the holdings of the Protestant community in Suwałki, which had been transferred to the state archive in Königsberg.35 As the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) would discover in 1940, the Königsberg state archive had seized the school holdings from all Protestant church archives in the region.36 Forstreuter also hoped to secure the Suwałki district administration’s registry and the Jewish archives. Both were sorted and packed for shipment to Königsberg in July 1940.37 The archive’s diary entries about earlier trips indicate that it had been a long and difficult search. No Jewish community documents had been found during Hein’s first visit in December 1939, but he had heard and noted that it was assumed that they were stored in a house that had belonged to the brothers Zym and Abraham Fink, which was by this time deserted. Forstreuter seized these documents three months later, in March 1940.38 This time he talked to the head of the local Gestapo unit, who was keeping an eye on the Jewish community’s archives – they were still stored in a former private Jewish home. Forstreuter made the Gestapo chief agree to transport the documents to Königsberg. In June, he visited Suwałki again, spending three days examining the starosta’s archives and one additional day continuing the search for the Jewish archives. Again, the Gestapo and the SD helped him to find the Jewish community’s archives, which proved difficult because ‘the house [where they were stored during his previous visit] is inhabited by different people now.’ Most of the ­material – accounting books – was sent for destruction, while

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the ­‘historically interesting’ remainder was sent to the customs office, where it was stored with the starosta’s holdings for further processing.39 Forstreuter was taken to neighbouring Sejny in an SD car in the company of Untersturmführer Dilba, who was responsible for the SD’s archival activity and who Forstreuter complimented for recognizing the importance of the archives, but the Jewish archives were not to be found. Forstreuter mentions only Dilba’s last name and that he was a fellow from Memelland, but most likely this was Benno Dilba, born in the Klaipėda region, SS membership number 325 708.40 Forstreuter mentions regretfully that the files had been destroyed ‘through ignorance’. The SS and the SD seemed to have been particularly helpful in transporting both the archivists and the documents, as well as in gathering information. In Sejny, private Jewish book collections and libraries had been broken up and stockpiled in the synagogue – the Jews themselves had been expelled to the no man’s land between occupied Poland and Lithuania. Forstreuter did not have enough time to properly examine the books, but as they were primarily printed books, he presumed they would be of little interest to the archive. He contacted the Königsberg state library, which agreed to send someone to assess the books, with the promise that the archive would be informed if any archival material were found. Besides examining these Jewish books, Forstreuter inspected the archive of the monastery in Sejny, as well as those of the court and the municipality. ‘The town was willing to deposit their archives in Königsberg’, he reported.41 More than once, Forstreuter wrote that the majority of the Jewish communities’ holdings were historically insignificant and that they added nothing to the study of race, so they would be destroyed.42 During a third visit to Suwałki in July 1940, he specified that the historically interesting remnants of the Jewish archives would be sent to Königsberg within a week’s time.43 Responsibility for this fell to Heinrich Blank, a RSHA official. In 1942, Blank discovered that all of the documents necessary for registering the Jews had already been taken to Königsberg by Forstreuter,44 who also had been in contact with the RSHA in 1940 regarding the church records from Płock, which he verified had arrived in Königsberg where they were being processed and registered.45 Heinrich Blank asked for Forstreuter’s expert opinion before travelling in September 1941 to Białystok, where he himself investigated the archives that Forstreuter had already sifted through.46 This contact was part of the years of negotiations between the archives and the Sippenämter for the location and assessment of church records and other person-related documents.47

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Warsaw The reorganization of the Warsaw Central archives after the German occupation was comprehensive. The plan was to split up the archive based on an extremely strict principle of provenience, rolling back the Polish state’s centralization measures in the process. Thus, holdings were to be sent to Zichenau, Warthegau, Gdańsk and Poznań, requiring a series of tedious negotiations and trips back and forth – the process was far from complete when the Red Army liberated Warsaw.48 Forstreuter was sent to Warsaw in September 1940 (a month before the ghetto was sealed off), and again in January 1941, and from 16–21 June of the same year. As usual, he had been informed about these trips a couple of weeks ahead of time and had agreed to take them on, although he repeatedly complained about other colleagues who did not pitch in and contribute to archive assignments the way he did. It becomes evident in his post-war diary entries about his travels to Warsaw that Forstreuter had had encounters with Jewish communities that he did not mention in his work reports. He recalls ‘six beautiful weeks in autumn’, before the ghetto was established, but when ‘the Jews were wearing the yellow star’. In 1941, he took a train through the ghetto and had ‘awful impressions’.49 In Warsaw, Forstreuter sifted through the holdings of the main archive that were to be distributed to the archives in Gdańsk, Stettin and Königsberg – Forstreuter had met with representatives from the other archives in Gdańsk on his way to Warsaw to determine what interested them. He was visiting at the request of the General Governorate’s archival administration, which was separate from the Prussian archive.50 During previous trips, the military administration, in the form of either the Wehrmacht or the SS, had always dealt with Forstreuter’s accommodations, paperwork and transportation. During his October trip to Warsaw, however, things seem not to have unfolded so smoothly. He complained in his report that no one had been expecting him, and nobody had any idea where to house him. Also his salary was not taken care of, and he requested that money be sent. He spent a few days examining church records and diploma collections, and in particular the Radziwiłł family archive, which he claimed for Königsberg.51 This report sheds light on the strategy of the Prussian archivists in the occupied territories: principles of archival provenience were frequently violated, with archives being broken up, removed from their historical context and deliberately allocated to the archives in Gdańsk, Königsberg and Poznań.

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Forstreuter returned to Warsaw twice in 1942. The negotiations about the Warsaw holdings were still on-going, with the archives in Königsberg, Danzig, Stettin and Bromberg each to receive their share. Forstreuter took the seventy-four Teutonic Order vellum diplomas to Königsberg52 – something he viewed as the correction of a historical error, as the Polish crown had seized these documents during the wars of the fifteenth century. Despite various and persisting attempts of the Polish state to regain these diplomas, they are until today being kept in the GStA. In June of the same year, Forstreuter had another work meeting in Warsaw with Erich Weise and Franz Böhm, the directors of the newly formed archives in Danzig and Posen.53 During his final trip to Warsaw, in July 1943, Forstreuter lived in constant fear because ‘assassinations were a daily event. The ghetto had been destroyed, but many Jews had escaped, which added to the general atmosphere of chaos. There had also been a bombing at the archive. Külke was killed and Buttkus injured.’54 His belief that many Jews had escaped the destruction of the ghetto in May and were running around in the town did not conform to the sad facts, but it was true that the archive had been targeted with a letter bomb by the Polish resistance movement. Buttkus, who survived his injuries, would later become a close friend of Forstreuter.55 As with many of Forstreuter’s diary notations, this one was written in the spirit of German colonialism in the East; given the nature of their cultural sense of superiority, many Germans felt as if they had been flung into an uncivilized country when they were in Poland, and this was not only the case in the rural areas.56

Lithuania and Białystok In 1941, the war with the Soviet Union and the initial progress of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern front brought with it a new area of activity for the Königsberg state archive: Lithuania, an issue close to Forstreuter’s heart. Thematically, this trip coincided with his continuing study of Lithuania Minor; the same year, he published yet another article about the historical development of the border between Prussia and Lithuania in AF.57 As far as archival work goes, developments in Lithuania make the connection between the archives and the military and SS units more apparent. During the first weeks of the war, the Germans suddenly developed a previously unknown aggressive dynamic in the Lithuanian border region, with the first waves of mass murder of Jews taking place there.58

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Lithuania had been occupied by the Soviet Union since the Hitler-Stalin treaty in 1939. During the last weeks before Germany attacked the USSR, the population of Lithuania had suffered mass deportations to Siberia, and immediately after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa an armed rebellion broke out in the attempt to re-establish national autonomy. Initially, the Germans were welcomed enthusiastically in Lithuania, not at least because many believed them to be liberators rather than occupiers. The first wave of pogroms against the Jewish population was carried out by Lithuanians and Germans in collaboration. Vilnius and Kaunas particularly have recently received increased attention from scholars of Holocaust history who have reconstructed the collaboration between Lithuanian nationalists and German Einsatzgruppen in the mass murder of Jews. This work provides a background that makes it possible to place Forstreuter’s reports in the context of the events taking place at the time, specifically, the mass executions of Jews. In his post-war diary, Forstreuter mentions the Jews in Kaunas, but his main concern remains the Lithuanian reaction to the German occupation: When I returned to Kaunas, I witnessed the installation of the Ostland government. This quickly dampened Lithuanian enthusiasm for Germany … many Jews had already been killed in Fort VII, presumably by Lithuanians. The Jews had already been evacuated to the Vilijampolė suburb.59

Vilnius and Kaunas were occupied on 24 June 1941, and Forstreuter visited both towns a month later, arriving in Kaunas on 21 July. Four days later, the civil administration was put in place; the fact that Forstreuter’s travels were unaffected by the shift from military to civil administration makes the cooperation between the archival administration and the military clear. Forstreuter was primarily interested in the Lithuanian central archive, which the Red Army had transferred to a monastery in Pažaislis, close to Kaunas. He was unaware that the archive had been relocated – in Lithuania, the two years of Soviet occupation had led to a certain amount of chaos in the administrative routines, and the Germans were obviously not in all cases updated on the location of certain archives. As a result, when Forstreuter arrived in Kaunas, he went directly to Fort VII, the archive’s original location. Forts IV, VII and IX, all parts of the defensive walls built around Kaunas in the nineteenth century, became key sites in the destruction of the Jewish community. Fort VII, which indeed had been used as archive before 1939, was the

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first of the old defence buildings to be turned into a concentration camp and killing site. Forstreuter reported: My first concern was, of course, the Lithuanian central archive, which used to be at Fort VII. However, I was informed that the Bolshevists had removed this archive from Fort VII to free up the space, so it could be used to hold political prisoners. Even now, there are prisoners in Fort VII, for the most part Jews.60

The establishment of Fort VII as primarily a Jewish concentration camp that continued to operate following the mass murder of late June was a reaction to the pogroms in Vilijampolė and in the Litaukis garage.61 The decision was meant to restore public order and to have the killing proceed in the more restricted and controlled way favoured by the Germans. The chronology of events provides some insight into how closely Forstreuter and his institution worked with those responsible for the mass killings. The first organized pogrom against the Jewish population took place in Vilijampolė from 25 to 27 June. From the beginning of July onward, about 1,500 Jews were jailed in Fort VII, and mass executions were a daily event. During this warm summer month, disposing of the bodies posed a problem. This irritated the Einsatzkommando 3, which had approved of the killings but now wanted the entire process to be better organized. As a result, a death squad was formed under the command of Joachim Hamann to continue the killings throughout the month of July.62 Forstreuter was at Fort VII and the Pažaislis monastery from 21 to 24 July. At this point, killings orchestrated by the Einsatzgruppe Jäger had replaced the pogroms that had immediately followed the arrival of the German army. Forstreuter also notes the ‘evacuation’ of Jews to Vilijampolė. On 15 August, the Vilijampolė ghetto was sealed off. A major wave of mass executions took place three days later in Fort IX, and again at the end of October.63 The approximately 1,500 Jews still incarcerated in Fort VII in early July were routinely tortured by the Lithuanian guards, and corpses were lying around while Forstreuter went about organizing the initial transport of the governor of Klaipėda’s holdings to Königsberg. In 1942, he published an article about the medieval establishment of Kaunas in Jomsburg, affirming the town’s German origins – a quite obvious expression of approval for the annexation despite any lack of open support for the Holocaust. The article, focused on the relation between German, Jewish and Slavic inhabitants and cultures in Kaunas, characterizes the town, founded in 1408, as that closest to Prussia and thus most heavily influenced by German culture. He mentions also that the Magdeburg

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town law privileged only Christians and basically only Germans (in contrast to Vilnius, where all inhabitants were included in the law code), while baptized Lithuanians and Russians were not included in the town’s privileges. Jews, ‘of course’, neither had the right to become citizens.64 The text, written in direct connection to Forstreuter’s own experiences in Kaunas, witnesses of the wish to project modern relations and perceived ethnic struggles into the Middle Ages, as well as of an attempt to use medieval legal relations and the presence of German merchants for a legitimization of the contemporary war – German culture, German presence, German language ever since 1408. This publication and his regular writings about the Prussian-Lithuanian border were used by the Reichskommissar in Riga in formulating the Strukturbericht über das Ostland (Report on the Structure of the Baltic Countries) and to plan and carry out deportations, executions and resettlement;65 this served to establish him as the key expert on sources about Lithuania, and he was frequently asked to produce studies on demographic developments in the area. During the same trip, Forstreuter visited Vilnius from 25 to 29 July. After the war, he remembered, I had seen Vilnius in 1929 under Polish rule. Now it had changed, turned Lithuanian, but the Polish impact in the bourgeoisie was still unmistakeable. The numerous Jews, still existing, were already miserably suppressed. Thus many impressions were clouded while I gave myself to the magic of this town.66

His task was to conduct an initial assessment of the local archives, particularly the state archives and the university archives. He immediately packed the university’s collection of diplomas and had it shipped to Königsberg. He was not only interested in the documents but in the personnel as well; regarding the latter, he said that given the demographic structure of the town and the region, Polish archivists – ‘Polish or Polonised Lithuanians’ – would be necessary, and he assessed the current archive director, the Lithuanian Juozas Stakauskas, as ‘speaking fluent German. Made a quite reliable impression.’ Here again, he maintained his pre-war differentiation of non-German colleagues; those who were willing to adopt German language and culture were regarded as ‘German-friendly’, while the others were rejected as foreigners. In the case of Stakauskas, he was mistaken. The Lithuanian archivist and priest used his position to hide and save a number of Jews when the ghetto was evacuated. He brought twelve people to the Benedictine monastery, where the archival holdings were being stored,

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and hid them there from the spring of 1943 until liberation in July 1944.67 Stakauskas survived the war, and in 1974, four years before his death, he was honoured as Righteous Among the Nations.68 As for the documents, for the most part Forstreuter could only report about where they had been taken; many of the state archive holdings had been transferred to Minsk by the Red Army, and Forstreuter recommended sending a German archivist there to seize them. As previously mentioned, the Königsberg archive was particularly interested in the Radziwiłł family archive, but it still had not been located. Some medieval Bible manuscripts that the Germans had hoped to take possession of had also been lost.69 The state archive building in Vilnius had been locked and sealed by the SD, and Forstreuter worked closely with them to locate the holdings. The chronological relationship between the mass murders and Forstreuter’s visit is striking in this case as well, and it might very well have ‘clouded’ his impressions of the ‘magic of this town’. A special SD division, the Einsatzkommando (EK) 9, working with a group of Lithuanian volunteers, shot approximately five hundred people every day in July in Paneriai/Ponar, a suburb of Vilnius. On 20 July, the Wehrmacht and the SD carried out a major raid and collected and secured all of the files relevant for registering the Jews. On 23 July, two days before Forstreuter’s arrival in Vilnius, most of the EK 9 left the town for Minsk, but the shootings nonetheless continued throughout the week. Daily, except for Sundays, the Lithuanian division and a small section of the EK 9 used the lists provided by the SD to deport Jews to Paneriai, where they were killed – these lists were compiled from the documents Forstreuter was trying to get a hold of for the archive; he mentions his negotiations with the SD and that they agreed to provide ‘everything that was not needed for immediate police measures for the archives to sift through’.70 The total number of victims had risen to approximately five thousand by the end of July.71 During a later visit, Forstreuter even used the road from Vilnius to Grodno, passing by the Paneriai killing site. He concluded his report about this trip with a suggestion that the Lithuanian archives be entirely reorganized ‘after the liquidation of the Lithuanian ministries’. Compared to other towns, Forstreuter’s work with the Jewish archives in Vilnius is extremely thin. The ghetto comprised major parts of the Old Town, it existed between September 1941 and September 1943, established after Forstreuter’s first visit. Jews had made up about 45 per cent of Vilnius’ population before the war; there were 105 synagogues (of which only one is left today) in the so-called ‘Jerusalem of the North’. The major cultural goods were looted by other institu-

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tions than the Königsberg archive, and Forstreuter did not engage any deeper in the whereabouts of, for example, the treasures of the YIVO library and other Yiddish institutions. Forstreuter took a surprising amount holiday time in 1941: thirtyone days in all, in April, May, August and early October. The August holiday was in direct connection to his Białystok trip, but the others were taken during periods when he was working in Königsberg.72 Between his two trips to Kaunas, Forstreuter and other Königsberg archivists had to assess the archives in Białystok and Grodno as well. Their immense holdings were, however, not transported out. Instead, the buildings were closed to the public and sealed off during the German occupation, then destroyed when the Red Army arrived. Forstreuter went there three times in late 1941, first from 18 to 20 August, directly after the military government had been replaced by civil administration on 15 August, and on the same day when Erich Koch was made head of the civil administration of the Białystok district. Forstreuter returned then in the company of Max Hein from 26 to 29 October, and one last time in December 1941. The seizure of the archives of both the town and the district of Białystok was performed with the close cooperation of the Landesstelle Ostpreußen für Nachkriegsgeschichte. In his postwar diary, Forstreuter mentions that during his last trip, in December 1941, he was accompanied by both Theodor Schieder and Kurt von Raumer. By that point, von Raumer held the chair at the Albertina which previously had belonged to Hans Rothfels – von Raumer’s participation is not, however, mentioned in the official archive reports.73 Białystok had had about 100,000 inhabitants in 1941, of which approximately 50 per cent were Jews. The first mass executions had taken place from June to August 1941. Following a year of relative quiet, Jews in the district were suddenly concentrated and liquidated on 2 November 1942.74 In August and October, several hundred executions took place in Białystok, most of them performed by police battalions.75 Forstreuter travelled to Białystok immediately after the military government had been replaced by a civil government under the leadership of Erich Koch, whose administrative district of East Prussia now also included parts of the earlier Polesie Voivodeship and the former Białystok Voivodeship, with the exception of Suwałki.76 Forstreuter unsuccessfully attempted to contact the civil commissioner, Waldemar Magunia, and talked instead to his second in command, Dr. Fritz Brix, governor of the Tilsit subdistrict and thereby most familiar to Forstreuter’s home area, whom Forstreuter attested had a great interest in archival matters – it was at this point the civil administration that was responsible for cataloguing and deporting the Jews, as well as

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for most of the framework for their existence such as forced labor and ghettoization.77 After visiting Białystok twice, Hein and Forstreuter recommended that an outpost of the Königsberg archive should be established there rather than ‘securing’ the holdings, because there were too many archives of interest and it would be too expensive to ship them all to Königsberg. As in the other cases, in Białystok, Forstreuter cooperated closely with military units and especially with the SD. During his first trip to Białystok in August, the Ortskommandant (local SS commander) lodged Forstreuter with a military unit. He arrived at an agreement with the SD to have the Protestant church, where the Białystok state archive was stored, sealed. He also negotiated with SD representatives about holdings from Grodno, which had been transported to Białystok and turned over to the SD – the files of the Soviet political police, the NKVD, were of particular interest to the SD. Forstreuter noted that a majority of the town’s residents were Jews, but he made no mention of their complete ghettoization or of the extermination measures already being undertaken.78 It is not until his post-war diary that he mentions that ‘most of the Jews were already in the ghetto’. Max Hein, who, as has been mentioned, accompanied Forstreuter on his October 1941 trip, noted in his report to the archival administration that the starosta’s archive was being stored in the synagogue, ‘a spacious, solid building’.79 This could not, however, have been the Great Synagogue in the Jewish quarter Chanajki, which had been burnt down exactly four months earlier (27–28 June) by members of Police Bataillon 309, with approximately eight hundred Jews inside, on the day that became known as der royter fraytik, the Red Friday.80 Typically, Forstreuter and Hein paid special attention to the Jewish archives in Białystok and the surrounding towns, as well as to church records. Forstreuter had located the church records archive in a building in Alexanderstraße during his first visit and, at that point, drew attention to its significant historical value, noting that ‘the civil administration will surely need it later for studies of race (Aryan certificates)’. Throughout the region, the plundering of archives continued, and so did the pattern of eradicating Jews. Two days after Forstreuter and Hein’s visit, all of the Jews in the Białystok district suddenly found themselves sealed off in ghettos. The ghetto in the town of Białystok remained in place until August 1943, when, despite the resistance of its underground movement, all of the inhabitants were deported or killed. Shortly after the liquidation of the ghetto, Königsberg archivist Hans Quednau transported parts of the Białystok town archives to the empty buildings for storage.81

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The goal was to make certain sources from the Białystok district, especially church records and guild holdings, immediately available for studies of the area’s Deutschtum82 – these studies were performed by the members of Schieder’s Landesstelle. The ghettos in Białystok are occasionally mentioned in the reports written by members of the Landesstelle about the demographic structure in the town and the district.83 Schieder’s employee Ernst Keit, who had been in the area several times before his final visit in January 1942, worked on a report entitled Das Nationalitätengefüge des Bezirks Bialystok und seine geschichtliche Entwicklung (The Setup of Nationalities in the Bialystok Administrative District and its Historical Development).84 The Landesstelle mentioned Forstreuter in a report about their ‘measures in the Reichskommissariat Ostland’ as the archivist responsible for the archives in Lithuania, Kaunas, Vilnius and Białystok, noting that he had transported the Białystok and Grodno archives to Königsberg.85

Research during Wartime In 1942 Forstreuter seems to have been in some sort of crisis. His sister Erna died, leaving their mother alone on the farm in Weedern. His sister’s husband Willy died in fighting at the Eastern front, and one of their sons, Ulrich (born 1921), was missing in Russia.86 Forstreuter’s private travel diary does not include any logs for that year. By this point the archival administration had found a way to protect their more valuable employees from the demands of the NSDAP and from other duties that might take up their research time. Forstreuter did, however, travel to Białystok one more time, in spite of the fact that the state archive considered the holdings of little interest to Königsberg. One incident provides interesting insight into the relationship between those employees who were party members and those who were not, and how this may have affected their careers. A major conflict seems to have developed between Forstreuter and Carl Hinrichs, the latter founder of the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut at the Freie Universität. Hinrichs (born 1900) joined the NSDAP in 1933 and was committed to various other party organizations as well (the Reichsbund Deutscher Beamten, Reichsluftschutzbund, Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt, beginning in 1934, the Verein für das Deutschtum im Ausland, beginning in 1938, and served as Blockwart, 1939–41). He had been provided a post at the Privy State Archive in Berlin in 1933 and completed his Habilitation in 1937, after which he was transferred to the state archive in Königsberg – a change in his career path that he used after the war for

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his self-presentation as active in the resistance movement and victim of political persecution during National Socialism.87 Hinrichs was clearly pursuing a career path that included both archival work and university employment, so he was eager to minimize his tasks for the archive and concentrate on his scholarly work. Forstreuter complained about him in a letter he wrote to Zipfel in 1941, agreeing to yet another extended stay in Warsaw. While stressing his commitment to these strenuous and time-consuming trips, he remarked that Hinrichs behaved ‘nicht beamtenmäßig’, not like a civil servant, focussing on his research instead of dealing with necessary practical archival tasks.88 He had already complained about Hinrichs several times before this, including to his immediate superior, Hein, pointing out Hinrichs’s unwillingness to integrate into the ‘community of archivists’ and his efforts to escape archival work and looting trips. This amounted to openly criticizing a colleague who was well placed in the party structure and likely reaped all the benefits that came with that. Not only that, he was criticizing him for not taking full professional responsibility for the immediate needs of the state and its institutions. Although the conflict between Forstreuter and Hinrichs was not resolved in 1940–41 (Hinrichs had taken a total of four months of ‘working vacations’ and sick leave in 194189), it does seem that Hein took the former’s side. In any case, given the Königsberg state archive’s continued focus on research and the related publications, more needed to be done to prevent loyal archivists from using all of their time acquiring and assessing new archival holdings from the occupied territories. The solution was a closer connection with the university. In the latter part of 1941, Hein and several professors at the Albertina formed the Forschungskreis der Albertus-Universität. As Hein himself admitted, the group was basically founded to shelter archivists and historians from party- and war-related duties. They did so by drawing up Schutzbriefe (letters of protection) and establishing an annual fee for the use of researchers. Hein informed Zipfel about the institution and its aims at a January 1942 meeting, acknowledging its basically cosmetic nature. He also discussed his plan to open the resources of the Forschungskreis for more archival work.90 Carl Hinrichs, the party protegé, and Forstreuter, not a party member, both received Schutzbriefe, indicating that party membership did not play all that important a role in the case of those who were already integrated into the system and who had proven their loyalty in other ways. It also seems that Hein and Forstreuter had reached some sort of agreement to exempt Forstreuter from further travels – or perhaps Hein wanted greater control over Forstreuter and his workload. He wrote

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to Zipfel several times, pointing out that Forstreuter was necessary for the registration of the holdings seized in Białystok and Grodno. The fact that Forstreuter lived next door to the archive was one argument advanced for keeping him in Königsberg; he could be on site quickly in the event of an airstrike and had the necessary skill to decide what would most need to be safeguarded. Furthermore, Hein also proposed Carl Hinrichs as a potential alternate candidate for subsequent trips to Warsaw, so it seems that in the end Forstreuter’s complaints bore fruit.91 In the long run, however, Hinrichs was exempted from military duty, becoming a docent at the Albertina in 1942 and a professor during the 1943–44 academic year, while Forstreuter was drafted. In 1946, Hinrichs joined the Christlich-Demokratische Union, CDU. Overall, things were not going that well at the Königsberg archive. The evacuation of archival holdings began in 1942; first the oldest parts of the Königsberg state archive, the Teutonic Order’s archives, were moved to small castles in quiet areas of East Prussia (Castle Heilsberg, Domäne Brandenburg, the Order’s castle in Lochstädt, etc.). Early in 1943, the archive was evacuated, and beginning in 1944, its files were primarily held in Grasleben in Lower Saxony, in the care of the director of the Lower Saxony state archive.92 The remaining staff in Königsberg was entirely occupied with registering the holdings from the Zichenau district – most of which had been collected by Forstreuter – but neither people using the archive nor the authorities showed much interest in this material.93 Forstreuter himself was occupied with registering the holdings he had seized in Suwałki, particularly those of the Russian agrarian commissioner.94 Despite the shortages in manpower, the archive’s research programme continued; Hein planned an edition of inventories of the diplomas of the Teutonic Order in Marienburg as a contribution to this programme.95 In early May 1942, Forstreuter requested an extension of his holidays to six weeks because of ‘nervous fatigue’. He included a letter from his physician attesting to his nervous condition and weight loss. Ernst Zipfel, who the previous January had declared Forstreuter vital to the war effort, sparing him from military duty, denied his request.96 The conflicts between the Prussian archival administration and the National Socialist research organizations had, by this point, been completely resolved. The Landesstelle had basically ceased its work; Schieder took over von Raumer’s chair at the Albertina in 1942, and his two employees were assigned to war duties part-time and worked on their Habilitationsschriften part-time.97 Relations between the NOFG and the archives had also improved considerably. The NOFG planned a conference dealing with the history of trade for October 1942 in

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Leipzig, and Forstreuter was invited to present a paper about Vilnius. The conference was meant to assemble experts to discuss the important role of trading routes in the development of the Deutschtum in the East during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period; an assessment of the available sources was an initial priority.98 Forstreuter had been publishing on the topic of medieval trading relations since the 1920s, but any explicit expertise regarding Vilnius would have arisen from his Archivschutz activities. Whether or not this conference actually took place and what role if any Forstreuter might have played at it remains a mystery. It seems that Forstreuter spent all of 1942 dealing with his health condition. When Zipfel requested a report on his research project on the Teutonic Order’s political correspondence for the annual meeting of the Volksdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaften, Forstreuter responded that as a result of his on-going health problems, he had only been able to keep up with the absolutely necessary work at the archive during the previous year. He also notes that both being drafted for service in an anti-aircraft unit that spring and the necessary internal reorganization of the OBA had further interrupted his study.99 He published only the mentioned article about Kaunas, some smaller reviews and a contribution to an anthology about Nicolaus Copernicus, edited by Papritz, in 1942 and 1943.100 In February 1943, Brackmann announced an immediate programme to address population policy, and again the archivists in Königsberg were employed in the services of the NOFG. Forstreuter’s task was to rapidly produce an overview of the development of the various populations in the Prussian-Lithuanian border region, and it seems that he began work on it immediately. When he was finally drafted into the Wehrmacht that September, Papritz wrote to his major in the Jägerregiment 20 and asked him to let Unteroffizier Forstreuter go home for a couple of weeks to finish working on the demographic statistics for the NOFG. No answer to this letter is to be found in the files, but as Forstreuter is on record saying that he remained in the army until the end of the war, it seems safe to assume that Zipfel’s letter failed to sway Major Falke.101 By December 1944, Forstreuter had been sent to the front in Sarajevo, where he served as a scribe until the end of the war. He later wrote a report entitled Kriegsende im Südosten (The End of the War in the Southeast) about this period of his life and his time as a prisoner of war in Belgrade. The paper was never published, but he did send it to some friends and colleagues. He described his regiment’s movements in detail, the contact he developed with the local population,

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the strolls he took at night in Sarajevo, the last holiday he took back home in Königsberg in 1944 and the final bitter battles between the Germans and the Allies. In the prisoner-of-war camp he fell ill and was hospitalized in Belgrade, from where he was sent back to Germany in November 1946.

After the War: Reemployment and Reconnecting Forstreuter never returned to Königsberg, but instead chose Berlin as his home and was taken there by train. His mother had died fleeing from Weedern and was buried in Chruściel/Tiedmannsdorf, near Braniewo. Forstreuter’s health crisis in 1942 and wartime imprisonment had left him with a variety of health problems, and he was hospitalized in Berlin on several occasions over the subsequent three years. In December 1946, he was allocated a room in the Privy State Archive building, and two months later he received a position there as a Volksbildung departmental referee. For the following six years, he worked as an archivist in the Hauptarchiv. During these years, the re-formation of the German archival landscape took place, with the majority of the archivists being re-employed. Ernst Posner (1892–1980) played a central role in the successful reestablishment of archives in post-war Germany. Posner had been an archivist and historian at the Prussian Privy State Archive, but he was obliged to retire in 1935. He spent several months in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp before being forced to emigrate to the United States in 1939. Posner had helped the U.S. Army catalogue the German archives, as well as the U.S. Army’s own staff archives, which included assessments of every employee’s political views and character. No particular mention was made of Forstreuter in Posner’s report to the U.S. Army. Numerous archivists sought out Posner for a positive reference, and Posner did in fact make favourable statements on behalf of some of them. He was, however, not well informed about the archivists’ actions in the occupied territories and the degree of their looting activities; it wasn’t until 1952 that he was able to correct his largely apologetic estimation of his former colleagues’ activities. Despite his assessments of, for example, Ernst Zipfel and Wilhelm Rohr as ‘Nazis for ideological reasons’ and Papritz as ‘too heavily compromised to be left in a leading position’, Posner thought that the archivists overall were simply too conservative and too elitist to wholeheartedly welcome National Socialism.102

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Forstreuter contacted Posner sometime before March 1947, by which time he had been re-employed. On 30 March 1947, Posner answered Forstreuter’s initial missive with a nostalgic description of a hike in Sambia in 1930. He asked for contact information for a Dr. Grosse, ‘who supported me even when I was in the concentration camp’. Posner does not explicitly mention having received any support from Forstreuter following his forced retirement, nor is there anything in Forstreuter’s post-war letters to suggest that he had,103 but Posner says he is happy to hear from him, and they did, in fact, remain in contact until at least 1963, when Posner’s nephew went to Göttingen for a year as a guest professor of the Max Planck Institute and Forstreuter agreed to meet with him and his wife. It is unlikely that Forstreuter’s initial letter had any particular political or self-serving motivation – as noted, he was already re-employed and he had no need for a positive reference. In the years immediately following his return from the war and imprisonment, Forstreuter resumed contact with archivist colleagues and with neighbours and acquaintances from Prussia. In financial terms, making contact with Martha Schmeer, a former neighbour now living in Duisburg, proved particularly important. In November 1949, she wrote a detailed description of his mother’s last weeks and of her death in a refugee camp at the manor Groß Tromp/Trąby. She mentioned a suitcase containing papers and documents that his mother had given her, having her promise to deliver them to her son.104 These papers, including bankbooks and stock certificates, helped Forstreuter pursue the restoration of his former assets. He made claims against approximately twenty thousand Reichsmarks worth of stocks from IG Farben, Daimler Benz and other companies. By 1961, all of his stocks had been restored to him under stock restitution and clearing guidelines. He also had almost forty thousand Reichsmarks in different bank accounts in East Prussia, with chequebooks as evidence in some cases. It appears that he was successful in having the greater part of his pre1945 assets restored. There is no evidence of any political consistency in Forstreuter’s post-war resumption of contact – at least within the context of the already very narrow confines of archivists active before and during the war. As well as the warm greeting from Posner, he received a short note from Ludwig Dehio in March 1947, who had not been allowed to publish during the National Socialist period because his grandfather was Jewish, but who had nonetheless managed to retain his position at the Brandenburg-Preußisches Hausarchiv. Dehio was one of the few archivists who refused to testify positively in de-Nazification processes for those of his colleagues who he perceived as deeply involved in

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National Socialism.105 The note from Dehio to Forstreuter might be an additional hint that the latter was not perceived as politically active by his colleagues. While Forstreuter was in contact with archival colleagues who had been victims of the National Socialist regime, a majority of his contacts had been among the perpetrators. Heinz Buttkus, who had been stationed with the archival administration of the General Governorate in Warsaw and who had been wounded in a letter-bomb attack carried out by Polish partisans mentioned above, remained a close friend of Forstreuter, often seeking his advice. In later years, Forstreuter acted as a friend and counsellor to the entire Buttkus family, particularly for Heinz’s work-related issues. When Buttkus was working in the Magdeburg town archive, he was having problems with his superior and expressed the desire to leave his workplace and the Russian zone. In this case, Forstreuter did not help him, instead choosing to remind Buttkus of his own past difficulties with Hein, encouraging him to persevere in a situation that he acknowledged was unlikely to improve. Shortly before Forstreuter was re-employed, he received a letter from Buttkus claiming there was a political dimension to the tension with superiors: Your presence in the old Prussian archival administration of people like Zipfel, Randt, Weise and Frederichs was always a source of consolation and hope for us. … From my point of view, as someone who knows full well you were a firm opponent of the Nazis and never a party member, you have every claim to a position commensurate with your talents.106

The people Buttkus mentions were all indeed active Nazis and well known for their choleric natures and immense egos. Forstreuter never identifies the political activities of these men as a particular problem, but in a subsequent letter he does mention Max Hein as a quintessential example of a difficult superior who caused him a lot of grief – Hein, it must be noted, was not a party member. In the communication of these two men, the assessment of former colleagues as difficult on a personal level and as politically problematic merges, and the personal assessments overweigh the political ones. Even though both of them were active in the archival actions in the occupied territories, they do not consider this to be relevant as a political commitment for the National Socialist state. Within the context of mutual relief from responsibility, they strictly separate between party politics and their professional duties. For Forstreuter, even involvement in party politics did not mean that he avoided contact with former superiors and colleagues, with whom

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he had worked directly to loot the Polish archives during the war. In February 1947, Papritz wrote Forstreuter from Coburg, sending greetings to his Berlin colleagues and to tell him that his Spruchkammerverfahren (trial in front of a lay court for de-Nazification) had gone well – all that remained was for the military government to confirm the outcome. It is not possible to reconstruct whether this contact had been initiated by Forstreuter, nor is it clear why Papritz found it relevant to send this information. In 1949, Forstreuter received a long letter from Carl Diesch, library director from Königsberg; Diesch had originally been re-employed at a library in Leipzig, but he was dismissed due to antisemitism. A few years later, Forstreuter contacted Karl von Raumer, the historian at the Albertina who had been his companion during his trips to Białystok, on behalf of the HIKO. None of these contacts reveals any reflection on the men’s deeds during the war. It seems that Forstreuter, as a non-party member and already re-employed in 1947, as well as a friendly colleague who was known not to engage in personal conflicts and ego-related competition, was a relevant contact for a number of archivists who all were interested in leaving the past behind. He was assigned a new area of responsibility: besides the medieval diploma of the Hauptarchiv, Forstreuter became responsible for a number of files from ministries of the National Socialist state, such as the remaining files of the Auswärtiges Amt, Reichsministerium für Rüstung und Kriegsproduktion, Reichspropagandaministerium, and those from the Reichssippenamt.107 As a peculiar footnote it can be mentioned that many of the notes and excerpts Forstreuter took for his research after 1945 were jotted down on paper bearing the header of the Reichssippenamt. Forstreuter remembered the next six years as a happy period, and when he was appointed as the head of the Archivlager Goslar in September 1952 – initially for a period of three months, but he was soon given tenure – he was quick to point out that he would have preferred to stay at the Hauptarchiv, a fact he included in his letter of resignation to the Berlin senator of interior.108 He received this position because Rudolf Grieser, head of the archival administration in Lower Saxony, was very interested in having him there, but also because he was the most experienced archivist from Königsberg who was still alive. Forstreuter was initially not at all happy about this position; he also mentioned the bad working conditions in the Archivlager in Goslar in 1952, before the holdings were moved to Göttingen the following year and Forstreuter was able to establish more regular activities and subsequently open the archive to the public.

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Forstreuter Testifies The fact that Forstreuter himself did not have to go through a Spruchkammergericht for de-Nazification certainly helped his re-­ employment in Berlin and Goslar, and it even increased his popularity as a witness, as already indicated in the contacts with colleagues like Papritz and Dehio. He might even have been a useful contact person for the so-called Persilscheine (de-Nazification certificates), for which the testimony of a less politically questionable colleague was crucial – as Forstreuter had never been a party member, he must have attracted some interest in a context where even Albert Brackmann’s testimony about someone’s resistance to the Nazi government was treated as reliable. Astrid Eckert has described the mutual testimonies and processes of re-employment of German archivists and has found that, as in many other professional areas, successful de-Nazification was rather a matter of networks than of actual political commitment. In retrospect it is basically impossible to trace a consistent guideline in the policies of the archivists’ testifying and re-employment. Georg Winter, also not a party member, testified positively on behalf of Ernst Zipfel and his referee Wilhelm Rohr. Even Erich Randt was able to receive positive testimonies from the Polish colleagues. It seems that those archivists who had ‘only’ been active in the service of the state archives were not usually subjected to a thorough de-Nazification processes – as long as they had not been party members – while those active with specific institutions, such as the ERR and its Sonderstab Archive, were incarcerated and interrogated and found it difficult to get re-employed.109 Although Forstreuter did not face an official de-Nazification process, Max Hein, who by then was employed at the Kiel town archive, attested in a letter that Forstreuter had never been a member of the NSDAP but instead ‘had indeed been critical of the NSDAP, as I know from personal conversations with him’.110 This is the only document in his personal files from the immediate post-war years relating to his activities prior to his army service. It is to a certain degree surprising that Hein and Forstreuter found themselves testifying on each other’s behalf about their activities during National Socialism, since they both had been so heavily involved in the archival looting. Many of the archivists who had worked in the occupied territories not only lost their posts but were also interned, particularly those who had been in leading positions, such as Wilhelm Rohr, Erich Randt and Georg Winter. As Astrid Eckart has pointed out, it was impossible, and probably not even desirable, to relieve all of the

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archivists of their positions and replace them with people untarnished by their duties between 1933 and 1945, but the Allies generally did try to avoid re-employing anyone who had been active in the occupied territories.111 The sources we have do not tell us how Hein and Forstreuter initially managed to fly under the radar – eventually simply the fact that they had not been members of the NSDAP was sufficient. Forstreuter served as a referee for several of his colleagues, mostly not in the Spruchkammerverfahren during the immediate post-war period but several years later, for various matters of re-employment. In these assessments, Forstreuter never singled out anyone as having been an active Nazi – not even Roland Seeberg-Elverfeldt, who had been both a member of the SA and the NSDAP and who had been stationed at the General Governorate’s Warsaw archival administration’s archives in Lublin. Paradoxically, he, as an active National Socialist, had used his time in Russia for studies at the antifascist school in Krasnogorsk and was immediately employed at the archival department of the Ministry of the Interior of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and made a quick career. In 1953, he fled to West Germany, where it turned out to be more difficult for him to find work in governmental services, not so much because of his NS activities, but because of the period he spent in the GDR.112 When he applied for archival work with the government of the GDR in 1956 (Presse- und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung), it was Forstreuter who was asked about his involvement in the National Socialist regime. He responded enthusiastically about the research Seeberg-Elverfeldt had conducted at the Königsberg archive for his dissertation and engaged in apologetics about his party membership, once again blaming Zipfel: I valued him as a colleague and still think back on our joint activities in Königsberg. As to political engagement, first he joined the SA, and then the NSDAP. However, that was typical of young people at the time, and on top of that the director of the state archives at the time was bringing a certain pressure to bear, which particularly the younger colleagues couldn’t really resist. I don’t recall S.-E. being particularly active in the party.113

Forstreuter was also asked for testimonies about users of the Königsberg archive and historians in general. The Federal Minister of All-German Affairs (Bundesminister für gesamtdeutsche Fragen) made a request of this sort in November 1962, asking about the involvement of Hanswerner Heincke in National Socialist politics. Heincke had admitted that he had been a member of the educational department of the Königsberg Reichskolonialbund (Reich Colonial League, a collective of all the colonial organizations, with the purpose to reclaim

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all German overseas colonies). When he applied for a position as referee for cultural questions of the Bund der Vertriebenen (Federation of Expellees), Forstreuter was contacted to act as his reference. He replied that he had met Heincke in the Königsberg archive in the 1930s but that they had only ever discussed the latter’s dissertation, which Heincke had finished in 1939. Forstreuter concluded, ‘This makes it obvious that [Heincke] had in no way advanced specific politics.’114 These testimonies speak of Forstreuter as either politically naïve or, more likely, actually not very interested in party politics. To find discussions about medieval history and its sources more relevant for a person’s character assessment than his involvement in National Socialism is definitely a stance that Forstreuter shared with a majority of his colleagues probably until today. The German authorities were also interested in Forstreuter’s political assessment of the potential Soviet sympathies of his former colleagues who were now working in the Russian Zone. Forstreuter was in a position to confidently deny the possibility in the case of Hans Belleé, who had been stationed at the General Governorate’s archival administration,115 and of Otto Korfes, former major general of the Sixth Army and, by 1951, the head of the GDR ministry of the interior’s archive.116 Forstreuter also testified that Jürgen Sydow, later the Regensburg town archivist, harboured no Soviet sympathies.117 While rather dismissive regarding the National Socialist activities of his colleagues, Forstreuter seemed to assign the potential Soviet contacts and sympathies quite a lot of importance and called for more observance and surveillance. If for no other reason, in the years immediately following the war, archivists were in contact with each other to negotiate the exchange of archival collections that had been broken up during the war. Forstreuter argued that all of these contacts should be reported to the superiors at the Department of People’s Education.118 Forstreuter was obviously seen as politically and socially reliable within the context of the Federal Republic during the 1950s, and he continued to receive requests for testimonies from different German authorities for many years. The fact that he was the head of the Archivlager, a relatively high position in the German civil service hierarchy, far outweighed his activities in the occupied territories, which had likely rapidly faded into irrelevance given the deeds of many of his colleagues. There is not a single assessment to be found in Forstreuter’s estate where he identified anyone as an active Nazi, condemned anyone’s activities or otherwise provided any testimony likely to affect any of his colleagues negatively. There are several possible reasons for this. First, he himself might have destroyed any such documents before his

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death. Second, he may never have written any negative assessments of his colleagues on principle, hoping they would all have a professional future in the Federal Republic. Third, he might have been so politically naïve, or at least so completely focussed on the question closest to his heart, East Prussia and its ethnic and national character, that he assessed his colleague’s activities against that background.

Göttingen, a Small Königsberg Even though he did not initially want to leave Berlin, Forstreuter found a vibrant professional network in Göttingen, and as a Königsberg expatriate he found himself again in contact with many of his former colleagues. His position as the head of the expatriate archive, the Archivlager, automatically made him a valued member of all the social circles and institutions that made Göttingen the centre of post-war Ostforschung and the academic wing of the political struggle of the Heimatvertriebene from the East. A number of studies have in recent years described the community structures, political and religious cultures and organizations of the exiles, usually with a focus on Silesia, but with clear results regarding the political and ideological discourse within these networks and organizations. Andrew Demshuk’s study of the split between the bureaucrats and the majority of the exiles around rhetoric and strategy is of particular interest. He distinguished between the figures of the Heimat ‘of memory’, an idealized place that never existed, and Heimat ‘transformed’, the now-Polish region that appears increasingly decimated and uninhabitable.119 Both of these figures of thought are discernible in the research circles Forstreuter was active in. His commitment to those organizations dealing primarily with historical research was intense, while his contacts with more openly political groups such as the Landsmannschaften (subdivisions of the Federation of Expellees) were rather informal, almost random, and limited to occasional lectures and contributions to smaller publications. In Göttingen, the historian and librarian Götz von Selle had been working to reorganize what remained of the Albertina University personnel and archives. Because of his commitment to National Socialism, von Selle was not permitted to resume an academic or library position, but he nevertheless enjoyed his colleagues’ professional and personal loyalty. The town and its university soon became the centre of post-war research in the spirit of Ostforschung – with many people picking up where they had left off. Von Selle and Friedrich Hoffmann founded a number of organizations whose goal was to resurrect the spirit of

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Königsberg as a sort of virtual intellectual space of memory and research dedicated to the lost Heimat. Forstreuter became an active member of two of these organizations: the Göttinger Arbeitskreis, founded in 1946,120 and the Gesellschaft der Freunde Kants, active in Göttingen from 1947 onward. The latter was the direct heir of the community that had existed around Immanuel Kant until 1803 and had been active in Königsberg until 1944. It was made up of a pre-existing circle of men from academic and non-academic professions in Königsberg. One of their main activities had been an annual celebration of Kant’s birthday, which they resumed in Göttingen, reviving the rituals that had existed in Königsberg – minus the ceremony that had been held at Kant’s tomb, of course. In 1957, Forstreuter was their Bohnenkönig (the speaker at the annual banquet was chosen by hiding a silver bean in the dessert). His speech was entitled Ansichten Kants über den National- und Volkscharakter des östlichen Nachbarn Preußens (Kant’s Views on the National and Ethnic Character of Prussia’s Eastern Neighbours).121 Adopting a humorous tone, he took up a favourite topic of the Königsberg expatriates, stretching back to the eighteenth century: the cultural inferiority of Poland and Lithuania. As important as this group might have been for social networking, the Göttinger Arbeitskreis was unquestionably more relevant when it came to academic outreach and political lobbying on behalf of the Ostforscher. It funded and published texts that met a certain scholarly standard, sometimes by researchers who had no particular academic aspirations. Besides presenting a clear academic agenda and promoting research into the German character of the territories Germany had lost, the Arbeitskreis also used its contacts with journalists and scholars, both inside and outside Germany, for political lobbying and public consciousness-raising purposes with the hope of winning support for an active engagement in its work. The immediate political goal was funding necessary for further activities, institutionalization of Ostforschung and employment for expellées. As most of the Heimatvertriebenen organizations, the Arbeitskreis was partly financed by governmental funds, but in order to secure these, public opinion was considered crucial. The utopian political resolution sought was the complete restoration of the former German territories, and this included discussions about what was to be done about the Slavic population now living in these territories. From 1951, the president of the Arbeitskreis was Herbert Kraus, professor of international law, who had been forced to retire between 1937 and 1945 due to his international contacts.122 With the help of the Arbeitskreis, Götz von Selle became the director of the university archive. The organization also helped a number of

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the Ostforscher working at the archives, in the museums and as part of the university administration to publish. Forstreuter wrote a glowing obituary in the circular letter of the Freunde Kants when von Selle died in 1956, describing him as a man whose very personality made him the de facto heart of the Arbeitskreis123 – again the superiority of character assessments over political assessments is apparent. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Arbeitskreis functioned on three different levels. At first blush it was an academic circle promoting and publishing scholarly studies about the former German territories. Besides that, the Arbeitskreis was effectively a lobby association that produced political and educational material presenting its point of view, and it served as an independent think tank advancing the political interests of the Heimatvertriebene. Finally, at a more covert level only ever vaguely referred to, even in internal annual reports, was the lobbying of ‘foreigners and foreign institutions’. Whenever the members of the Arbeitskreis wrote letters to professional and academic contacts, they included information to advance their political perspective, which is to say, their claims to the former German territories. These letters were meticulously counted and reported back to the Arbeitskreis. To quote: ‘In this case, we are talking about longer letters in connection with current events in which pertinent reflections are exchanged with the foreign correspondent.’124 In 1962, for example, 800 letters of this sort were written to 3,192 ‘foreigners or foreign institutions that are in contact with us’. This form of networking is a recurrent theme in annual reports, but it is impossible to tie specific members to particular Auslandsverbindungen (foreign connections). The reports express concern about anti-German propaganda from Poland or Auslandspolen (Poles living in other countries) and simultaneously about the growing censorship in Poland and the perceived pro-Polish opinion in West German media, against which the Arbeitskreis had to argue. Even open letters to foreign media were included in the count. The main enemy was, of course, Poland, and the foreign contact was considered a great success whenever Polish diplomats were forced to respond. In this light, Polish expatriates were seen as a particularly serious political threat to the Arbeitskreis’s claims and objectives. But the men (the organization’s members were exclusively male) did not stop at the current political status quo. The Arbeitskreis even discussed what was to be done with the Poles who lived in the former German territories when Germany regained them – according to one report in the early 1960s, the Arbeitskreis did not expect ‘a particularly peaceful coexistence’.

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Until the treaties with Russia and Poland in 1970, the so-called Ostverträge, Arbeitskreis activities were financed by the land of Lower Saxony and the federal government, who were generous in their ­funding  of the political and propaganda activities of Heimat­ vertriebene.  This effectively secured institutions and organizations which actively worked for the territorial and political revision of the German borders. Forstreuter remained an active member of the Arbeitskreis until his death, as well as of several other institutions that sat on the line that separated research from politics: the Verein für ost- und westpreußische Landesforschung and the re-founded HIKO, to name but two. Initially, Forstreuter gave lectures and speeches, as well as taking on other duties, but he eventually stepped aside to make room for his younger colleagues. All of these organizations worked actively to shape the outcome of scholarly research into Prussia and the Teutonic Order, not only by participating in academic debates but also by publicly rebuking scholars whose terminology, conceptual framework or line of argument they found distasteful. At an annual meeting of the HIKO in 1967, these men decided it was necessary to admonish the historian and archivist Anneliese Triller because she had used the Polish place name Wałcz in a publication about Jesuits instead of the German, Deutsch-Krone. Forstreuter agreed to talk to Triller and to explain to her the importance of maintaining uniform – German – terminology in all research about Prussia. A subsequent addition to the minutes mentions that Forstreuter had indeed talked to her and that Triller expressed regret for her error.125 Forstreuter and Triller knew each other from before the war, when she was employed at the Frombork diocesan archive. One of Forstreuter’s key concerns was the way in which the Teutonic Order’s Crusades were characterized – he outlined the ‘correct’ appraisal and terminology in several letters to Klemens Wieser, a member of the Order, who was also periodically the person primarily responsible for its central archive. While Forstreuter readily acknowledged the information necessary to correctly portray the historical contexts and events that determined the Order’s active offensive against the pagans, he nonetheless rejected the way research results were presented, saying, ‘Haven’t we agreed that the Teutonic Order’s struggle against the pagans was, in fact, of defensive character. That is how it should remain.’126 It is difficult not to be a bit sarcastic when discussing the idea of two old men writing letters to each other developing a secret master plan for the characterization of the German colonization of the East.

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They obviously belonged to a generation which was used to have their ­scholarly results heard in political debates. However, this little conspiracy gains a greater, and perhaps even tragic, relevance when placed in the context of post-war German scholarship on the matter; the degree to which Forstreuter and Wieser were able to control the research is an open question, but their ‘agreement’ about the defensive character of the Teutonic Order’s Christianization campaign stands the test of time – also due to the previously discussed lack of postcolonial perspectives on Prussian history. Recently, for example, archaeological research has defined the results of the Prussian Crusade as the complete replacement of one culture by another, and thereby hardly ‘defensive’.127 And while not completely extinct, most Prussians who survived lived as unfree peasants and servants, often in the Komtureien of the Order; those who gained personal freedom and were able to leave exclusively Prussian settlements mostly adopted German or Polish names, culture and religion.128 Another issue Forstreuter raised on several occasions was the need to put the right face on the relationship of the Teutonic Order to National Socialism. Forstreuter was obviously well aware of the ideological parallels that could be drawn between the Order and the German Wehrmacht and of the general revisionist use made of medieval history to support eastern expansion, and he now proclaimed that the official position of all historians must be that the Order had been banned and dissolved by the Nazis, thereby avoiding the analogy altogether – while this was true with regards to the contemporary institution, this position consciously overlooked the entire ideological prehistory. Forstreuter was not alone in this struggle. Both aspects of this historiography of the Teutonic Order – the Christianization Crusades and the Order’s relationship with the Nazis – were raised as part of the Göttinger Arbeitskreis’s attempt at damage control regarding public opinion. The things Hans Kühner-Wolfskehl had to say in two 1967 radio broadcasts, Der Deutschritter-Orden ohne Heiligenschein (The German Knights’ Order without Halo, Hessischer Rundfunk) and Tabus der Kirchengeschichte: Der Deutschritter-Orden (Taboos of Church History: The German Knights’ Order, Deutschlandfunk), were treated as a major incident in various research circles Forstreuter was active in. Kühner claimed, for example, that the Teutonic Order had killed about 300,000 Old Prussians during the first decades of Crusades and settlement. As Reinhard Wenskus put it, this was an even higher estimate than that used by Polish historians, a way of subtly suggesting that the Polish estimate of the number of Old Prussian victims was also exaggerated and incorrect.129

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In 1943, Kühner-Wolfskehl, who was a survivor of the Dachau concentration camp, had fled to Rome, where he was active in the resistance movement and helped to hide Jewish refugees. He was a left-wing Catholic writer whose publications focussed on Church history; for a brief period, he was also the director of the Goethe Institute’s Bibliotheca Germanica in Rome. In later years, he published material addressing nationalism and National Socialism.130 It is difficult to estimate the impact of his radio broadcasts, but the Teutonic Order, the Göttinger Arbeitskreis and HIKO were furious. Later in 1967, the members of the HIKO would express regret that the action taken against Kühner – a number of articles in various media written by Forstreuter, Gause and others – had not been properly coordinated, and therefore had not been particularly effective. They promised to learn from their error.131 For its part, the Teutonic Order had reacted by issuing a pamphlet entitled Contra-Punkte oder die Kunst, sich zu irren (Counter-Points or the Art of Error), partially an ad hominem attack on Kühner and partially an alternate view of the medieval Order and its ‘defensive’ missionary practices, in line with what Wieser and Forstreuter had agreed upon as the preferred version.132 The topic was followed up by Udo Arnold in the 1990s, who sees the instrumentalization of the Teutonic Order during National Socialism as restricted to Prussia and Livonia, while the actually existing Order in Austria was illegalized in 1938.133 Forstreuter’s commitment to the Arbeitskreis manifested itself also in his publications. His first post-war monograph, Vom Ordensstaat zum Fürstentum,134 a study about the Reformation process in Prussia, appeared as volume 20 of the series Veröffentlichungen des Göttinger Arbeitskreises. The Festschrift presented to him by his colleagues on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday was volume 9 in the sub-series Ostdeutsche Beiträge aus dem Göttinger Arbeitskreis.135 And in 1971, he contributed a history of his former school, the Realgymnasium Tilsit, to an anthology in the series.

Notes 1. ‘Das Provenienzprinzip, das ein Archiv an das Land bindet, in dem es entstanden ist, bedarf, nach den Erfahrungen des letzten Krieges, der Ergänzung. Wesentlicher Bestandteil des Landes ist die Bevölkerung. … Durch die völlige Trennung der Menschen vom Lande ist eine neue Tatsache geschaffen worden, der auch der Archivar Rechnung tragen muß. Die Folgerung müßte wohl sein, daß in einem solchen Fall die Menschen, als wertvollste Substanz eines geschichtlichen Landes, als

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Träger der geschichtlichen Überlieferung zu gelten haben.’ Forstreuter, Das Preußische Staatsarchiv, 95. 2. Eckert, Kampf um die Akten, 143–45. 3. Some parts of this chapter have already been published as C. Heß, ‘“Some Short Business Trips”: Kurt Forstreuter and the Looting of Archives in Poland and Lithuania, 1939–1942.’Yad Vashem Studies 42(2) (2014): 91–122. 4. ‘Ende Oktober wurde es ernst mit meiner Abkommandierung nach Posen. Ich sträubte mich sehr dagegen, lieber wäre ich Soldat geworden ... denn die Tätigkeit als Beamter in einem besetzten Ostgebiet erschien mir von vornherein bei der herrschenden Einstellung als besonders unglücklich, und meine Erwartungen wurden noch bei weitem übertroffen. Ich habe alles getan, um wieder von Posen wegzukommen, ehe ich überhaupt mit der deutschen Verwaltung des Warthegaus vereinigt würde. Ich war nur von der Archivverwaltung kommissarisch abgeordnet und wurde Anfang Januar 1940 durch Sandow abgelöst.’ Meine Reisen [s.p.], GStA, XX. HA, Nl Forstreuter, no. 10. 5. Hein to Zipfel, Königsberg, 26 October 1939. GStA, I. HA, Rep. 178, no. 334. 6. Zipfel to Hein, Berlin, 31 October and 11 November 1939. Ibid. 7. Kaczmarczyk had prepared a number of source editions for the medieval history of Prussia, the last before the war being the oldest Schöffenbuch of Altstadt Toruń. 8. ‘Als ich eines Abends heimkehrte, fand ich mein Zimmer offen, die übrigen Teile der Wohnung aber versiegelt. Die Wohnung war beschlagnahmt, Frau K. abgeholt worden und verschwunden. Es empfahl sich nicht, in der Wohnung zu bleiben, die nun dauernd von Deutschen besichtigt würde. … Die Ausweisung der Polen war eine empörende Maßnahme, die auch bei den Deutschen offene Missbilligung fand. Verglichen mit der Ausweisung der Deutschen 1945 und später wurde sie jedoch bei weitem menschlicher gehandhabt. Das Leben in Posen war vergleichsweise angenehmer als in Königsberg. Man konnte alles kaufen, d.h. Deutsche konnten es. ... Es war für mich keine verlorene Zeit, ein Leben am Rande des Krieges.’ Meine Reisen. 9. C. Epstein, Model Nazi: Arthur Greiser and the Occupation of Western Poland (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 164. Epstein provides other examples of anti-Jewish violence in Warthegau in October 1939. 10. P. T. Rutherford, ‘“Absolute Organizational Deficiency”: The 1. Nahplan of December 1939 (Logistics, Limitations, and Lessons)’, Central European History 36(2) (2003): 245. 11. I. Loose, ‘Wartheland’, in Das ‘Großdeutsche Reich’ und die Juden: National­ sozialistische Verfolgung in den ‘angegliederten’ Gebieten, ed. W. Gruner and J. Österloh (Frankfurt am Main: Campus-Verlag, 2010), 233. 12. Tgb 548, Hein to Zipfel, 4 March 1940. GStA, I. HA, Rep 178, no. 333, Bd. 16. 13. Nonn, Theodor Schieder, 97; Haar, Historiker, 340. 14. Forstreuter, Das Preußische Staatsarchiv, 89. 15. W. Kalicki, ‘Biblia i dzentelmeni’, Gazeta wyborcza, 3 October 2001.

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16. Fahlbusch, Wissenschaft, 506. 17. Max Hein, Bericht über eine Dienstreise mit Staatsarchivrat Dr. Forstreuter nach Plock und Czerwinsk, 14.–18. Januar 1940. GStA, I. HA, Rep. 178, no. 334. 18. ‘[Weil] die Juden in den Städten etwa 1/3 der Bevölkerung ausmachen und daraus wegen der verschiedenen Behandlung von Polen und Juden zahlreiche Arierforschungen erwachsen könnten. Am besten wäre es, wenn in Płock selbst ein Sippenamt eingerichtet würde, das sämtliche Personenforschungen auszuführen hätte’. Sta Tgb no. 232, 9 February 1940. Ibid. 19. According to Forstreuter’s own account, material from Płock was stored at the Brandenburg state farm close to Königsberg. Forstreuter, Das Preußische Staatsarchiv, 91. 20. ‘Diesesmal wurde auch der Judengemeinde, die dort noch besteht, ein Besuch abgestattet. Der Vertreter des Bürgermeisters, der die Judensachen bearbeitet, ließ den Judenältesten kommen und befragte ihn nach den Archivalien. Der Judenälteste, der erst seit einem Jahr im Amte ist, beteuerte, dass nur Akten ab 1938 vorlägen. Wo die älteren Akten sind, wusste er nicht. Die Synagoge, die jetzt für andere Zwecke benutzt wird, enthält keine Akten mehr. Der Bürgermeister will weitere Forschungen anstellen. Der Judenälteste übergab eine Geschichte der Juden in Plock.’ Bericht über eine Dienstreise des Staatsarchivrats Forstreuter nach Plock, 11 December 1940. GStA, I. HA, Rep. 178, no. 334. 21. ‘Das Landratsamt hatte, wie verabredet, 4 Hilfskräfte (Juden) gestellt, die unter Aufsicht des Amtsgehilfen Ratzkowski die Verpackung vornahmen. ... Das Landratsamt legt großen Wert darauf, dass ein Archivbeamter beim Verladen zugegen ist. Während polnische und jüdische Arbeitskräfte vorhanden sind, fehlt es an deutschen Aufsichtsbeamten.’ Ibid. 22. ‘Besprechungen im Landratsamt. Dieses war bereit, die Kontrolle über die Arbeit von Herrn Witkowski zu übernehmen, der Art, daß er in derselben Weise beaufsichtigt werden sollte wie die anderen polnischen Beamten, die im Landratsamte arbeiten. Ihn einzuschließen lehnte das Landratsamt ab, da dieses auch bei den übrigen Polen, die z. T. allein arbeiten, nicht üblich sei.’ Tgb no. 5811, 6 September, 1940, Płock. Ibid. 23. ‘Vortrag Staatsarchivrat Dr. Forstreuter am 4. April 1940 über Die Kriegsflotte des Deutschen Ordens’. ‘Jahresbericht für das Jahr 1940’, MVGOW 15(4) (1941): 65–66. K. Forstreuter, ‘Die preußische Kriegsflotte im 16. Jahrhundert’, AF 17 (1940): 58–123; this article covers a longer period than the lecture. 24. Nonn, Theodor Schieder, 96–97. 25. J. Grabowski and Z. R. Grabowski, ‘Germans in the Eyes of the Gestapo: The Ciechanów District, 1939–1945’, Contemporary European History 13(1) (2004): 26. 26. A. Schulz, ‘Regierungsbezirk Zichenau’, in Gruner and Österloh, Das ‘Großdeutsche Reich’, 266. 27. ‘Was die Judenakten betrifft, so ist die alte Synagoge verbrannt, die neue wird teils als Garage, teils als Warenlager benutzt. Sie wurde besichtigt.

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... Juden sind im Kreise Ostrolenka nicht mehr vorhanden. Sie haben sich im Oktober den sowjetischen Truppen, die Ostrolenka kurze Zeit besetzt hatten, bei deren Abzug angeschlossen.’ Sta Tgb no. 518, Königsberg, 7 March 1940. GStA, I. HA, Rep. 178, no. 334. 28. Schulz, ‘Regierungsbezirk Zichenau’, 265. 29. ‘Pultusk … über die Judenakten konnte der Bürgermeister keine Auskunft geben. Die Juden sind alle im September über den Narew geschafft worden. Der Kreis hat keine Juden mehr … Praschnitz … die Judenakten sind nicht zu ermitteln. Die Synagoge ist abgebrannt. In der Stadt befinden sich nur noch einhundertsiebzig Juden.’ Sta Tgb no. 518, Königsberg, 7 March 1940. GStA, I. HA, Rep. 178, no. 334. 30. ‘Desgleichen musste die Bestandsaufnahme des Schriftgutes der jüdischen Kultusgemeinden schon jetzt erfolgen, da wegen des Abzuges der Juden zu befürchten war, dass dieses rassenkundlich besonders wichtige Schriftgut verloren gehen könnte: ein Fall, der leider schon eingetreten ist.’ Ibid. 31. Ibid. 32. ‘Während das Deutschtum im Bezirk Zichenau verhältnismäßig stark vertreten ist, fehlt es im Bezirk Bialystok fast ganz. Die vorhandenen Aktenbestände sind deshalb für unsere Interessen noch weniger von Belang.’ Ernst Zipfel, Auszugsweise Abschrift einer Besprechung mit Hein in Berlin, 30–31 January 1942. GStA, I. HA, Rep. 178, no. 334. 33. Bericht über eine Dienstreise des Staatsarchivdirektors Dr. Hein nach Plock, Zichenau etc., Königsberg, 4–8 December 1939. Ibid. 34. ‘So wurde am 22. März 1939 die unnatürliche und ungeschichtliche Konstruktion des Memelgebietes beseitigt und die alte Grenze zwischen Deutschland und Litauen wiederhergestellt. Dasselbe Jahr 1939, das im Frühling nördlich von der Memel die Grenze des Jahres 1422 wiederherstellte, hat im Herbst südlich von der Memel eine kleine Korrektur dieser Grenze zugunsten des deutschen Reiches gebracht. Das Reich hat durch den Moskauer Vertrag vom 28. September 1939 den heutigen Kreis Suwalki erworben. Damit wurde die deutsch-litauische Grenze verlängert. ... Die neuen Grenzen des Reiches im Suwalkigebiet sind in mehr als einer Hinsicht, geschichtlich, geographisch, völkisch, von Interesse. ... So haben die Stürme unserer Zeit ein Stück altpreußischen Bodens wieder an die Grenze Ostpreußens gespült.’ Forstreuter, ‘Entwicklung der Grenze’, 70. 35. ‘Man wird jetzt, nachdem die polnischen Archive für die deutsche Forschung viel besser zugänglich sind als früher, immerhin noch manche Einzelheiten über deutsche Siedlungen in Polen und Litauen daraus erwarten dürfen. In dem Archiv der evangelischen Gemeinde in Sudauen (früher Suwalki), das im Staatsarchiv Königsberg hinterlegt worden ist, befindet sich eine Urkunde. ...’ K. Forstreuter, ‘Die Gründung der evangelischen Gemeinde in Sudauen: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen Siedlung’, MVGOW 16 (1941): 27. 36. Blank to G. Kayser, Reichsstelle für Sippenforschung, Königsberg, 11 September 1940. BArch, R 1509/1738.

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37. StA Tgb no. 1758, 29–30 July 1940. GStA, I. HA, Rep. 178, no. 334. 38. Yet another visit from Königsberg to Suwalki was performed by Quednau in July 1940. There is a controversy whether Theodor Schieder accompanied the Königsberg archivists during all these trips, as Ingo Haar reckons, or only during the first one, as Christoph Nonn states. Nonn, ‘Direkte und indirekte Beiträge’, 213. 39. StA Tgb no. 1233/40 II, Königsberg, 30 June 1940. GStA, I. HA, Rep. 178, no. 2428. 40. ‘Numery członków SS od 325 000 do 325 999’. http://www.dws-xip.pl/ reich/biografie/numery/numer325.html. 41. StA Tgb no. 1233/40 II, Königsberg, 30 June 1940. GStA, I. HA, Rep. 178, no. 2428. 42. Ibid. 43. Sta Tgb no. 1758. Ibid. 44. Heinrich Blank an den Oberpräsidenten der Provinz Ostpreußen in Königsberg, 16 June 1942. BArch, R 1509/1738. 45. Forstreuter an Reichsstelle für Sippenforschung, Königsberg, 20 May 1940. Ibid. 46. Heinrich Blank, Bericht über die Reise nach Białystok vom 16.–19. September 1941. Ibid. 47. Weiser, Geschichte, 168. 48. See a complete description of the lootings and relocations of the Warszawa archive in M. Stażewski, Niemiecka polityka archiwalna na ziemiach polskich włączonych do Rzeszy, 1939–1945 (Warszawa: PWN, 1991), 149–52. 49. ‘Furchtbare Eindrücke.’ Meine Reisen. 50. Lehr, Osteinsatz, 129; Tgb no. 5811, 9 September 1940. GStA, I. HA, Rep. 178, no. 2428. 51. Ibid. 52. Stażewski, Niemiecka polityka, 149–52. 53. Zipfel describes the results thusly: ‘Archivbestände deutscher Herkunft, die bei früherer Gelegenheit in polnische Hände gefallen waren, so die nach dem Frieden von Tilsit ausgelieferten preußischen Zentralakten (1473 Pakete) und die österreichischen Abgaben von 193? (3569 Pakete) wurden in schnellem Zugriff an ihre Ursprungsorte zurückgeschafft. Die 74 Pergamenturkunden der Jahre bis 1416, die als ehemalige Bestandteile des Archivs des Deutschen Ritterordens zufolge der Friedenstraktate von 1422 bis 1525 an den König von Polen hatten ausgeliefert werden müssen, nahmen ihren Weg zurück in das Staatsarchiv Königsberg.’ Ernst Zipfel, Denkschrift über Leistungen des Archivschutzes für die Wissenschaft. BArch, R1509/1512a. 54. ‘Attentate waren an der Tagesordnung. Das Ghetto war zerstört worden, aber viele Juden waren entkommen und verstärkten noch die allgemeine Unruhe. Im Archiv war auch ein Attentat verübt worden, Külke getötet, Buttkus verletzt.’ Meine Reisen. 55. Lehr, Osteinsatz, 256. 56. Furber, ‘Near as Far in the Colonies’, 548. 57. Forstreuter, ‘Entwicklung’.

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58. Leiserowitz, Sabbatleuchter, 367. 59. ‘Bei der Rückkehr nach Kowno erlebte ich die Einsetzung der OstlandRegierung. Die litauische Begeisterung für Deutschland wurde dadurch stark abgekühlt … in Fort VII waren damals schon viele Juden, angeblich von Litauern, ermordet worden. Die Juden wurden bereits in die Vorstadt Williampol evakuiert.’ Meine Reisen. 60. ‘Die erste Sorge galt natürlich dem litauischen Zentralarchiv, das sich ehemals in Fort VII befand. Es wurde mir jedoch mitgeteilt, dass dieses Archiv von den Bolschewisten aus Fort VII entfernt worden sei, um das Fort für politische Gefangene frei zu machen. Auch jetzt befanden sich in Fort VII Gefangene, meist Juden.’ Tgb no. 1742 III, 21–31 July 1940. GStA, I. HA, Rep. 178, no. 334. 61. The history of Fort VII as a concentration camp is badly researched and plays a minor role in Lithuanian memory politics. A museum is currently being planned at the site, which focuses on the fort’s function during the Napoleonic wars. One of the very few publications on the concentration camp is V. Petrikėnas and M. Kosas, VII fortas: lietuviška tragedija: Pirmosios Lietuvoje koncentracijos stovyklos istorija (Kaunas: Arx Reklama, 2011). 62. For the reconstruction of the events in Kaunas, see C. Dieckmann, Deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Litauen 1941–1944, 2 vols. (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2011), 1:321–34. 63. W. Benz, K. Kwiet, and J. Matthäus (eds.), Einsatz im ‘Reichskommissariat Ostland’: Dokumente zum Völkermord im Baltikum und in Weissrussland, 1941–1944 (Berlin: Metropol, 1998), 172–74. 64. K. Forstreuter, ‘Kauen, eine deutsche Stadtgründung’, Jomsburg 6 (1942): 18–37. 65. Dieckmann, Deutsche Besatzungspolitik, 747. 66. ‘Ich hatte Wilna 1929 unter polnischer Herrschaft gesehen. Nun war es verwandelt, litauisch geworden, aber der polnische Einschlag im Bürgertum war noch unverkennbar. Das zahlreiche Judentum, noch vorhanden, war bereits jammervoll gedrückt. So wurde mancher Eindruck getrübt, wenn ich mich dem Zauber dieser Stadt hingab.’ Forstreuter, ‘Vom Blickpunkt eines Archivars’, 407–8. 67. M. Paldiel, Churches and the Holocaust: Unholy Teaching, Good Samaritans, and Reconciliation (Jersey City, NJ: Ktav, 2006), 230–31. 68. The Righteous among the Nations: Family Story Stakauskas, http:// db.yadvashem.org/righteous/family.html?language=en&itemId=4043731. 69. Rall to Mommsen, Minsk, 27 February 42. BArch, R 93/5, fol. 1. 70. Tgb. no. 1742, 3 August 1941. 71. Dieckmann, Deutsche Besatzungspolitik, 356–60. 72. GStA, I. HA, Rep 178, no. 341. 73. ‘Nochmals in Białystok im Spätherbst 1941 (Dezember), mit Hein, von Raumer, Schieder’. Meine Reisen. 74. W. Curilla, Die deutsche Ordnungspolizei und der Holocaust im Baltikum und in Weissrussland 1941–1944, 2nd ed. (Hamburg: Schöningh, 2006), 510–18, 867. 75. Ibid., 592–93.

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76. C. Madajczyk and B. Puchert, Die Okkupationspolitik Nazideutschlands in Polen 1939–1945 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1987), 143–44. 77. S. Bender, The Jews of Białystok during World War II and the Holocaust (Waltham, MA/Hanover: Brandeis University Press, 2008), 100. 78. ‘Quartier wurde durch die Ortskommandantur besorgt ... Bialystok (früher etwa 100.000 Einwohner, die meisten Juden) ist eine moderne Großstadt, die durch den Krieg nur wenig gelitten hat.’ Sta Tgb no. 1917, 8–10 August 1941. GStA, I. HA, Rep. 178, no. 2420. 79. ‘In der Synagoge zu Bialystok, einem geräumigen, soliden Gebäude, liegen Akten der dortigen Starostei.’ Tgb no. 2443, 26–29 October 1941. Ibid. 80. Bender, The Jews of Białystok, 92. 81. Jahresbericht 1943. GStA, I. HA, Rep. 178, no. 2420. 82. Tgb no. 2443. Ibid. 83. Nonn, Theodor Schieder, 101. 84. Tgb no. 3466–35/42, 4 February 1942, Keit to Brackmann. GStA, I. HA, Rep, no. 1192. 85. Berlin, 10 January 1942. GStA, I. HA, Rep 178, no. 1175, bl. 2, av. 23/42. 86. Familienbuch Schaak, Gut Weedern. GStA, XX. HA, Nl Forstreuter, no. 1. 87. W. Neugebauer, ‘Die ‘Strafversetzung’ von Carl Hinrichs: Politischer Eklat oder Professionalisierungskonflikt?’, in Kriese, Archivarbeit, 95–110; W.  Neugebauer, ‘Wissenschaft und politische Konjunktur bei Carl Hinrichs: Die früheren Jahre’, Forschungen zur Brandenburgischen und Preußischen Geschichte 21(2) (2011): 141–90. 88. Tgb 134.1, Forstreuter to Zipfel, 19 April 1941. GStA, I. HA, Rep 178, no. 333, Bd. 16. 89. Neugebauer, ‘Strafversetzung’, 108. 90. Av 422, Meeting Hein and Zipfel in Berlin, 30–31 January 42. GStA, I. HA, Rep 178, no. 333, Bd. 16. 91. Hein to Zipfel, 22. March 42. Ibid. 92. Forstreuter, Das Preußische Staatsarchiv, 88–89. 93. Ernst Zipfel, Auszugsweise Abschrift einer Besprechung mit Hein in Berlin, 30.–31. Januar 1942. GStA, I. HA, Rep. 178, no. 334. 94. Ibid., no. 2420. 95. Av 422, Besprechung. Ibid., no. 333, Bd. 16. 96. Ibid., no. 341. 97. Nonn, Theodor Schieder, 102. 98. Papritz to Zipfel, Berlin 29 September 1942, no. 48. GStA, I. HA, Rep 178, no. 1175. 99. Forstreuter to Zipfel, Königsberg 11 November 1942. Ibid. On a personal note, this reorganization of the OBA continues to negatively influence work on late medieval Prussia. 100. K. Forstreuter, ‘Fabian von Loßainen und der Deutsche Orden’, in Kopernikus-Forschungen, ed. J. Papritz and H. Schmauch (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1943), 220–33. 101. Papritz for NOFG to Major Falke, Königsberg, no. 164. GStA, I. HA, Rep 178, no. 1175.

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102. Eckert, Kampf um die Akten, 129–30. 103. Briefwechsel Posner. GStA, XX. HA, Nl Forstreuter, no. 120. 104. Martel (Martha) Schmeer to Forstreuter, Duisburg, 12 November 1949. Ibid., no. 2. 105. Eckert, Kampf um die Akten, 139. 106. ‘Ihr Vorhandensein in der alten ehemaligen preußischen Archivverwaltung der Zipfel, Randt, Weise und Frederichse war uns stets eine Art Trost und Hoffnung. … Als mir wohl bekannter scharfer Gegner des Nazisystems und als Nichtparteigenosse haben sie m. E. allen Anspruch auf eine ihren Fähigkeiten entsprechende Stelle und Stellung!’ Buttkus to Forstreuter, 23 November 1946. GStA, XX. HA, Nl Forstreuter, no. 120. 107. J. Kloosterhuis, ‘Staatsarchiv ohne Staat: Das GStA in den ersten Nachkriegsjahren, 1945 bis 1947. Eine archivgeschichtliche Dokumentation’, in Kriese, Archivarbeit, 585. 108. Ibid. 109. Eckert, Kampf um die Akten, 138. 110. Hein to whom it may concern, Kiel, 6 January 1947. GStA, XX. HA, Nl Forstreuter, no. 1. 111. Eckert, Kampf um die Akten, 125–26. 112. On Seeberg-Elverfeldt’s education, see Lehr, Osteinsatz, 64–65; on his activities in Poland, ibid., 150–58; on his post-war career, ibid., 338–39. 113. ‘Ich habe ihn daher als Kollegen geschätzt und denke noch jetzt an die gemeinsame Tätigkeit in Königsberg zurück. Was die politische Einstellung angeht, so hat Herr S.-E. sich damals wohl zunächst der S.A. und dann der NSDAP angeschlossen. Bei jüngeren Menschen war das in jener Zeit jedoch die Regel, und ausserdem wurde von dem damaligen Direktor der Staatsarchive auch ein gewisser Druck ausgeübt, dem zumal die jüngeren Kollegen kaum widerstehen konnten. Es ist mir nicht in Erinnerung, dass S.-E. sich in der Partei besonders betätigt hat.’ Forstreuter to Rambow, Presse- und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung, 20 April 1956. GStA, XX. HA, Nl Forstreuter, no. 120. 114. Ibid., no. 118. 115. Lehr, Osteinsatz, 107. 116. I. Kowalczuk, Legimitation eines neuen Staates: Parteiarbeiter an der historischen Front, Geschichtswissenschaft in der SBZ/DDR 1945 bis 1961 (Berlin: Links, 1997), 196. 117. Ohne Adressat, 23 February 1951. GStA, XX. HA, Nl Forstreuter, Kiste 14. 118. ‘An die Abteilung Volksbildung (zu Händen von Herrn Heuelmann)’, 28 October 1950. Ibid., no. 11. 119. A. Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration and the Politics of Memory, 1945–1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 120. Cf. K. A. Linnemann, Das Erbe der Ostforschung: Zur Rolle Göttingens in der Geschichtswissenschaft der Nachkriegszeit (Marburg: Tectum-Verlag, 2002). 121. Göttinger Tageblatt, 17 April 1857. 122. A. Szabó, Vertreibung, Rückkehr, Wiedergutmachung: Göttinger Hochschullehrer im Schatten des Nationalsozialismus (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2000), 152–56. Forstreuter published, among other members, an article in

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Kraus’s Festschrift: K. Forstreuter, ‘Ein Traktat des Deutschen Ordens aus dem 14. Jahrhundert’, in Recht im Dienste der Menschenwürde: Festschrift für Herbert Kraus (Würzburg: Holzner, 1964), 445–62. 123. GStA, XX. HA, Nl Forstreuter, no. 20. 124. ‘Hierbei handelt es sich im wesentlichen um längere Schreiben, mit denen im Anschluß an aktuelle Ereignisse sachdienliche Fragen erörtert oder Gedanken mit dem ausländischen Adressaten ausgetauscht wurden.’ Tätigkeitsbericht Göttinger Arbeitskreis 1961/62. Ibid., no. 96, 4–5. 125. HIKO, Vorstandssitzung Pyrmont 27. Okt 1967. Anwesend: Koeppen, Forstreuter, Gause, Hubatsch, Keyser, Riemann, Wenskus. Ibid., no. 106. 126. ‘Wir hatten uns doch darauf geeinigt, daß der Heidenkampf des DO wesentlich defensiv war. Dabei sollte es bleiben.’ Forstreuter to Wieser, Göttingen, 28 March 1968. Ibid., no. 64. 127. Pluskowski, Archaeology of the Prussian Crusade, 383. See also W. L. Urban, ‘Victims of the Baltic Crusade’, Journal of Baltic Studies 29(3) (1998): 195–212. 128. Friedrich, Brandenburg-Prussia, 12–13. 129. R. Wenskus, ‘Der Deutsche Orden und die nichtdeutsche Bevölkerung des Preußenlandes mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Siedlung’, in Schlesinger, Die deutsche Ostsiedlung, 418. 130. ‘Mitteilung zum Tod Hans Kühner-Wolfskehl’. Gesellschaft für Exilforschung, Nachrichtenbrief 7/8 (1987), 184. 131. HIKO Vorstandssitzung Pyrmont 27. Okt 1967. GStA, XX. HA, Nl Forstreuter, no. 106. 132. K. Wieser, ‘Der Deutsche Orden setzt sich zur Wehr: Broschüre ‘ContraPunkte’ gegen diffamierende Rundfunksendungen’, Das Ostpreußenblatt 19, 25 May 1968, 10. 133. Arnold, ‘Nationalismus’; see also chapter 1 in this book. 134. K. Forstreuter, Vom Ordensstaat zum Fürstentum: Geistige und politische Wandlungen im Deutschordensstaate Preußen unter den Hochmeistern Friedrich und Albrecht, 1498–1525 (Kitzingen: Holzner, 1951). 135. Preußenland und Deutscher Orden: Festschrift für Kurt Forstreuter zur Vollendung seines 60. Lebensjahres dargebracht von seinen Freunden (Würzburg: Holzner, 1958).

Map 2 Medieval Prussia

2 Chapter 4 A Ban on Jewish Settlement?

Before and After: Forstreuter’s Jewish Studies Considering his overall professional career and scholarly output, it seems unlikely that Kurt Forstreuter’s relatively minor and contradictive assessment of the sources for Jewish life in medieval Prussia has remained the most comprehensive and most influential contribution to the topic. It is also remarkable that towards the end of his life he returned to a topic and a study which he had published in 1937, a time when Jewish questions deeply affected his everyday life as an archivist: the takeover of the Königsberg Jewish community’s archive, the requests for lists of Jewish holdings and files relevant for the cataloguing of the Jewish population, the Aryan certificates. Forstreuter’s own close contact with the remains of Jewish community archives in the occupied territories was yet to come, and it is futile to speculate on what exactly had sparked his initial interest in the topic other than that it was obviously difficult to ignore Jewish questions as an archivist in 1937. In the late 1970s, however – the period where we can assume that he re-worked the article about medieval Prussian Jews – the racist form of antisemitism that allowed him to state en passant that Jews were a foreign element in Prussia and in Europe in general and had been so for two thousand years was widely discredited and had given way to more subtle forms of resentment. Schuldabwehr, the rejection of guilt and projection of it onto the victims, which has been analyzed as a primary motive behind post-war antisemitism in Germany, seems to be an unlikely explanation for Forstreuter’s return to the Jewish question towards the end of his life – none of his public or scholarly or even private written statements expressed any form of insight into his own responsibility and engagement for the National Socialist state. He never seems to have felt guilt, not even in the sublimated form of Schuldabwehr, or if he did, he kept it private and it is not reflected in his estate. He did not address his own engagement for the National Socialist state in any public way, except for the justifications regarding manuscripts stolen from Polish archives, measures he during the 1950s

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and 1960s still portrayed as means of securing or righteous restauration of holdings belonging to Königsberg. He never openly addressed his role in the destruction of Jewish archives or his reactions towards the pogroms he witnessed. Maybe his reassessment of the article about Prussian Jews was born out of the same mixture of political naivety and self-consciousness that let him brag about his sine ira et studio approach of politically heated topics. However, he found a fairly complete revision of his 1937 article necessary. But a simple ‘linguistic cleansing’ of the older version was not what he performed. While using the same basis of sources from the GStA, he restricted the chronological range until the Reformation, expanded the geographical range and basically re-wrote most of his discussion. In fact, there is very little resemblance between the 1937 version and 1981 version; the latter includes more sources, more speculation about potential interpretations of these sources and generally bears the character of a late work by an old and experienced researcher – the sources found regarding the Jews are routinely placed in the alleged economic and political context of the Teutonic Order’s state at the time. Nova Marchia and Livonia were included in the study – a crucial change, since the areas close to the Prussian heartlands clearly gave rise to different circumstances and potential for Jewish life. The first obvious change is the new introduction, in which Forstreuter asserts that his results stand the test of time. In the earlier version, he had qualified the purpose of the study as part of humanity’s twothousand-year-old struggle with the question of Judaism: the question of ‘the incorporation of a foreign element’. This basic idea of Judaism as a foreign element – in Forstreuter’s words, ‘today mainly of interest because of the racial differences, but in the Middle Ages, because of the religious differences’ – remains prominent throughout the article, in both its pre- and post-war versions. Both versions rely on the assumption that the Order’s territory was a bulwark against Jewish and Slavic influx – the first one spells it out more clearly, but the assumption remains stable. The article makes mention of the differences in Teutonic Order policies in the different areas of Prussia, Livonia and the bailiwicks in the empire, and then turns its attention to Prussia, ‘a wealthy and thus attractive region for the Jews’ – this en passant reference to Jewish greed is replaced in the later version by a vague curiosity about the absence of Jewish communities in the Baltic coastal area, despite the draw large towns are said to have for Jews. Having established that there is no evidence that there were stable Jewish communities in this ‘historically unique’ area, Forstreuter

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assumes that there must have been an Order law preventing Jewish settlement. In the older version this is based on an assumption that Jews were (and are) generally foreign and undesirable, which requires no further explanation. In the later version of the article, the assumption that there had been an anti-Jewish policy is supported by another popular turn of thought: the general uniqueness of the Teutonic Order’s state, the Sonderstellung of Prussia, would have pushed the Order to establish a kind of church state in this region, which the corporation had so recently conquered and seized away from the pagans. Prussian policies are presented as the model, with other local policies being seen as deviations even though they had been developed earlier.1 Forstreuter starts his run-through of sources with the Landordnung by Siegfried von Feuchtwangen, as presented by Simon Grunau, a sixteenth-century Dominican chronicler. In the later version, his discussion of the source is much more thorough; he mentions that the model for the text might have been the 1503 Landordnung by Friedrich von Sachsen and speculates that Grunau hoped to explain the (presumed) absence of Jews from Prussia in the sixteenth century as the result of the proclamation of a law earlier on. It is true that Grunau’s version of the presumed 1309 document resembles in some articles the 1503 document – but this is still no explanation for the origin of the passage with the Jews. What is striking about Forstreuter’s assessment of the Landordnung is that he acknowledges doubting the reliability of the tradition in the later historiography but continues to assume that there was an antiJewish regulation – here, the bulwark thesis obscures his assessment of the sources, which is particularly interesting, because Simon Grunau did otherwise not enjoy a terribly positive reputation among nineteenth- and twentieth-century historians. A reassessment of Kurt Forstreuter’s work on the Prussian Jews is not so much about a treasure trove of previously unknown sources; it is about assessing the same sources more respectfully and without the common assumption that relations between Christians and Jews were necessarily hostile, an approach that all too readily accepts anti-Jewish violence and segregation as the logical outcome of the very nature of Jewish-Christian relations. Another issue in this re-reading of the sources is the definition of Jewish communities. There are no extant sources from Jews themselves, and the Christian sources necessarily present only a certain, very narrow part of all potential forms of Jewish life. Additionally, our perception of Jewish life relies on the definitions shaped in those areas of Ashkenaz where the populations were much denser and the sources

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much more thorough. In Prussia, however, we probably have to accept a broader definition of Jewish life, one characterized by migration, nomadism and impermanence. In the following chapters, I will present a remake of Kurt Forstreuter’s work, starting with the alleged Landordnung of 1309, which High Master Siegfried von Feuchtwangen is said to have issued. I will address whether or not such a Landordnung existed and how likely it is that it would have included an anti-Jewish regulation. As the entire idea of Prussia as a bulwark, of the Teutonic Order as the defender of unsullied Christianity and of the total absence of Jewish life from medieval Prussia relies on this Landordnung, I hope the reader will excuse a certain necessary garrulity. The methodology used in this chapter, and the following, is fairly simple: a critical re-reading of the existing sources as part of a critical engagement with the existing scholarship on the topic, including the acknowledgment of gaps in the documentation and tradition – whether these gaps derive from medieval practices of writing or from destruction in modern times. To assess the Teutonic Order policies regarding Jewish settlement, it is necessary to clarify the general legal framework governing the relationship between the military order as landlord and its Christian and non-Christian subjects. The military orders that were established in the Holy Land and spread across the Mediterranean settled in old lands that had been inhabited by various cultures, ethnic groups and religions for centuries. The situation in Prussia was different; Prussia was largely seen as wasteland occupied by pagans in need of Christianization and suitable for colonization. Crusading in the Baltic started at the end of the twelfth century when German missionaries entered Livonia, an area of increasing interest to the merchants of the Hanseatic League, in order to secure the trading routes via the Daugava/Düna River. The Order of the Sword Brethren, the leading Western military force in the region between 1202 and 1236, then merged with the Teutonic Order, which was about to consolidate its military and missionary successes in the area of the pagan tribes. During the course of the thirteenth century, these tribes inefficiently revolted several times, which resulted in a legislation establishing their subordinate social and economic status. The boundaries between indigenous subjects and immigrating settlers and knight brethren were not impermeable for individuals, but the structures established here were still visible in settlement patterns in the Reformation period.2 The grade of Christianization of the Prussian – and, in Livonia, Baltic – tribes during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is hard to estimate and is still a topic of scholarly debates. But regarding regulations for non-Christian populations, the Prussians can

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equally serve as an area of comparison for Christian-Jewish relations as the relations in other, less densely populated areas of Europe. Parallel to the enforcement of the colonial dominion in Prussia, the Teutonic Order developed bailiwicks in other areas, mainly the Holy Roman Empire and Livonia. Regarding Jewish populations, Livonia and Prussia were different from both the dominions of the other military orders in Rhodes, Cypress and Malta and the Teutonic Order’s bailiwicks in the German lands, where relations between Jewish population and landlord were rather positive. However, the other military orders’ relation to Jews in their territories might serve as a comparative background to the situation in Prussia, even though they were situated in regions where Jews, Christians and Muslims had coexisted for centuries already when the military orders arrived. An example of long, peaceful, mutually beneficial relations between a Jewish community and a military order as landlord is Rhodes. The Order of St. John had established a territorial lordship not unlike the Teutonic Order’s on the Mediterranean island during the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The corporation had formal jurisdiction over the Jewish minority living there, exercised by one of the Order’s brothers. Relations between members of the Jewish community and its landlord are apparent in the regulations governing Jewish moneylending businesses, the taxing of the community and the privileges granted to Jewish physicians, whom the Order’s hospital relied upon – particularly important to maintaining a mutually positive relationship. It seems that the relationship only went into decline during the second half of the fifteenth century, and in 1503 the Jews were expelled from Rhodes, the pretext being that they had not converted to Christianity despite the friendly and hospitable treatment they had received at the hands of the Christians.3 An attempt to free the Crusader’s state from Jews is not visible in the earlier phases of dominion. In the German lands, the jurisdiction over Jews was one of the iura regalia belonging to the king or emperor or whoever they chose to sell it to – towns, bishops, territorial lords. These had then the right to allow or prohibit settlement of Jews and to take taxes from them in exchange for the landlord’s protection. Given the absence of Jewish communities from Prussia, the question of whether or not the Teutonic Order theoretically had the Judenregal (the royal privilege placing the Jews under the protection of the king or emperor), or the emperor, or the bishops seems a bit futile and has not been raised before. Furthermore, it touches the complicated issue of the legal status of the Order’s territory within the Holy Roman Empire.4 Even though Friedrich II had bestowed the Order with the same privileges as any other landlord in

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1226, the establishment of a relatively autonomous dominion under the control of the brethren, as a corporate whole garnering the consent of the emperor and the pope, was not an established fact from the outset, but a process. Additionally, until the move of the high master’s seat to Marienburg Castle in 1309, the Order’s structure permitted the regional overlords, Deutschmeister (master of the German lands) and Livländischer Meister (Livonian master), a considerable amount of autonomy and power. The Teutonic Order not only hosted Jews in the Reich’s bailiwicks and commands but also provided them with protection, as would eventually be the case for most landlords. In the town of Mergentheim, belonging to the Order, there was a Jewish community by the end of the thirteenth century; the community was subjected to expulsion and pogroms in 1299 (sixteen Jews were killed in the wake of a general pogrom in Franconia), 1336 and 1349. The 1336 violence, the socalled Armleder Pogroms, struck the large and well-to-do community in Mergentheim. After the pogrom, Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian granted the citizens of Mergentheim immunity from prosecution for their violence, directly opposing the interests of the Teutonic Order, which wanted to punish the perpetrators. However, five years later, the Order was permitted to allow five Jewish families to permanently (re) settle in the town, and in the late fifteenth century, the corporation took over the Judenregal entirely.5 The Order owned bailiwicks and commendatory properties in Bohemia (Prague and Plzeň, among others), Bozen and the surrounding area, Franconia, Alsace-Burgundy, Westphalia, Marburg, Koblenz and Thuringia-Saxonia, as well as in the Mainz-Speyer region. In most of these areas, there were sizable, well-established Jewish settlements, and, as the example of Mergentheim shows, the Teutonic Order generally prohibited expulsions rather than advocating them. No attempts of freeing the German possessions from Jewish inhabitants is visible. Why should that have been the case in Prussia and Livonia?

The Landordnung of 1309: Tradition and Probability To sum up the previous considerations: neither the Teutonic Order nor any other military order is known to have prevented Jews entirely from living in their territories. This is not to say that it is entirely impossible that such a regulation was issued but has been lost – the arbitrariness of the archival tradition must, after all, be acknowledged. Nonetheless, the reliability of the source can be evaluated at several levels using

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different approaches. First of all, the probability of a Landordnung in 1309 can, to some degree, be determined on the basis of the development of this sort of legal document and legal process, and, in the case of Prussia, this has been the subject of extensive research. Second, if we assume that a Landordnung of 1309 was issued but the documentation has been lost, its content can be compared to later regulations, which generally modelled themselves after similar earlier initiatives – a suitable comparison in the case of the Landordnung of 1309 would, for example, be the 1408 regulation, which allegedly tried to collect and systematize earlier regulations. Third, still assuming that an existing source from 1309 has been lost, the few anti-Jewish regulations issued on behalf of the Prussian towns during the mid-fifteenth century can help in assessing the content of a presumed ban from about 120 years earlier. But first of all, the tradition in which the Landordnung of 1309 has been handed down must be investigated; i.e., the content of the Landordnung in Prussian chronicles up to the early seventeenth century must itself be examined. These three approaches all lead in the end to the fact that the Landordnung cannot be found in any of the sources handed down to us, and it is extremely unlikely that it ever existed because of what we know about the historical circumstances of the year 1309 and the High Master’s move to Marienburg. And fourth, there is also no later Landordnung to be found that would have stated a ban on Jewish settlement. The way to these conclusions is complicated because of the character of the source tradition. The first question about the specific existence of the Landordnung of 1309 leads into the tradition of local post-Reformation historiography in Prussia – which until today remains largely unresearched – because the earliest verbatim quote of the text is found in Simon Grunau’s chronicle and some other Prussian historiographies, which were written at about the same time as Grunau’s. Most of the sources aren’t available in print or are only available in the corrupted and widely criticized Scriptores rerum Prussicarum series. On the basis of what we currently know, three main lines of tradition can be distinguished as relevant to the Landordnung: Simon Grunau’s Preussische Chronik, the Wartzmann complex,6 and the Ferber complex, all from the middle of the sixteenth century and partly dependant on one another. Udo Arnold has suggested a stemma in which both Grunau and parts of the Gdańsk historiographical tradition rely on one assumed source, the now lost version X of the history of Prussia. This putative document would then be the earliest source for the Landordnung – but this has yet to be verified.7 All of these chronicles come from an anti-Teutonic Order tradition, or at least from a position of mixed feelings.

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Simon Grunau was a Dominican and his sympathies for the Order were complicated. On the one hand, the Order was Catholic and, thus, better than the Protestants who succeeded it during the period when he was composing his chronicle. On the other hand, the Order had not had particularly friendly relations with other clerical orders in Prussia. In addition, Grunau was convinced that the people in the Prussian lands were a morally bad lot, and he largely blamed the Order for that. The Wartzmann and Ferber chronicles, in their different redactions, stem from the Gdańsk urban historiography that initially developed in the wake of the opposition of the Prussian towns to the Order, a tradition of historiographic writing which was continued as part of a local identity and urban pride even after the end of the Orders’ dominion – a less religious, more political opposition. The later chronicles dealing with the Prussian lands (East and West Prussia) in their totality by Christoph Hartknoch and Kaspar Bittander are also part of this tradition that was shaping urban and regional identity and saw the Order’s rule over Prussia as a small detail in the long and complex history of a people; this included a view of the medieval history of the region as a Catholic, and therefore oppositional, period. All of these chronicles mention Simon Grunau as the original source for the Landordnung claim, while using a number of medieval diplomatic sources to verify other events; thus, it is likely that none of the early modern chroniclers had access to any now-lost original of a Landordnung issued by the Order. It is also important to keep in mind that the Order’s own historiography also lacks any information about this alleged Landordnung. The article in question is either presented as a kind of preamble or as article one and reads more or less like in the Grunau version: For the glory of God and Mary, whose servants we are, we state that no Jew, no magician, no performer of the black arts, no weideler [the priests of the Prussian pagan religion] or what they all might be called who are in error with the help of the devil, are allowed to be held in our land Prussia, and if anybody does, he shall suffer whatever the unholy deserve.8

If we look at the framing of the Landordnung in the chronicles, we can clearly distinguish three approaches: one includes the Landordnung in the chapter about Siegfried von Feuchtwangen and repeats the article about the Jews and sorcerers more or less verbatim. The second, relatively comprehensive list of chronicles mentions this particular high master but does not claim that he issued a Landordnung. And a third, relatively small tradition includes the Landordnung, but not the article about Jews.

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Table 4.1: Occurrences of the 1309 Landordnung in Early Modern Prussian Historiography Chronicles that include the Landordnung with an article about ‘Jews, sorcerers, black magicians’

Chronicles that do not include the Landordnung

Chronicles that include the Landordnung but not the article about Jews

1521, Simon Grunau

ca. 1529, Ferber-Buch9

1553, Heinrich von Rheden10 Ms Celle (lost)13

1543/1554, Wartzmann I11 1560?, Andreas Huckewitz12 16th/17th century, 1575, Von Ursprung und anonymous14 alten Herkommen des Teutschen Ordens15 1573, Wartzmann II16 1584, Kaspar Hennenberger, Kurtze Beschreibung 1575, Wartzmann I17 1587, Stenzel Bornbach18 1596, Chronik bis 151919 1657, Weissenfels20 1609, Kaspar Bittander21 before 1678, Hiärn, Ehst-, Hiärn, Ehst-, Lyf- und Lyf- und Lettländische Lettländische Geschichte23 Geschichte22 1684, Christoph Hartknoch24

Simon Grunau’s Preussische Chronik seems to be the oldest source to mention the Landordnung, including the article about ‘Jews, sorcerers and black magicians’. It was written sometime between 1524 and 1529. Along with Grunau’s Preussische Chronik, several manuscripts that included Bartholomäus Wartzmann’s version of the history of Prussia in two different redactions also belong to this group, as does an anonymous chronicle and both Kaspar Bittander’s and the Chronik bis 1519 later manuscripts. They claim the article about the Jews and sorcerers is central to the Landordnung and use more or less the same words in their descriptions, although the formulation of the preamble to the willkor may differ. Chronologically closest to Grunau is the Ferber-Buch, which exists in a seventeenth-century manuscript but was compiled around 1529, making it roughly contemporary to Simon Grunau’s version. It makes no mention of a Landordnung of 1309. Some decades later, Andreas Huckewitz and an anonymous chronicler similarly do not know about the Landordnung at all. Also Kaspar Hennenberger’s Kurtze Beschreibung des Landes Preussen belongs to this tradition, as does Stenzel Bornbach’s and other chroniclers’ work later during the seventeenth century.

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Another variation that does not mention Jews is the Heinrich von Rheden chronicle, written some twenty years later than the earliest of these examples. It does include a Landordnung but not its preamble. While article 7 of the document does address sorcerers, waideler and blasphemers, it makes no mention of Jews. Since the tradition of early Prussian historiography is so complicated and there are so few studies to rely on, it is not possible to determine whether one or the other of these versions was of greater or lesser importance or if the manuscripts listed here reflect an increased diffusion of the Landordnung over time. On the basis of this sample, which includes the collections in libraries in Berlin, Uppsala, Stockholm and Copenhagen, it appears that approximately half of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century chronicles mention the Landordnung, and the rest do not.25 None of the chronicles from either group makes any mention of later regulations governing Jewish settlement. Those that include later Landordnungen list them but do not contain articles about Jews – in complete accord with the diplomatic tradition we are aware of in this regard. As the oldest evidence, Simon Grunau’s chronicle has a special status within this tradition, but it is unlikely that it served as the sole and most important source for later chroniclers. Overall, the Grunau chronicle differs considerably from all the other Prussian chronicles; while the others share a largely similar structure and content, Grunau mixes ancient history and recent events, as well as mentioning a number of episodes involving Jews that the others do not.26 Besides Grunau, the different redactions of the Wartzmann chronicle are the oldest model for the Landordnung, with almost verbatim the same article as in Grunau. The second group of chronicles, which contains those that do not mention the Landordnung of 1309, is also rooted in the Gdańsk urban tradition. Ebert Ferber and his followers had access to the Grunau chronicle and perhaps to all of the other sources that Wartzmann and the others used. Ferber even had access to the Wartzmann chronicle itself, but, nonetheless, this group of texts makes no mention of a Landordnung or, by extension, any anti-Jewish ban in Prussia. They usually mention the election of High Master Siegfried von Feuchtwangen and the fact that he moved the high master’s seat to Marienburg, but they do not mention any legislative act of his banning Jews – they mention no legislative act of his at all. These differences cannot be explained simply by assuming that Grunau presented one version, which the others relied on, and the Ferber complex another one, which its followers relied on. With or without the mention of Jews, a Landordnung of 1309 contradicts

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Arnold’s classification of chronicles entirely; this alone would place Grunau, Wartzmann, Bittander and the later printed chronicles in a single group, with another group deriving from the Ferber-Buch, followed by Huckewitz, Henneberger and others. In this context, the Heinrich von Rheden chronicle is the most important document that provides a third version with the articles of the Landordnung presented in an entirely different order, and without mentioning of Jews. Since the second evidence, the Celle manuscript, is lost, this trace does not lead any further. Apart from the Landordnung, all the other chronicles of the sixteenth century have more in common with each other than with Grunau regarding structure and content. On the other hand, in those chronicles that include the Landordnung, the article about Jews and sorcerers is more or less word for word as in the Grunau version. This is a strong argument for the existence of a common, now-lost version of either a chronicle X or of the Landordnung itself. However, the variance in mentions of the Landordnung in the chronicles is also at odds with other general similarities among them. To sum up: there is a strong historiographic tradition presenting the Landordnung of 1309, including all of its articles, with the first article forbidding Jews, magicians and sorcerers from settling in Prussia. The different versions of the text do not vary greatly from the oldest accessible version, found in Simon Grunau’s chronicle, and thus seem to rely on each other or, more likely, on a common unknown model text (for example, Arnold’s version X). The fact that the version of the Landordnung in the Grunau chronicle includes more or less exactly the same articles as the later chronicles, which are otherwise structured entirely differently than Grunau’s and do not include several of the other incidents related to Jews included in Grunau’s chronicle, indicates that the Grunau chronicle was only the direct source for much later versions, such as Christoph Hartknoch’s (he specifically mentions Grunau as one of his sources), while the earlier chroniclers relied on a different text, to which Grunau also had access. A third option is that Simon Grunau simply made this list up, and other historians followed his lead. He has been accused of making up many other episodes in his chronicle, which positivist historians consider generally unreliable. Thus it is worth taking a closer look at Grunau’s chronicle and the Prussian Jews it mentions, which will be done in the following chapters. But another thing that makes the mention of Jews in this Landordnung suspect is that it is not repeated in other, later regulations mentioned in either these chronicles or in other sources. It remains single evidence restricted to one kind of Prussian chronicle from the mid-sixteenth

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century and later. In this light, a brief investigation of the development of Landordnungen in general seems in order.

The High Master Issues Laws: Landordnungen in Prussia It is worth mentioning that each of the Early Modern chronicles discussed above – whether or not they mention the ban on Jews and magicians – presents evidence of later Landordnungen issued by high masters and partially documents their articles. Ulrich von Jungingen’s 1408 regulation is particularly prominent, and in this case there is actually a tradition from the Order itself supporting it and the related negotiations with the diets representing the Prussian estates.27 None of the versions of this Landordnung in any way resembles the Landordnung of 1309 handed down in the Grunau chronicle, and none of them mentions Jews in this or any other context. The Grunau chronicle itself mentions later willkore for Prussia, one of which even includes the article about the treatment of the infidels – specifically mentioning black magicians and sorcerers, but not Jews.28 Landordnung is a problematic term and concept when discussing the early fourteenth century in Prussia. While regulations for different single areas of daily life, social relations and trade were issued by town councils throughout the Middle Ages, no evidence of any systematic and comprehensive attempt on the part of landlords to regulate the lives of inhabitants and visitors has been passed down. Consequently, regulations were not referred to as Landordnung before the late fifteenth or the early sixteenth century. From its earliest usage, the term seems to mean a collection of regulations and statutes issued by the landlord in tandem with the estates, or following a consultation, at minimum.29 The other related terms used in the sources are artickel, willkor, statuta. Before the high master took his residence in Prussia, the Prussian landmaster was the landlord for the region (except for the territories belonging to the bishops) and was thereby responsible for such regulations and negotiations. In Prussia, the relation between landlord and inhabitants was in some ways distinct, since the former was a spiritual corporation and the latter had different legal statuses based on their language and ethnicity. There were the (relatively) new settlers in the context of a colonial construct, whose status was codified for the first time in the Kulmer Handfeste, which granted the German settlers better legal conditions than the indigenous Prussians, particularly in the case of the inhabi­ tants of the towns Culm and Toruń, and thereafter all of the other

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towns governed by Culm law. There was also a Polish population, parts of which constituted the local nobility alongside German and Prussian nobles. The status of the Polish knights in the Culm area was codified by the landmaster of Prussia in a separate document in 1237, which was then renewed in 1278. These regulations were issued after negotiations between the representatives of the Order and of the settlers and knights. Indigenous Prussians found themselves in a different situation: during the early thirteenth century, their rights and duties were established in their peace treaties with the Order, but following the uprisings (described in Peter von Dusburg’s chronicle), most of them were treated as unfree and, therefore, not as subjects entitled negotiations and agreed-upon regulations, restricted to their own exclusive settlements under conditions worse than those of the new settlers.30 This provides a good example on how non-Christians were exempted from the early Teutonic Order documentation, which has an inevitable impact when it comes to assessing the existence and degree of religious heterogeneity. Thus, in the first fifty to seventy years after the establishment of a regional authority in Prussia, it was the Prussian landmaster or the bishops who issued the privileges that regulated the legal status of the inhabitants of towns, including their right to own land and their mutual rights and duties. Analysis suggests that the participation of a second negotiating party, usually one or several towns, and the pro­ mulgation of regulations by local authorities were characteristic of the older forms of Landordnung in Prussia.31 In the case of most of the preserved regulations that were issued by the landmaster, or later the high master, documentation about the negotiations, either produced by a diet or taking the form of letters of complaint from a party to the negotiations, has also been passed down. Documentation is scarce for the period 1230–1309, when the landmaster was responsible for legislation in the Prussian territory, but there is evidence that both the council of the town of Königsberg and the Polish knights had formally negotiated with the landmaster regarding legislation by the second half of the thirteenth century. The earliest recorded negotiations between the Prussian towns and the landmaster took place in 1293–94, followed by negotiations between the high master and the towns in 1336–37; both addressed issues of trade and of crafts.32 The year 1309 marked no immediate change in the development of the relation between landlord and estates (which at that point were not formal estates yet). Siegfried of Feuchtwangen did, however, install some novelties in the Prussian legislation, but only regarding the inner affairs and structure of the corporation itself; he changed the power

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relations between the Prussian, Livonian and German landmaster and the high master.33 The system of Tagfahrten (diets) seems to have been firmly established in Prussia by sometime in the mid-fourteenth century – or at least that is when they began to be properly documented. This is also the point at which the towns began to send official delegates to the annual meetings of the Hanseatic League. It was in connection with these Tagfahrten that the high masters began to issue regulations based on the needs of the towns’ representatives; everything handed down to us targets some specific area of economic life, often addressing local concerns within a broader context. Against this background, two things make the presumed Landordnung of 1309 seem anachronistic: first, it included a fair number of regulations addressing daily life that were supposed to apply to all of Prussia, including the bishops’ territories, and which encompassed both questions of faith and issues related to labour and wages; second, the very idea that it was issued by the high master himself without prior negotiations seems out of place. The chronicles substantiate the existence of this Landordnung by claiming that High Master Siegfried von Feuchtwangen moved his main seat from Venice to Marienburg, where one of his first acts was to issue a collection of laws for Prussia – this would be logical from the viewpoint of the sixteenth century, but it is anachronistic for 1309 since it presupposes a concept of Landesherrschaft that does not seem legitimate for this early period. Although moving the main seat located the high master of the Teutonic Order in an area where the Order was most successful and was obviously attempting to establish and exercise territorial authority, the concurrent issuing of a law for the entire country seems to reflect a modern fantasy of what a feudal lord would do upon moving to his new land. Additionally, Siegfried von Feuchtwangen did decide to move the seat officially, but this did not imply a stable residency yet. His follower in the office, Karl von Trier, elected in 1311, administered the Order from his hometown Trier. Only in 1324, the next high master Werner von Orseln made the castle Marienburg his permanent residency and the centre of administration. As most of the current research about this period states, the assumption of a planned establishment of dominion in Prussia for the entire first half of the fourteenth century is anachronistic. The next visible step in the development of territorial regulations came about in 1408, when Ulrich von Jungingen made the first effort to collect and systematize specific earlier regulations. He reacted to a litany of demands from the estates by issuing a collection of older

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r­ egulations, along with some new ones. He did not collect all earlier regulations or attempt to codify all of the existent Prussian laws. Nonetheless, this may well be the first endeavour to collect older regulations and present them together with new ones.34 The available sources make the procedure followed perfectly clear, thereby providing us with a suitable example of how regulations were drawn up in the years around 1400. Shortly before the laws were issued, the estates presented a list of demands to the high master. The document included twelve articles and specific willkore. The articles touch upon milling, trade, monetary issues and Pfundgeld (a specific toll on goods), fishing and the courts. There is no mention of rights of settlement or citizenship, or religious issues.35 The recess of the next assembly included the high master’s reaction to these articles, and it addressed some other issues: carrying weapons and riding in large groups, the right to confession for people sentenced to death, market closing on Sundays, the ban on trade in churchyards, the wool trade, court matters, fishing, interest taken by the Order’s officials, regulations for goldsmiths, wine importation, the kidnapping of virgins and rape.36 What’s significant here is that the first time that the high master issued a large number of regulations on behalf of the estates, neither section included anti-Jewish regulations. As the 1408 laws did not represent a conscious and comprehensive codification of all former laws, it is possible that the ban on Jews and magicians might have been omitted here, even if it had been a prominent element of an earlier collection. However, even later and more comprehensive collections lack such an article. In 1420, for example, there was a more systematic attempt to codify existing law.37 It reiterates most of the earlier regulations applicable to the entire country and adds some specific articles pertaining only to the towns of Toruń and Malbork/Marienburg, as well as some regulations regarding shipping on the Vistula. The editors of Acten der Ständetage Preussens (Acts of the Diets of the Prussian Estates, AST) made an effort to distinguish between new and older regulations in the collection of 1420. They identify several entirely new regulations, particularly in the first part of the collection, with the later sections presenting earlier collections stretching back as far as 1385. There is no indication of any earlier, even more basic collection of regulations, such as the one we later find ascribed to Siegfried von Feuchtwangen in the chronicles. Furthermore, none of the law collections between 1385 and 1420 in any way address the issues of Jewish settlement and/or trade. Article 83 is the only regulation dealing with residency, and it concerns Prussians. It reads: ‘No Prussians shall be

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taken in duty or to live in towns or in German villages; wherever they are found, they shall be removed.’38 This regulation is part of a set of older articles that were inserted and that reiterate the recess of a diet held in Elbląg/Elbing in 1417. These articles include some that we recognize from the alleged Landordnung of 1309 in the Grunau version – for example, article 87 addressing the salaries for servants and maids. This particular regulation does not seem to be the result of a request from the estates – which suggests that regardless of the interests of the estates, the high master was concerned with issues of settlement and residency (and ethnicity or religion), but he did not specifically mention Jews in this context. Nor did the estates demand any anti-Jewish regulations in the numerous assemblies that took place between 1385 and 1420. Restrictions on Jewish trade and settlement are not among the topics raised at the negotiations at Prussian diets held before 1435.

Regulation of Religious Deviance in Prussian Sources Despite the aforementioned doubts about the likelihood of a comprehensive Landordnung of 1309, the general idea that a medieval landlord attempted to establish religious homogeneity and orthodoxy within his dominion is not particularly far-fetched. The military orders are somewhat of an exception in this regard because they established dominion over territories with longstanding cultural landscapes that incorporated Christians of various confessions, as well as Jews and Muslims, who had been coexisting for centuries. In Cypress or Rhodes, with their stable Jewish and Muslim communities, the issue of religious diversity had to be approached entirely differently than was the case in the Baltic, where the indigenous population belonged to various tribes and cultural and language groups but could, nonetheless, easily be subsumed under the single label ‘pagan’ by the Crusaders. Pagans, whose conversion was the putative raison d’être of the Teutonic Order in the region, were subjected to numerous regulations separating them from the Christian population – different legal systems for Prussians and German settlers were established in the early days of colonization. In the presumed Landordnung of 1309, as we have noted, Jews are mentioned along with sorcerers, black magicians and waideler. This regulation is always presented as the first article or as a preface of sorts; subsequent articles deal with issues such as the working conditions of maids and servants, general jurisdictional matters, the use of weights and valuta. The first article is not merely an anti-Jewish

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regulation but a law forbidding the exercise and promotion of numerous non-Christian practices. The punishment is not elaborated upon, although it might have been expulsion or even the death penalty – the law specifically encompasses not only those performing these practices but anyone who helps them or provides them shelter. This article places Judaism alongside paganism, heretical practices and sorcery, and thus subjects it to both church and secular inquisition and judgement. (On a different note, it is interesting that all Jews are subject to punishment, whereas in the case of the Prussian pagan religion, it is only the priests. Simple adherents of the pagan religion are not even mentioned.) As we have seen, it is not possible to find any other anti-Jewish regulations in later collections of laws, but religious deviance nonetheless remains an issue: heretics are mentioned several times in the regulations issued by high masters during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, an additional factor that must be taken into consideration when evaluating the probability of an anti-Jewish ban in 1309. Several among the numerous collections of regulations issued between 1385 and 1420 include a mix of religious and secular issues. Article 4 of the 1408 regulations is of particular interest to our discussion: ‘Also, everybody shall admonish their subjects to confess and fulfil God’s laws, and whoever finds sorcery and false belief in his domain shall reject and disrupt it, to the best of his ability.’39 The same article is repeated almost verbatim in the 1420 regulations, in this case, as article 16.40 The focus of this one is slightly different from what is found in the alleged Landordnung of 1309, as it mainly focuses on the responsibility of authorities to ensure their subjects’ orthodoxy. The list of heresies is shortened to ‘sorcery and other false beliefs’, with a requirement for regular confession being added. There is no mention of a ban on settlement or residency for heretics, but there is of the authorities’ duty to ‘disrupt’ heretical practices to the best of their ability. Overall, the article is formulated in defensive terms, with no mention of any punishment, and with even local authorities being designated as undersassen (subjects). Given that the Order was the main authority in large areas of Prussia, this regulation is part promise and part demand aimed at the city councils, particularly the bishops, as well as at every head of a household. That said, this seems to be the regulation that resembles most closely that forbidding Jewish settlement in the alleged Landordnung of 1309, more than a hundred years earlier. A comparison of the traditions surrounding the Landordnung of 1309 with those relative to the 1408 and 1420 regulations shows that only the alleged 1309 version mentions Jews alongside sorcerers and

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pagan priests in the list of non-orthodox people and forbids them to settle in Prussia. Later, similar regulations repeat the intolerance for non-orthodox beliefs and practices but do not mention Jews. As such, it seems that these latter regulations were primarily issued to establish a common responsibility for the persecution of non-Christian practices, with a particular focus on sorcery and the Prussian population’s pagan beliefs, which were not to be tolerated in the German villages and towns. Recent scholarship suggests that it is, in fact, impossible to accurately assess the degree to which pagan beliefs were actually held and practiced in Prussia.41 Besides the Landordnungen, willküren and other regulations issued by the Order as the secular landlord, there are sources related to the Order’s role as a religious authority. There are also sources addressing the regulations produced by other religious authorities in Prussia concerning inhabitants’ religious orthodoxy. In this regard, the statutes of provincial synods and visitation reports are of particular interest; both of these source genres are well preserved for the fifteenth century, but not earlier than that. The bishops’ territories were not formally under the jurisdiction of the Teutonic Order, even though, in practice, the cathedral chapters of Pomesania and Warmia (Ermland) and the archbishopric of Riga were incorporated into the Order – there are, however, different assessments of the degree of autonomy these incorporated chapters had within the Order. In any case, the incorporated chapter in Riga provides interesting evidence about the status of the archdioceses in the frontier region of Catholic Christianity – the relationship between how unorthodox beliefs and practices were portrayed in ecclesiastical statutes, on the one hand, and the historical reality, on the other, is up for discussion, with some historians reading the statutes as an interpretative anthropological framework and others ascribing a certain amount of genuine content to them. Along with heretics, Jews are frequently addressed in ecclesiastical statutes, and it seems unlikely that much new information about their presumed habits and misdeeds remains to be discovered. Considering the frequent appearance of Jews in ecclesiastical statutes, it is remarkable that they do not appear at all in those from Prussia, and only once in Livonian statutes. It is difficult to determine what this tells us about their actual presence and any actual desire on the part of the authorities to repress them – this is also true of other religious groups that are not specifically identified. While pagans – a potentially exaggerated or even constructed religious constituency – appear frequently in the fifteenth-century Prussian sources, Jews are generally absent. In 1428, the provincial synod produced statutes, including a chapter

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entitled De Judeis et Sarracenis, which does not actually discuss Jews but instead focuses on Saracens ‘and the evil Russians’, prohibiting Christians from serving in their militaries or otherwise helping them to engage in war against Christians. On the other hand, another chapter entitled De sortilegiis identifies ‘Jewish superstitions and idolatry, with which they violate the Christian faith and baptism’, along with different forms of casting of lots, fortune telling and prophesizing, as activities leading to excommunication.42 The Teutonic Order’s officials seem to be primarily concerned with persistent pagan beliefs and practices and their representations. Presumably, other forms of religious deviance were either not terribly prevalent in Prussia or were not of great enough interest to be mentioned in the Order’s legal sources. There is a paucity of Prussian sources addressing either popular religious movements, such as the Beguines, the Lollardy or Manichean groups, or learned forms of religious belief that were considered heretical. In the latter case, the sole actual example is the Hussite heretic Leander, who appears frequently in the sixteenth-century historiography of Gdańsk and Königsberg, but without any particular discussion of his heterodoxy.43 Obviously, this reality has reinforced the notion of the Prussian territory as a uniformly Christian territory – which has possibly contributed to the complete absence of research into non-Catholic forms of religion in the area. Judaism, as a form of religious deviance, is not mentioned in the normative medieval Prussian sources.44 The normative and legal sources suggest that Jews were simply lumped into the category of pagans in Prussian political perception.

A Bad Landlord: The Conflict at the Council of Constance The youngest evidence of the simultaneous discussion of Jews and pagans in sources related to the Teutonic Order comes from the legal quarrels between the corporation and the Polish Crown in the fifteenth century. Ever since the Teutonic Order acquired the region of Pomerelia in the beginning of the fourteenth century, arguments and lawsuits with the Kingdom of Poland occurred, leading to papal interventions and comprehensive production of trial protocols.45 It is well known that the Teutonic Order found it increasingly difficult to justify its existence and constant warfare on the basis of its original religious argument about protecting Christian settlers from pagan violence and/or converting these same pagans to Christianity, since the number of actual pagans caught between the Catholic lands in Prussia and Poland, on one side,

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and the Orthodox Russian lands, on the other, had decreased considerably. Two hundred years after the arrival of the Order, the legitimacy of its existence was questioned by representatives of the Polish realm, and the Order’s treatment of non-Christians played an important role in this – the issue was triggered by the fact that the Order continued to commission and lead annual military expeditions into Lithuanian territory, even after the grand duke had converted to Christianity. As such, the argument at the Council of Constance addressed the bellum iustum against pagans in general, as well as the consequent rights of the pagans as subordinates and the duties of a landlord towards the nonChristians in his territory.46 Jews played a peculiar role in the debate that unfolded at the Council of Constance, as well as in a curious lawsuit brought against the Order as a landlord. Before turning to the actual events, a few words must be said about the sources. The relevant documents from the acts of the Council of Constance about the conflict between the Teutonic Order and Poland during the first half of the fifteenth century have been edited by Erich Weise, in a collection entitled Die Staatsschriften des Deutschen Ordens.47 This book includes a mix of verbatim texts and conclusions similar to regesta, as well as documents that diverge from the originals, framed by highly personal (or, better yet, personal-political) comments about the process itself. While source editions are generally seen as above suspicion, this one was harshly criticised by Hartmut Boockmann when it came out – for Boockmann, it was perfectly obvious that Weise had chosen and arranged his material to suit his political preoccupations. In the case of the Council of Constance, this meant that Weise treated the polemical writings from both sides as literal descriptions of a status quo. Additionally, he dealt with these writings as if they were evidence that legitimized the Teutonic Order’s presence in Prussia two hundred years earlier, thereby acting less like a scholar than a biased judge ruling on the 1418 process.48 As a result, Weise’s source edition fuelled an argument between German and Polish historians that amounted to a restaging of the lawsuit brought by the Polish crown against the Teutonic Order at the Council.49 Since it centred on the legitimacy of the Order’s presence in the Baltic, it was read as evidence of the contemporary legitimacy of German presence – it is my hope that these parallels will be seen as an amusing and extremely absurd footnote one day, but until quite recently they have played a crucial role in German-Polish post-war relations. Of interest to us is the Teutonic Order’s policies on Jewish settlement; the overall legitimacy of its dominion is not of great relevance. The Jewish question arises because the Polish ambassador Paulus

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Wladimiri mentioned Jewish subjects in his pamphlet attacking the Order. Many of the pamphlets, transcripts and other texts produced for this Council have been preserved, but for our purposes only two are of particular interest: Paulus Wladimiri’s Conclusiones and the response of Ardicinus de Novara, the latter commissioned by the Teutonic Order. We do not, for example, need to look closely at the overall controversy between Paulus Wladimiri and Johannes Falkenberg addressing the latter’s Satira, in which he called for all Poles to be put to death, for which Wladmiri demanded his excommunication – but we should keep in mind the general tone and context of the Council, which was clearly extremely heated, leading to the production of particularly polemical writings that nonetheless addressed entirely practical political issues. Paulus Wladimiri (Paweł Włodkowic, 1370–1435/42), who was the rector of Kraków University and the Polish king’s ambassador to the Council, produced a number of treatises critical of the Teutonic Order. His De potestate papae et imperatoris respectu infidelium (Of the Power of the Pope and the Emperor Regarding the Infidels) discusses the rights and duties of the ecclesiastical and secular powers in the mission to the pagans, their treatment as inferiors and property rights in their lands. It was written in 1415 and presented at the Council in July of that year. It is now recognized as one of the first texts to address international law and as an important step in its further development.50 In general, it dealt with the scope of the pope’s and the emperor’s power, and it raised several issues directly related to the situation between Prussia and the Polish-Lithuanian Union: it assigned universal power to the pope, not the emperor, giving the latter no say whatsoever in any Prussian issues; it defined a righteous war as entirely defensive, thereby excluding war to gain new territory; it also prohibited the forced conversion of infidels. Insofar as it also defended the employment of pagan and Tatar mercenaries by Christian armies in defence of their homelands (as was custom in Poland), the text is an example of relative religious tolerance. It draws, particularly regarding the coexistence of Christians and pagans, upon lines of thought developed by Thomas Aquinas and Raimund de Penaforte, from which a general criticism of the armed mission of the Teutonic Order is developed.51 In the context of his argument supporting the pagans’ right to selfdetermination and freedom of religion, Paulus Wladimiri also mentions the Jews’ right of life unmolested in Christian lands. The Christian lords may not expel the Jews and other infidels from their dominions, or rob them, if there is not a just cause for this. Argument: because laws prohibit the molestation of those wishing to live in peace.52

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This provides a general outline of a Christian lord’s duty to protect all of his subjects as long as they live peacefully. The relationship between Christians and Jews was centuries old, and Wladimiri pointed to it as an example of infidels living in Christian lands. Later in his argument, he makes reference to Jews falling within the pope’s jurisdiction. The pope is allowed to judge the Jews, if they act against the law established by their customs, or if they are firmly known to have created heresies that violate their own laws.53

These are the only instances in which the chancellor invokes the law governing the Jews, and he does so to make a point about the law governing the pagans. His main argument is that the pope has the duty to protect all of the people in his lands, even the infidels, who should also be seen as lambs of the Lord. He sees the Crusading wars against the pagans in the Baltic as immoral, their goal being to conquer new land, land in which the pagans were supposed to have a right to self-determination – in contrast, for example, to the reconquistadores in Spain, who were fighting to regain land the Christians had once owned. In this argument, the Jews serve as examples of infidels to draw attention to a specific, well-established legal relationship. Plures materie et scripta de pugna regis Polonie et Cruciferorum, the response of Ardicinus de Novara, which was commissioned by the Teutonic Order, makes even less mention of Jews. Ardicinus acknowledges the papal jurisdiction over the Jews in an introductory paragraph, but thereafter focuses solely on the pagans. This would seem to suggest a role for a ban on Jewish settlement in the context of a generalized attempt by the Teutonic Order to establish and maintain Prussia as a uniformly Christian state. However, nothing like that ever happened. Even though Paulus Wladimiri accused the Teutonic Order of being a bad landlord who would not leave the infidels in peace, the Teutonic Order did not respond by arguing that the Jews, for some reason, should not to be left in peace in its territory. The reply simply ignored the subsumption of Jews and pagans and treated only the latter. To sum up, it seems highly unlikely that the high master issued a ban on Jewish settlement in 1309, or any year thereafter. The tradition of the regulation is complicated and doubtful and stems from sixteenthcentury chronicles, at least two hundred years after the alleged event. There is also no evidence of any parallel diplomatic tradition that would accompany such a regulation. Neither earlier or later Landordnungen include any anti-Jewish regulations, but they do address the authorities’ duty to preserve their subjects’ orthodoxy and sound faith, which was part of the alleged anti-Jewish regulation. Similar claims are issued

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in the statutes of the provincial synods, even those primarily concerned with pagan heterodoxy than with Judaism. Even during periods when its religious basis and its legitimacy were in doubt, the Order did not invoke an eventual expulsion of Jews as an example of the successful establishment of religious homogeneity. Furthermore, the very nature of the presumed Landordnung presents an anachronistic idea of the landlord’s authority during the early fourteenth century, making it unlikely that any set of regulations, with or without an anti-Jewish ban, ever actually existed – none of the researchers working on the legislative process in Prussia mentions the Landordnung of 1309 or perceives it as a missing link that has only been preserved in later chronicles. On the other hand, scholars working on issues related to the Jews treat this alleged Landordnung as the singular source of the Teutonic Order’s anti-Jewish policy. In effect, an entire research tradition has relied on a highly questionable source when arriving at its understanding of medieval Prussia as a bulwark against Jews, without even taking the time to search out other potential sources to prove the existence of an anti-Jewish ban or even the actual presence of Jews in Prussia during this period.

Notes   1. See the discussion of recent criticism of this approach in chapter 1.   2. Vercamer, Siedlungs-, Sozial- und Verwaltungsgeschichte, passim.   3. J. Sarnowsky, Macht und Herrschaft im Johanniterorden des 15. Jahrhunderts: Verfassung und Verwaltung der Johanniter auf Rhodos (1421–1522) (Münster: Lit, 2001), 363–66.   4. For the territories within the Reich, see K. Militzer, Die Entstehung der Deutschordensballeien im Deutschen Reich (Marburg: Elwert, 1970).   5. B. Klebes, Der Deutsche Orden in der Region Mergentheim im Mittelalter: Kommende, Stadt- und Territorialherrschaft (1219/20–ca. 1525) (Marburg: Elwert, 2002), 184–86; 336.   6. The Wartzmann chronicle exists in two versions, both by the same author, one written in 1542 (seven surviving manuscripts) and the other written in 1551 (nine surviving manuscripts). The author believed the second version to be much better than the first. A list of the manuscripts of the Wartzmann chronicle can be found in P. Gehrke, ‘Der Geschichtsschreiber Bartholomaeus Wartzmann im Kreise seiner Abschreiber: Ein Beitrag zur Quellenkunde der Danziger Chroniken im 16. Jahrhundert’, ZWG 41 (1900): 1–137. The manuscript used here is from the Uppsala UB, is part of the second redaction and is described ibid., 30–31.   7. Udo Arnold was the first to assume a pre-existing version X; his research was recently addressed by Arno Mentzel-Reuters. U. Arnold, Studien zur

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  8.

  9. 10.

11.

12. 13. 14.

15. 16.

preußischen Historiographie des 16. Jahrhunderts (Bonn [u.a.]: Wellm, 1967); A. Mentzel-Reuters, ‘Danziger Historiographie des 16. Jahrhunderts’, in Kulturgeschichte Preußens königlich polnischen Anteils in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. S. Beckmann and K. Garber (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2005), 99–128. For the most recent discussion of the Gdańsk tradition see Heß, ‘Nigra Crux Mala Crux’, 567–70. ‘Got zu lobe und Marien zu ehere, der dienner wir sein, wir setzen und wollen, damit kein Jude, kein zoberer, kein schwartzkunstiger, kein weideler, und wie sie danne genant sein, die mit hulffe des teuffels im irnusz des glaubens sein, sollen in unserm lande zu Preussen nit verhalten werden, und so sie iemandt wurde verhalten, er sol das leiden, das die unseligen verdient haben.’ M. Perlbach et al. (eds.), Simon Grunaus Preussische Chronik, 3 vols. (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1876–96), vol. 1, tract. XI, cap. 2, par. 2, p. 474. StaBi Berlin, Ms. boruss. 175 (seventeenth century manuscript). ‘[Art. 7] Alle Zauberer, weydler, pilweiyssen schwarzkunstiger und wie die gotteslesterer mogenn genanth werdenn, die sal mann umbringenn töttenn unnd mith feuer vorbrennenn uber all wo man sie bekümptt an alle wider redenn.’ StaBi Berlin, Ms. boruss. 176, fol. 92r. – As the quotations reveal only minor changes in the content, they will be left untranslated in the footnotes. ‘Anno 1310. kam mit der wohnung in preussen der erste hohmeister mit namen seifridus, er hielt ein capittel auf marienburgk, setzte seine gros compthur und marschalcke, und machte marienburgk zu seiem hauptschlosse, und setzte nachvolgende artikel, bei grosser pein und strafe zu halten auf: got zu lob, und marien zun ehren setzen wir und wollen, das kein jud, kein züberer, kein schwartzkünstler, kein zuführer, und wie sie genennet mögen werden, die mit hülffe des teuffels in irrung des glaubens sein, sollen in unserm lande zu preussen vorhalten werden, und wer sie verhalten wirdt, der sol leiden, was die unsehligen vordienet haben.’ StaBi Berlin, Ms. boruss. 175, fol. 38v. StaBi Berlin, Ms. boruss. 251; Biblioteka Gdańska Polskiej Akademii Nauk, Mg. 1279. According to Arnold, Studien, 89–90, the Celle manuscript of the Prussian chronicle included Siegfried’s Landordnung. The manuscript was allegedly stolen after he wrote his study. ‘Folgen die artickell. der erste artickel gott zu lobe, marien zu ehren, setzen wir und wollen, das erstlichen gehalten haben, das keyn jude, kein schwartzkunstiger zauberer noch weydeler die ihn der irrunge des glaubens myt hulffe des teuffels seyn, soll ihn unsern landen nicht vor halten werden, wer irer halten wirdt, dir sollen myt ihren lyden, was die ungleubigen und unseligen leyden wirden.’ StaBi Berlin, Ms. boruss. 255, p. 80. Von Ursprung und alten Herkommen des Teutschen Ordens und Bekherung der Preussen zum Christlichen Glauben, aus einem uhralten beschribenen Exemplar abgeschribenn. Anno 1575. KB Copenhagen, NKS 325 folio. ‘Anno 1309 ... Der erste articul, Gotte zu lobe Maria zu eren setzen wir unnd wollen, daz ernstlich gehaltenn haben, das kein Jude kein Schwartzkünstiger,

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17. 18. 19.

20. 21.

22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

Zauberer, noch waydeler die in der Irrunge des glaubens mit hülff des Teuffels sein sollen, in unseren landen nicht verhalden werdenn, unnd wer sie vorhalten wirt, die sollen mit ihnenn leiden was die ungläubigenn und unseligenn leiden werdenn.’ Uppsala UB, Nordin 416, fol. 59r. KB Stockholm, D 1337. StaBi Berlin, Ms. boruss. 246, vol. 2. ‘Der erste artickell. gott zu lobe mariae zu ehren setzen wir, undt wollen das erstlich gehalten haben, das kein jude, schwartzkünstinger, zauberer noch weideler, die in der irrungck des glaubens, mit hülfe des teuffels sein, sollen in den unsern landen nicht verhalten werden, undt wer sie erhelt der soll mit thun leiden, was die ungleübigen undt unsehligen leiden werden.’ StaBi Berlin, Ms. boruss. 253, fol. 56r. See also for a very similar entry Ms. boruss. 257. StaBi Berlin, Ms. boruss. 175. ‘Des landes wilköre. Gott zu lobe und ehren settzen wir dies, und willen das ernstlich gehaltten haben, das kein Judt, kein Schwartzkünstler, kein Zauberer kein Waideler und wie sie genantt mögen werden, die in ehrung des teifels gespensts, und in müßbrichen des glaubens sein, die mit ihn handelen und wandelen, derselbigen sollen in unseren landen nit gehalten noch gelitten werden, und wer sie verhaltten wirdt, der soll mit ihnen leiden was solchen gebuhrett.’ UB Uppsala, H 153, fol. 87v. C. E. Napiersky (ed.), Thomae Hiärn‘s Ehst-, Lyf- und Lettländische Geschichte (Riga: Frantzen, 1835), 146–47, briefly mentions a Landordnung of 1317. Ibid., mentions for 1409 a Landordnung with an article about black magicians and sorcerers, but with no mention of Jews. C. Hartknoch, Preussische Kirchen-Historia, mentions Caspar Schütz lib. 2 chron fol. 54, Waissel fol. 105 and Grunau as sources. Biblioteka Gdańska Polskiej Akademii Nauk, the former Stadtbibliothek Danzig, contains a number of manuscripts of Prussian chronicles, but I doubt that including these would change the results considerably in a qualitative regard. They are listed in A. Bertling, Katalog der die Stadt Danzig betreffenden Handschriften der Danziger Stadtbibliothek (Danzig: Schroth, 1892), 1:46–50; O. Günther, Katalog der Handschriften der Danziger Stadtbibliothek (Gdańsk: Saunier, 1903); R. G. Päsler, Deutschsprachige Sachliteratur im Preußenland bis 1500: Untersuchungen zu ihrer Überlieferung (Köln: Böhlau, 2003). See below chapter 6. OBA 1034; AST, vol. 1, no. 82. Perlbach, Simon Grunaus Preussische Chronik vol. 1, tract. XIV, cap. 7, § 3, p. 713: ‘Ordenskapitel und auch willkür der Preussen’. Deutsches Rechtswörterbuch, lemma Landordnung, http://drw-www.adw. uni-heidelberg.de/drw/, with the oldest examples dating from 1489. Cf. M. Biskup, ‘Etniczno-demograficzne przemiany Prus Krżyzackich w rozwoju osadnictwa w średniowieczu’, Kwartalnik Historyczny 98(2) (1991): 45–67. M. Brauer, Die Entdeckung des ‘Heidentums’ in Preußen: Die Prußen in den Reformdiskursen des Spätmittelalters und der Reformation (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2011), 112–14.

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32. AST, vol. 1, 7–9. 33. M. Perlbach (ed.), Die Statuten des Deutschen Ordens nach den ältesten Handschriften (Halle an der Saale: Niemeyer, 1890), 145–46. 34. K. Neitmann, ‘Die Landesordnungen des Deutschen Ordens in Preußen im Spannungsfeld zwischen Landesherrschaft und Ständen’, in Die Anfänge der ständischen Vertretungen in Preußen und seinen Nachbarländern, ed. H. Boockmann and E. Müller-Luckner (München: Oldenbourg, 1992), 62. 35. 6 May 1408, Ständetag zu Marienburg, AST, vol. 1, no. 79, 110–12. 36. 30 November 1408, Ständetag zu Elbing, AST, vol. 1, no. 81–82, 113–19. 37. Neitmann, ‘Landesordnungen,’ 68. 38. ‘Keyne Prewssen sullen in steten noch in Dutschen dorfern werden uffgenomen czu dyenen noch czu woenen, wo man die fyndet, die mag man wedir nemen.’ AST, vol. 1, no. 286, 358. 39. ‘Item sal eyn yderman syne undersassen dorczu halden, das sie beichten und gote recht tun, und wer zowberey und andern ungelowbin under im dirferet, der sal is weren und storen, so her beste mag.’ 30 November 1408, Ständetag zu Elbing, AST, vol. 1, no. 81–82, 113–19. 40. AST, vol. 1, no. 286, 350. 41. See for example the discussion in G. Vercamer, ‘Rezension zu: Brauer, Michael: Die Entdeckung des ‘Heidentums’ in Preußen. Die Preußen in den Reformdiskursen des Spätmittelalters und der Reformation. Berlin 2011’, H-SozKult, 5 October 2011. 42. F. Hipler, ‘Die Statuten des Rigaer Provinzialconcils vom Jahr 1428’, Pastoralblatt für die Diöcese Ermland 30(8) (1898):95–96. Also Bunge, F. G. v., H. Hildebrand and B. Hollander (eds.), Liv-, Esth- und Curländisches Urkundenbuch nebst Regesten, 15 vols (Reval: Kluge und Ströhm, 1873), vol. 1:7, no. 690, 487–88. 43. A. Triller, ‘Häresien in Altpreußen um 1390?’ in Studien zur Geschichte des Preußenlandes: Festschrift für Erich Keyser zu seinem 70. Geburtstag dargebracht von Freunden und Schülern, ed. E. Bahr (Marburg: Elwert, 1963), 397–404. 44. No protocols of visitations from medieval Prussia are preserved. All that remains are the formulae of the different dioceses, in which the form and content of an interrogation was provided. See a discussion of their content in the later chapter on conversion. 45. Edited in A. T. Dzialynski (ed.), Lites ac res gestae inter Polonos Ordinemque Cruciferorum, 6 vols. (Poznań: Merzbach, 1855–1935). See most recently the contributions in W. Sieradzan (ed.), Arguments and Counter-arguments: The Political Thought of the 14th–15th Centuries during the Polish-Teutonic Order Trials and Disputes (Toruń: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniw. Mikołaja Kopernika, 2012). 46. These questions have also caused dissent among scholars of medieval law on issues that have nothing with the German and Polish controversies. See F. H. Russel, ‘Paulus Wladimiri’s Attack on the Just War: A Case Study in Legal Polemics’, in Authority and Power: Studies on Medieval Law and Government Presented to Walter Ullmann on his Seventieth Birthday, ed. B. Tierney (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 237–54.

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47. E. Weise (ed.), Die Staatsschriften des Deutschen Ordens in Preußen im 15. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1970). 48. Boockmann, Johannes Falkenberg, 16. Boockmann attests Weise a ‘erkennt­ nisleitendes Interesse, das nicht nach- sondern eher vor-rankianisch ist’. 49. For a Polish perspective, see J. W. Woś, Dispute giuridiche nella lotta tra la Polonia e l’Ordine teutonico (Firenze: Licosa, 1979), which presents an equally excited discussion of the process, with a particular focus on countering the accusation that the Poles used Tatar mercenaries against Christian soldiers. 50. For a brief bibliography on the treatise, see ‘Paulus Vladimiri, Tractatus de potestate papae et imperatoris respectu infidelium’, http://www.geschichts­ quellen.de/repOpus_03819.html; and J. Soszyński, ‘Włodkowic, Paweł’, in Dunphy, Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle (Leiden: Brill Online, 2015). 51. S. Kwiatkowski, Der Deutsche Orden im Streit mit Polen-Litauen: Eine theologische Kontroverse über Krieg und Frieden auf dem Konzil von Konstanz (1414– 1418) (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2000), 23–24. 52. ‘Non debet principes christiani Iudeos et alios infidels expellere de suis dominies aut eos spoliare, iusta cause non extante. Racio: quia iura eos, quiete vivere volentes, prohibent molestari.’ ‘52 Conclusiones’, in Weise, Staatsschriften, 137, art. 3., also in tract. I, qu. 1. 53. ‘Papa potest Iudeos iudicare, si contra legem faciunt in moralibus, et idem, si contra legem suam hereses invenire dinoscuntur.’ Ibid., art. 13.

2 Chapter 5 Absent from Akko to the Baltic

Jews and the Baltic Crusades The idea that the Teutonic Order kept Prussia free of Jews derives from the actual absence of Jews, from the mysterious tradition of the Landordnung of 1309 and from the idea of the Order as a Crusading corporation that was bound to promote certain ideals in its territories, especially after the loss of the Holy Land. As shown in the previous chapter, there is no evidence of Teutonic Order legislation directly opposing Jewish settlement in Prussia. So the next question must be: Do any texts indicate indirect hostility? Or, put another way: How did Jews (and other non-Christian groups) fit into the Order’s political and spiritual ideology, and what role, if any, did anti-Jewish resentment play, compared to anti-Muslim and anti-pagan resentment? Kurt Forstreuter did not elaborate on these questions in his work about the Prussian Jews – the bulwark theory and the assumption of a general anti-Jewish attitude seemed sufficient. Since his contributions, there has been a tremendous amount of work on the Baltic Crusades – not at least from scholars from the Baltic countries – which can be used in order to explain the differences between Crusading propaganda for the Holy Land and for the Baltic. The question of Jews as potential targets for Baltic Crusading propaganda has not been raised yet, though. A key aspect for the religious-ideological foundation of Prussia and Livonia is the assignment of a patrimonium Mariae to the lands newly occupied in the Baltic, raising the question: Could Jews have lived in the Virgin Mary’s land? Another aspect to be considered is the possible subsumption of Jews under inimici crucis (enemies of the Cross), even though they were never primary targets of Crusading propaganda.1 An important issue in this context is the Teutonic Order’s emphasis on biblical figures and episodes to shape its corporate spiritual identity, beginning with the prominent position of the Maccabees in the Order’s statutes. In this light, the Order’s production of Old Testament translations, along with other evidence of the Order’s attachment to Jewish role models, should be taken into consideration.2 The follow-

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ing sections will touch upon the much-discussed relationship between religion and politics for the Teutonic Order and the way this is reflected in its historiographic and literary production – but from a somewhat particular angle. The struggle against the pagans was admittedly an extremely important, if not the most important, argument in favour of the Order’s presence in the Baltic, and their conversion was the most prominent – if not consistently pursued – goal behind the corporation’s military presence and actions. We must ask, however, if the goals of conversion and of governing the heathens automatically meant the establishment of a religiously homogenous territory and, thus, the necessary exclusion of Jews (and, although somewhat more far-fetched in geographical terms, of Muslims). Founded in the Holy Land, the Teutonic Order participated in and profited from Crusading. To do so, the Order based its ideological legitimacy on the same texts as other Crusaders and knights’ orders. In these texts, anti-Judaism did not play a major role – even if Peter the Venerable and Bernhard of Clairvaux, as well as the popes involved in Crusading, simultaneously published a fair number of purely antiJewish texts. Bernhard’s De laude novae militiae (In Praise of the New Knighthood) includes the conversion of all Jews and the destruction of all pagans as the sign and precondition for the arrival of the heavenly Jerusalem. Should this eschatological model be read as a literal to-do list for the Teutonic Order? A necessary conversion of the Jews mentioned by Bernhard of Clairvaux is not referred to in the Order’s statutes. The Maccabees are certainly prominent in the Order’s statutes as a typological model, with New Testament and Early Church martyrs going unmentioned – the Teutonic Order is, in essence, modelled on the Old Testament. This becomes particularly apparent in the Prologue of the statutes, which draws a line from the biblical Holy Wars, Abraham, Melchizedech, King David and the Maccabees.3 The same prominence of Old Testament model heroes is visible in the Bible translations commissioned by the Order, while for example narratives of the Passion, often paramount examples of anti-Judaism, are less frequent. The Order is thus one more example of the contradictory relation between the Church, Crusading, and the Jewish communities of Europe. The First Crusade marked an entirely new era in European antiJewish violence. Even though the papacy repeatedly tried to delimit violence against the Jewish communities in the Holy Roman Empire, a vast amount of theological writings fostered the construction of Jews as internal enemies, and thus the Crusades and Crusading propaganda remained an important factor for the deterioration of Jewish-Christian

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relations and a constant threat for the communities. For the Baltic Crusades, pagans were constructed as the main enemies. At the same time, with the Teutonic Order and Poland, at least two opposing Christian entities also had political goals for expansion and alliances, and these have often overweighed the religious reasoning behind the warfare. Scholars have mostly been addressing the centrality of political as opposed to religious reasoning behind the Baltic Crusades – ­judging from later developments, with the Order maintaining its conflict with Poland and Lithuania even after the conversion of the latter, it seems reasonable to assume that territorial expansion was the German knights’ primary strategic concern during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. However, any formulation of a uniformly Christian state as an explicit goal would have occurred earlier, when the Order arrived in Pomerania in the wake of the missionary bishop, Christian, and the legate, William of Modena, who had touched upon the question of Prussia’s religious and political order in their early diplomas,4 or in the years of growth and expansion that followed the suppression of the Prussian uprisings during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.5 It is also necessary to keep in mind that during this period, the political and religious reasons for establishing dominion might, in fact, have been different than the situation in the late fourteenth century suggests. Scholars have never stopped speculating about the reasons for the sudden waves of violence experienced by the Ashkenazi communities beginning with the First Crusade, since there is no immediate and apparent connection between the preaching of a Crusade against Muslims in Palestine and the killing of Jews in Cologne and Worms. The displacement of violence, to use Shmuel Shepkaru’s term for the phenomenon, was not sanctioned in the texts of Church authorities, who were eager to direct the Crusaders’ energy towards Jerusalem while maintaining orderly co-existence in the Empire.6 The chronicles of the First Crusade directly condemn the violence committed against the Jewish communities, and later Crusading propaganda does not identify Jews as targets. In the decades following the First Crusade and its attacks on European Jews, the papal position expressed in Crusading bullae was consistent: Jews were to be protected from violence – even though they might be seen as enemies of the Christian empire. The general attitude of Christians towards non-Christians grew increasingly hostile during the course of events in the Holy Land. In the case of Christian-Jewish relations, however, other things contributed to the deterioration: i.e., host desecration and blood libel accusations fuelled pogroms and expulsions in the German lands and France, rather than some general

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idea of an internal Crusade and the urge to convert the Jews by sword.7 It would appear that the development of anti-Judaism in thirteenthand fourteenth-century Europe occurred, by and large, independently of the Crusading concept and its development – at least, in the case of the Crusades to the Holy Land. Broadly speaking, the papacy approved of Holy Wars against heretics (Albigensians, Stedingers) and declared the missionary wars in the Baltic to be Crusades, but the ideological legitimation of these differed somewhat from what was found in earlier texts – and it was one that endured for a surprisingly long time. Marek Tamm has recently discussed the transfer of the Crusading concept from the holy sites in Palestine to the Baltic coast. He points out – somewhat surprisingly – that the places where no missionary had previously been were relatively easily presented as targets of Holy War, and that the forced conversion of pagans was treated as just as virtuous as the liberation of the Holy Land from the gentiles. He also points out the importance of the sacralization of Livonia as the land of the Virgin Mary to the popularity of the Baltic Crusades. After Arnold von Lübeck first mentioned this in his chronicle, Livonia came to be described as a land under Mary’s patronage in chronicles inside and outside of Livonia. There are miracles and there are martyrs, and the Virgin is abundantly invoked – in a region extremely far from the sites of biblical history, or any other previous Christian history.8 After this initial placement of the Baltic on the map of Christian Europe, not much happened in terms of propaganda production for about a century from the side of the curia. An examination of the role played by texts related to Crusading and Crusading ideology in the Teutonic Order’s politics indicate that during the fourteenth-century wars, the Reisen (literally: travels, but in fact, raids) against Lithuania, the Order relied on the privileges and indulgences from 100 to 130 years earlier. No new papal privileges were issued during this period, but the Order continued to promise the same spiritual rewards to the participants of the Lithuanian Reisen as it had to those who had participated in initial conquests of the region and in seizing it from the control of pagan Prussians.9 This would indicate that the transfer of Crusading ideology from the Holy Land to the Baltic was only partially the Teutonic Order’s doing, but that, nonetheless, the corporation, once established as the defenders of Christianity in the area, drew upon arguments from the distant past. The struggle against the infidels remained the primary rationalization for the Teutonic Order’s military actions and territorial expansion, even though, by this point, actual pagans were rarely an issue. The assignation of the knights, and eventually the entire Prussian territory, as the Virgin Mary’s patrimony is

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seen as an important aspect of the Order’s identity and self-perception, one that is primarily manifested in the interconnection between Marian symbols and symbols of political authority, such as the Marienburg castle. This, however, is a later phenomenon with no direct connection to the earlier Crusading ideology.10 What this means about the inhabitants of the land and their religion needs to be investigated in the light of the texts produced by the Teutonic Order and those close to the Order.

The Literary Tradition: Heinrich von Hesler Even though intimately acquainted with the Teutonic Order’s literary tradition, Kurt Forstreuter did not discuss the significance of these texts for an anti-Jewish policy in Prussia. Maybe he was disturbed by the many positive references to Old Testament warriors and the overall dominance of Jewish role models for the corporation. Failing to fit this into his bulwark theory, he also missed the single true example of an anti-Jewish text in the Order’s environment: the Evangelium Nicodemi, which combines religious and practical anti-Jewish stereotyping and challenges landlords to expel Jews from their territories. A reason for this oversight might be the complicated issue of what should be counted as Deutschordensliteratur (literature of the Teutonic Order). The Teutonic Order’s text production is not seen as particularly interesting from a literary point of view. The bulk of the texts consist of Bible translations and the later chronicles, which in older research have been interpreted as monuments of German culture in the East, but which more recently have been seen as an expression of the Order’s corporate identity and of its attempt to educate the knight brethren. The majority of the Order’s literary tradition stems from 1250 to 1340, while, in the case of Prussia, the historiographic tradition only begins in the early fourteenth century and continues until the Early Modern period – the historiography of Livonia, on the other hand, begins already in the thirteenth century. Because it is difficult, if not impossible, to establish whether or not most of the texts were actually produced in Prussia itself, or even if they were produced by members of the Order, the scholarly debate has instead focussed on trying to define the range and importance of Deutschordensliteratur – texts produced in various bailiwicks in the German lands were considered equally important to the Prussian knights, either because the texts tell the stories of the Order’s arrival in various areas or because it can be proven that various houses of the Order in Prussia held copies of the texts, suggesting that they fit into the corporation’s educational project. As with most topics

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regarding Prussia, this issue was highly politically charged, because of the important role of literary production in the transfer and establishment of Germanic culture in the East – and the Teutonic Order did not prove to be a particularly fertile producer and bearer of culture in this regard. Recent opinion seems to be that Deutschordensliteratur should be seen to encompass those texts that played a certain role in the way the Order developed and functioned, both in Prussia and elsewhere, even if they were not necessarily written by a priest brother, were not of Prussian origin or were not even commissioned by the institution itself. As a result, the focus of the definition shifts from a narrow understanding of literary production towards a broader one of literary usage and perception.11 Obviously, since many of the brethren could not read or even understand Latin, translations of Bible texts, the Order’s statutes and even historiographic texts were necessary as part of an on-going effort to increase the general level of knowledge, as well as to establish a common identity and a consciousness of the corporation’s goals. However, since we do not know the extent to which the refectory readings mentioned in the statutes actually took place, or what exactly was read, it is impossible to establish a direct connection between the existence of a certain text in a particular house and its actual use and importance in shaping a corporate identity. It is, however, possible to determine which issues were important to the education of the priest brothers and which were not on the basis of the texts commissioned and the ones owned by Prussian libraries. According to Arno Mentzel-Reuters’s comprehensive description of the libraries of the Teutonic Order in Prussia, rather a lack of specifically anti-Jewish texts is striking, as well as a general lack of interest in scholastic literature.12 There were also substantially fewer anti-Jewish texts produced by the Teutonic Order than was the case generally with medieval Christian literature. The comprehensive anti-Jewish framework of medieval Christianity must, of course, be taken into account, and given the fact that the Order’s libraries held copies of the most common theological works, this framework was known and spread among the brothers as much as the rest of the medieval Christian population. But the brethren and the Prussian population participating in the general anti-Jewish ideological framework provided by the Christian church is not the same as the institutional support and use of texts providing a basis for or advocating a complete expulsion of Jews from Prussia, or a ban of Jewish settlement. The only openly anti-Jewish texts identifiable within what has been defined as Teutonic Order literature are the works by Heinrich von Hesler. His Apokalypse and Evangelium Nicodemi were widely copied

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and diffused in the German lands – there are twenty-three surviving manuscripts of the Evangelium Nicodemi13 and twenty-two of the Apokalypse14 – and a number of these manuscripts were held by Teutonic Order houses or Prussian towns; the three complete manuscripts of the Apokalypse even include illuminations that present an iconographic programme designed specifically for the Teutonic Order. The Apokalypse, which was Heinrich’s most important work, was most likely written around 1250 in Thuringia. It was not commissioned by the Order; the iconographic programme was an adaption added when the Prussian manuscripts were produced. Heinrich’s connection to the Teutonic Order and Prussia is relevant to assessing his works’ importance in shaping anti-Jewish stereotypes in Prussia and within the Teutonic Order. Since there is evidence that his works were read in several of the Order’s Prussian houses, the muchdebated question of whether or not he was a brother, or possibly even a priest (a claim made in older research), is of limited importance, just as the question of whether or not his works were produced in Prussia is of little significance. Given that the Apokalypse and the Evangelium Nicodemi were the only literary works held by the Prussian houses that had a distinct anti-Jewish content – even if we are only talking about a handful of manuscripts of each work, most of them fragmentary – it is worth discussing their importance for an eventual Teutonic Order antiJewish sentiment. Arno Mentzel-Reuters is the only scholar to address the connection, and only in a brief few pages, and he sees ‘antisemitism’ as playing a distinctive role in both of Heinrich von Hesler’s works, particularly in the framework of his apocalypticism. Mentzel-Reuters does not differentiate between various anti-Jewish stereotypes and formulations used in the works but, nonetheless, firmly rejects a connection between the anti-Jewish character of Heinrich’s work, his posthumous importance to the Order, and any potentially anti-Jewish policy on the part of the Order.15 The main reason for treating the Apokalypse as anti-Jewish is the illustrations showing Jews being baptized during the apocalypse, in the presence of a Teutonic Order priest brother.16 While the Jews were an integral part of the entire tradition of illustration of the Apokalypse, the fact that the Prussian manuscripts replace the prophets Henoch and Elias with knight brothers of the Teutonic Order is specific for the local adaptation.17 When considering the importance of this image to the reasoning underlying the concept of a uniformly Christian state, we can assume a conceptual merging of Jews and pagans. The Christian tradition provided substantially fewer anti-pagan images than anti-Jewish images, so when in doubt, these categories of non-believers were easily

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interchangeable, and the same is true regarding Muslims. Within the framework of the apocalypse, the best treatment Jews received was as objects requiring conversion, and they were probably portrayed as such in the image cycle of Heinrich’s poem. More obvious is the anti-Judaism in the apocryphal Evangelium Nicodemi, which received increased significance for liturgy, didactical literature, poetry and Church art during the late Middle Ages. Heinrich von Hesler’s variant of the Evangelium Nicodemi begins by paraphrasing the trial of Jesus from the perspective of the Evangelists and the Gospel of Nicodemus, and then continues with the Passion and Descensus ad inferos, which resembles the most common parts of the tradition.18 Leaving behind the biblical framework, Heinrich then recounts the legends of Vespasianus, Tiberius and Veronica, finally wrapping it up with a sermon for a prince that includes the admonition to punish Jews more severely. The last 1,500 verses or so follow the tradition of Judenschelte, in which Heinrich advocates for harsh punishment for Jews who blaspheme Mary and Joseph, as well as for forced conversion using any and all means. What is of particular importance here is the section of the text that asserts a requirement for landlords to expel the Jews, as well as the relationship established between biblical Jews and the contemporary Jewry. Heinrich also elaborates upon the stereotype of Jewish usury in this section of the Evangelium Nicodemi, surpassing the anti-Judaism found in the negative presentation of Jews in the (apocryphal) Gospels and exceeding the existing anti-Judaism experienced by actual medieval Jews. The portrayal of Judas, who became the prefiguration and embodiment of the entire Jewish people, is also used to establish this connection – in this case, the Evangelium Nicodemi plays a key role for the development of a stereotype. Heinrich’s version of the Evangelium Nicodemi effectively creates a connection between religious and political anti-Judaism. It directly connects the religiously grounded ‘Christ killer’ stereotype to the key socioeconomic stereotype of Jewish usury, as well as mentioning blasphemy and, most importantly, formulating a direct demand that secular governments take action against the Jews living in their domains. As such, it constitutes a step from religious and theoretical to practical anti-­Judaism on a discursive level and might well have served as an argument for the expulsion of Jews from Prussia or for a ban on their settlement. That said, the practical importance and influence of this particular Evangelium Nicodemi is difficult to estimate. Copies were found in two of the Order’s houses, both outside of Prussia, and they were probably initially meant for an individual priest’s personal study.19 This fact, as well as the lack of an intertextual relationship between this text and

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other literary or diplomatic sources, suggests that the text was of limited importance to the Teutonic Order as a corporation and to Prussian policy in general when it came to putting Heinrich’s words into practice. Still, it marks the single evidence of a purely anti-Jewish text with a direct connection to the Teutonic Order.

Stories of Conversion: Peter von Dusburg As most of the scholars working with the Teutonic Order, Kurt Forstreuter knew the corporation’s historiographic tradition very well. In his articles about Prussian Jews, he also discusses some of the cases where Jews are mentioned in the chronicles – these are very few, and the bulk consists of positive references to the people of Israel in the Bible, which Forstreuter ignores. From Peter of Dusburg’s Chronicon terrae Prussie, he mentions an episode about knight Heinrich von Kunzen, who receives a vision of a Jew and a Christian disputing at his deathbed and takes this as an opportunity to declare the Christian faith as superior. On the one hand, Forstreuter considers this account to be a legend, while, on the other, he suggests that an expulsion much later mentioned in Simon Grunau’s chronicle may well have been the result of the attempts at Judaization mentioned by Dusburg – this is a quite audacious interpretation, given that it combines two legends, written down two hundred years apart from each other, as sources for an alleged historical explanation of events. Leaving aside this particular approach to narrative sources, the presumed Judaization activities derive from a misreading of Dusburg’s text; in this account, the knight Heinrich did not have a dispute with the Jew who wanted him to convert, but rather witnessed a dispute between a Christian Beghard and a Jew in a vision he had on his sick bed. Beghards, most commonly seen as the male counterpart of Beguines, lived in semi-religious communities without having taken vows and were usually considered as heretical. Although convinced that there were no Jewish communities in Prussia at the time, Forstreuter is still able to conjure up attempts at Judaization in his effort to treat an expulsion in either 1309 or 1340 as credible and justifiable – whatever happened to the Jews, it must have been their own fault. Thus, Jews in the historiographic tradition of Prussia deserve a more thorough investigation, as does the question of conversion. While the literary tradition has been primarily examined by scholars addressing questions of identity, language and style, the historiographic tradition has been the source of historians’ attempts to reconstruct the events in Prussia following the arrival of the Order, as

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well as the corporation’s propaganda efforts to present these events favourably. The historiographic tradition has often been placed in the context of the charters and privileges that the Order received from popes and emperors. The propaganda value of the Eastern adventures was clearly spelled out in this context, but with a unique twist. In the texts describing the arrival and the first hundred years of the Order in Prussia, the struggle against the pagan Baltic and Slavic tribes was the main consideration; these sources provide little useful information about the existence of other non-Christian religions in the region – this simply was not their focus. Some of the chronicles do, however, mention Jews in various contexts and, as such, might shed additional light upon the question of whether or not a general anti-Jewish policy was established in Prussia from the outset. A key issue here is conversion: both the need to convert the pagans actually living in Prussia and the potential requirement that all Jews be converted for eschatological reasons. This can be read in two ways: the pagans’ need to convert if they are to become free political subjects, and the Order’s need to convert the pagans to fulfil its eschatological and political Crusading objectives. The obvious question is: Did Jews play a role in any of this? The relevant texts are Peter von Dusburg’s Chronicon and Nicolaus von Jeroschin’s rhymed translation of it; the Ältere Hochmeisterchronik (ca. 1433–40), including its two appendixes; and the Jüngere Hochmeisterchronik (late fifteenth century, Middle Dutch, probably from Utrecht). There are more historiographic works to be counted to the Teutonic Order’s tradition, but they do not mention Jews at all. While the number of Old Testament references varies from text to text, there is little evidence of actual Jews in any of them. Peter von Dusburg’s work in particular has been much studied by Polish scholars, with the primary focus on the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ aspects of the colonization process. It is, however, considered the most reliable source for the early history, being the first chronicle of the region that was actually written in Prussia, in this case, sometime before 1326, by a brother from the Low Countries who was officially commissioned by the Teutonic Order. It makes perfectly clear the primacy on anti-pagan resentment for the legitimation of the Order’s presence in Prussia and for its existence in general, as well as mentioning relevant examples of state formation. It is also the only chronicle from the Teutonic Order that makes any ­mention of Prussian Jews. Describing the first hundred years of the Teutonic Order’s presence in the region, the chronicle focuses on the conquest of Prussia and the attempted conquest of Livonia, the three Prussian uprisings and their subjugation and the stabilization of the Order as Prussia’s landlord. The

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initial impetus for the composition of the text is allegedly the migration of the high master’s seat to Marienburg – an event intimately connected to the presumed establishment of an anti-Jewish policy. When it was composed, the Chronicon might also have served as a form of defence against Polish criticism of the conquest of Pomerelia.20 Jarosław Wenta provides a thorough identification and description of its sources and text models, also addressing the most recent edition of the text, which responded to the sweeping criticisms of the earlier edition published in the Scriptores rerum Prussicarum.21 The propaganda value of the Chronicon lies in its juxtaposing of the pagans and their customs with the knights in all of their moral superiority, clearly sanctioned by miracles and visions. The descriptions of the pagans’ habits are opposed to the ideals of the Christian knight; the pagans drink excessively, buy wives (whom they treat like maids), dress oddly and worship idols.22 Erich Weise, as usual, treats this text as a faithful portrayal of historical reality instead of as Crusading propaganda. His interpretation resembles closely a typically modern model of colonization based on cultural superiority; primitive people with some positive ethnic values are nonetheless able to recognize a superior culture – here, expressed in the form of the knights’ military skills – and, as a result, finally adopt it.23 The chronicle shifts back and forth between a preponderance of descriptions of the Prussians as rotten through and through, evil and cruel, and the occasional appreciative assessment of their warrior prowess. The occasional evidence of upright pagans, based on the model of brave Muslims in the Holy Land, in the end, only serves to reinforce a perception of the Teutonic knights as even greater fighters – generally, the transfer of the ideological model of the Saracens to the North did provide for some semantic variety in the portrayal of the enemy, but deprecating descriptions prevail in Peter’s chronicle. It is unclear if this propaganda tool was directed at the brothers themselves, to remind them of the importance of a Christian spirit within the corporation, or at potential new recruits from the German lands24 – the Chronicon, written after the consolidation of the dominion and during the earliest days of its expansion, provides a basic formulation of an idealized image of the Teutonic Order as a colonizer and a landlord in Prussia. The original aim of the Crusade, the conversion of the pagans in the region, is subsequently merged with the aim of subjecting them to the Order’s authority – conversion and colonization reinforce each other, and both play a necessary role if the indigenous people are to be considered the landlord’s subjects and the inhabitants of his territory, and not simply enemies – leaving aside the differing legal status of German and non-German inhabitants. The treatment of

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the pagans in Peter’s chronicle does indeed suggest that conversion was necessary to gain recognition and the right to social participation – but does the presentation suggest that this was Prussia’s explicit raison d’état? Both the establishment of the Crusader’s state in Prussia and the relationship between German Christian knights and the pagan Prussians are fairly well documented in the Chronicon, in some sections supported by inserted legal documents, and in others not. If the complete exclusion of all non-Christians from the territory was an explicit feature of legitimizing the Order’s existence and power, or if the exclusion of Jews in particular had been an issue, one would expect to find evidence of it in this fundamental text. The Chronicon consists of four sections: the background of the Order, two sections addressing Prussia and Lithuania and a fourth section about events in other parts of the world. While broadly adhering to the Maccabees as the typological model for the Teutonic Order and milites Dei (knights of God) in general – established in their statutes – the prologue of the Chronicon includes fewer references to the Old Testament books than is the case for many later Prussian chronicles. Except for the Psalter, quotations and references generally come from the Gospels. Despite this, there is no mention of Jews as Christ killers, nor do they appear in any other context in the prologue or in the first chapters De institucione ordinis dominis Theutonicorum (Of the Foundations of the House of the German Lords). The sites of Christ’s suffering are to be freed ab oppressionem gentilium (from the oppression of the gentiles),25 with no explicit anti-Jewish terminology being used. The main source for this short introduction and for the list of the first four high masters is the Narratio de primordiis ordinis theutonici (Story of the Beginnings of the German Order, early thirteenth century, Latin and German), which also does not mention Jews as particular enemies of the Order.26 The second and third sections of the Chronicon include most of what we know as the facts about the colonization and fortification of the land. The land was not empty when the Order arrived; pagans and Christians settled side by side. There were, of course, missionaries – some of them more successful than others. Whether or not the inhabitants included Jews is not something Peter addresses. The enemies are clearly the tribes referred to as the Pruthenos, who are moved by the devil to be hostile towards the Christians and obstinate in the face of attempts at Christianization; they worship idols, practice polygamy and embrace other errors. It has been observed that these pagans were occasionally called Saracens, both by Peter and in the accounts of Crusaders from Western Europe, transferring a term for Muslim inhabitants of the Holy

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Land, and the Levant in general, to the Baltic, and thereby also transferring Crusading ideology from the Levant to the North.27 Jews play no role in this survey of enemies. To make a long story short, Peter mentions only two incidents involving Jews, both of which also appear in Nicolaus von Jeroschin’s High German translation Kronike van Pruzinlant, and both of which are tales of conversion. The first one is the exemplum of the knight Heinrich von Kunzen, a brother not mentioned in other sources but, as mentioned above, seen as evidence for Jewish proselytizing by Forstreuter. If he was real, he presumably lived in Prussia during the first decade of the fourteenth century, since the story told about him occurs immediately after the election of High Master Siegfried von Feuchtwangen (1303– 11). Originally from Thuringia, Heinrich von Kunzen was an immoral individual – a robber and killer who enjoyed his sinful existence until his conversion, which came after he met the devil in the form of a black rider who promised to show him a place where he could steal a great wealth of goods. The devil, however, was repelled when the knight passingly invoked the name of God to spur on his horse. The horse had actually recognized the devil and did not want to follow him, thereby saving Heinrich from falling into a deep canyon – a trap prepared for him by the devil. After this episode, Heinrich decided to join the Teutonic Order, but his wife prevented him from doing so a number of times. However, he kept having visions of the judgement of his evil deeds and of the salvation that awaited him if he followed through on his promise to join the Teutonic Order, as well as of the devil and Christ disputing with him about whom to serve. Eventually, his wife was also overcome with the fear of God and agreed to enter an order herself – we are not told which one she chose. Until this point, Heinrich appears as a man troubled by antagonistic forces that display the respective advantages of both a secular and a monastic life to him. There is no discussion of any religious alternative to the Teutonic Order, nor are we told how or why Heinrich came to choose a half-monastic life in the Baltic. Even after his conversion and entrance into the Teutonic Order, however, he continues to be troubled by the struggle between good and evil. On one occasion, he falls ill and sees two men beside his bed, a Christian and a Jew disputing about whose faith is the better. For some unexplained reason, the Jew wins the debate, approaches Heinrich and asks him to embrace his faith. When Heinrich demurs and reaffirms his faith in Christ and the Virgin Mary, the men disappear. A detail mentioned in Dusburg’s chronicle, but not repeated in the Jeroschin translation, is that the Christian in this episode was wearing a Beghard’s habit.28 So, this dispute is actually

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between a Christian belonging to a group frequently considered heretical, and a Jew, to whom he loses the debate. Regardless of how the Jew might wish to interpret his victory, he has not won against Christianity in general. I have not come across any discussion of this episode in the vast research into the Chronicon, except in Forstreuter’s case. He offers two possible interpretations: either the event occurred, in which case the ban on Jewish settlement in the Landordnung issued at that time must be seen as a reaction to attempts at Judaization among the brothers, or it is a legend, in which case it does not provide evidence for the existence of Jews in medieval Prussia. The first interpretation, favoured by Forstreuter, relies on a lot of ‘ifs’ – if there was a Jewish community active enough to carry out missionary activities, if there was a Landordnung, if the Beghard and the Jew were meant to represent actual people and are not just apparitions in a vision Heinrich had on his sick bed … Forstreuter’s assumption of Jewish proselytizing in Prussia seems to be primarily spurred on by an underlying idea that Jews, wherever they appear, strive to contaminate the Christian (German) community. It also amounts to backing up one unreliable source (the Landordnung) with another. The second interpretation – reading Heinrich’s conversion and vision as a legend – seems much more plausible. While this provides no evidence of Jews in Prussia, it also is no clear evidence of unambiguous anti-Judaism on Peter von Dusburg’s part. That the Jewish faith is presented as the antithesis of Christian faith is perfectly in line with the general construction of ecclesia and synagoga as antagonistic entities; thus, it makes sense that a Jew figures prominently in this story of conversion instead of a Muslim or a pagan. The version with the Christian as a Beghard is even less obviously anti-Jewish, as the Jew and the Beghard represent two deviant versions of faith, and in this case the Jew wins the dispute with the heretic. In both cases, the religious dialogue – the content of which is never clarified in the text, by the way – only serves as an opportunity for Heinrich to confess his orthodox Christian faith following a long struggle with his own demons. This interpretation also fits neatly with the analyses of much richer material about conversion, such as the first person accounts that Ryan Szpiech has analyzed and that he finds make most sense when read as fables rather than as accurate accounts of actual events.29 The second incident involving a Jew in Peter’s Chronicon does not even take place in Prussia, although it also deals with conversion. In the fourth book, which includes historical varia from different regions, he discusses De invencione cujusdam libri in medio lapidis in Toleto (Of the

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Finding of a Certain Book in the Middle of a Stone in Toledo) dated to the year 1232. Jeroschin copies this story about a Jew in Toledo who found hidden in a stone a book in Hebrew, Greek and Latin that contained the history of the world from Adam until the time of the Antichrist. Concerning the third age, it said that the Son of God would be born to the Virgin Mary and then martyred. After reading this, the Jew converted to Christianity – in Peter’s version, along with his entire family.30 The Toledo conversion story, hardly original for the Prussian chronicle, found its way into other historiographical works around the Baltic Sea; Lübeck Franciscan Detmar tells it in his world chronicle, written during the late fourteenth century, and Ranulf Higden (died 1364) addresses it in his Polychronicon.31 While many anti-Jewish polemics present Jews as lacking the necessary intelligence to understand the secrets of the Christian faith, this example simply seems to prove that reading can be sufficient to understand and to convert. Both of these stories indicate that Peter von Dusburg was familiar with the question of Jewish-Christian interaction, and both incidents deal with conversion in a broad sense. They do not, however, present an explicit position on the question of the necessity to convert the Jews for the second coming of Christ to occur. Peter’s awareness of the issue might be the result of his clerical education, or he might have had some sort of contact with contemporary Jews. The Nuremberg Memorbuch gives Peter’s birthplace Utrecht as one of the towns where Jews were persecuted during the Black Death epidemic. This would mean that there was a Jewish community in Utrecht twenty-five years after the Chronicon was written, and probably even earlier than that.32 Peter’s many stories of pagan conversion cast an interesting light on the stories of Jewish conversion, because the former unfold in an entirely different way. Even though Peter spends a certain amount of time describing the Prussian pagans’ religion and customs, at the end of the day a dialogue about faith with them is unimaginable. The pagans have no voice in any of this, not even the distorted voice allowed to Jews in anti-Jewish polemics. Equivalently, the idea of pagan attempts to convert Christians is out of the question in the Chronicon – the narrative of pagan conversion is much more asymmetrical than the accounts of Jewish conversion. So, even though the stories of Jewish conversion in the Chronicon stand in a tradition of Christian polemical writing and basically serve to legitimize the historical status quo,33 their place within the larger narrative of pagan conversion served to establish Judaism as a religion that is at least deemed worthy of a dialogue with Christianity. Paganism, on the other hand, deserves only subjugation and annihilation.

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The chronicle includes no similar stories of Muslims involving proselytization and conversion in either direction; on the one hand, this is because the pagans are identified as the ‘Saracens of the North’, and on the other hand, it is because theological dispute about the distinctions among the three Abrahamic religions is definitely not a central issue in this sort of Crusading history. The Jews in Dusburg’s chronicle thus seem to be the ‘living letters of the Law’, providing a sort of lowest common denominator when the author wants to discuss issues of proselytization and conversion. Whether this view of Judaism as a threat to Christians of weak faith is simply an expression of anti-Jewish fear, as opposed to a reaction to actual attempts at the conversion and Judaization of Christians, has been the subject of scholarly debate. Simply the fact that Peter (and Nicolaus von Jeroschin) mention Jews twice in the context of conversion cannot be taken as proof of a distinct anti-Judaism, since conversion of both pagans and sinful Christians is a general theme in the chronicles, and in most cases the storyline unfolds without the typological Jew making an appearance. Read in the context of the violent and forced conversion and oppression of the pagans, the impression left by the two stories of Jewish conversion in Dusburg’s chronicle is somewhat positive: Look at the Jews! At least it’s possible to reach them by writing and talking! Peter of Dusburg leaves the reader in the year 1326, in the middle of constant attacks on towns such as Memel, Dobrzyń/Dobrin and Wisła/Weichsel, and on the entire region of Masovia and the Mark Brandenburg. He does not mention the Landordnung or any other anti-Jewish regulations. In fact, the non-existence, or at most extremely limited presence, of Jews in his chronicle is somewhat striking. The chronicle is entirely focussed on the Prussian and Baltic tribes as the Teutonic Order’s antagonists. In spite of the fact that this is the period when the landlord’s authority was being established, there is no apparent overall plan, no initial documents or meetings where a high master proclaims a Crusader state and no programmatic utterances about a raison d’état. Miracles, especially the support of the Virgin Mary in battle, occur frequently, but there is no concept of the Teutonic Order as a homogenous corporation consciously pursuing clear aims; for example, the establishment of a uniformly Christian state never arises in Peter’s Chronicon, nor even a proclamation of any state to be formed. The events that would most likely be interpreted as foundational episodes – and have been interpreted as such in German and Polish scholarship – are the arrival of the Order in Prussia at the invitation of Konrad of Masovia and, later, the 1309 transfer of the Order’s main seat to Marienburg.

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The initial arrival of the brethren in Prussia is described at the beginning of the second book of the Chronicon. The Order was called in by Duke Konrad of Masovia to protect his lands from recurring Prussian attacks when the previous peaceful co-existence of Christians and pagans came to a sudden end. The donation of the soon-to-be-Christian land to the Order is described as an act of Konrad and his wife that later received the approval of both the pope and the emperor; besides their role in battle, the brothers play no particular active part in this process.34 As a result, Peter does not present the Order as taking any initiative in the establishment of a Christian state – even though the Golden Bull of Rimini has been described as the blueprint of the ideal state for a military Order, much like the monastic plan of Saint Gall served as a blueprint of the ideal monastery.35 However, this paradigmatic document is not even mentioned in Peter’s text, nor does it, in fact, address Jews, much less the need to exclude them. Finally, the transfer of the high master’s main seat from Venice to Marienburg in 1309, an event that has been connected to the issuance of the Landordnung and the anti-Jewish ban, is utterly undramatic in Peter’s Chronicon. Siegfried von Feuchtwangen is said to have moved the seat, which had been in Venice since the loss of Akko, to Marienburg. He indeed issued a new regulation when he arrived; both priest and lay brothers of the Order were supposed to say an additional Ave Maria after the Salve regina antiphone in order to appeal to the Virgin to help the brothers who were under much scrutiny at that time.36 To sum up, Peter of Dusburg’s Chronicon does indeed embrace the Crusading ideology behind the Baltic Crusades, which is essential to legitimizing the Order’s presence in the region. It does not, however, present the long, drawn-out struggle or the peace negotiations as a conscious attempt to establish a particular sort of Christian state. The integration of an active anti-Jewish regulation into this process must, therefore, be seen as a modern projection equal to that of the idea of conscious state-building. In any case, there is no sign of either in the Chronicon, the main surviving example of domestic and external propaganda produced and distributed by the Order to depict its struggle for dominion. Regarding actual Jews, conversion is the key issue in Peter’s chronicle, which makes sense given that the conversion (and subsequent subjugation) of the pagans is the overall issue discussed and objective advanced in the text. Both examples offered are quasi-mythical in nature and do not testify to any specific anti-Judaism or any particular interest in interreligious issues, besides the immediate conflict with the pagans.

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There is another example, although much less read, that can be used to illustrate the propaganda aspects of the Teutonic Order’s construction of its own history, and of the position of Jews in it. The Jüngere Hochmeisterchronik primarily mentions Jews as part of its development of the typological Maccabee model for the Baltic Crusade. It begins with a summary of biblical history, telling the stories of King David, the Babylonian exile and the other difficulties the people of Israel faced, and quickly arrives at Judas Maccabaeus and his knights, who are presented as models of ‘killing for the faith, dying for the faith’, as a recent anthology on the topic framed it.37 In the chapter about the life and death of Jesus, Jews are not identified as the perpetrators,38 which is quite remarkable in the context of late medieval religious literature. This chronicle is divided into two parts, of which the first generally describes the warriors of the Old Testament as the typological model for the Teutonic Order, eschatologically linking them. The second part uses this eschatological basis to legitimize the presence of the brethren in Prussia, even after the entire region has been Christianized, pronouncing the Prussian estates traitors and expressing regrets about defeats suffered at the hands of Poland.39 We must remember that this chronicle was written at a time when the Order was wracked with turmoil and in decline, making a retroactive construction of its dominion as the fulfilment of the eschatological promises made to the people of Israel a powerful expression of Order imagery. The biblical Jews play a generally positive role in this construct, while contemporary Jews are simply absent. The establishment of Old Testament role models draws upon the tradition of representing Jews in bono, which is to say, acknowledging the important role of the Jewish faith and Jews in the relationship between God and humans – the original covenant – and in the preparation for the coming of Christ. This portrayal is usually contrasted with Jews in malo – New Testament Jews, as well as contemporary Jews (and the discursive Jew, in general). The Jüngere Hochmeisterchronik adheres entirely to the in bono portrayal, referring to Jews as positive examples of faith, strength and courageous triumph. The text is entirely directed at pagans and, for later periods, all political enemies of the Order, including Poles, Lithuanians and the Prussian estates. Actual contemporary Prussian Jews play no role at all. As such, the Jüngere Hochmeisterchronik is of great interest regarding the Teutonic Order’s use of Old Testament models, rather than as a witness of the Order’s relation to actual inhabitants of Prussia.

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Actual Jewish Converts, and Presumed Proselytizing Peter von Dusburg’s accounts of conversion can be compared to diplomatic evidence of Jewish converts in Prussia during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This evidence is relatively extensive, but it lacks any theological discussion of the issue, which in itself is interesting since the Teutonic Order had been compelled to take up the discussion of the forced conversions of pagans during the conflict with the Polish-Lithuanian Union, at the latest. There is no evidence that the authorities in the Prussian lands forced Jews to convert – a synodal statute issued by Bishop Heinrich III Sorbom of Warmia, for example, forbade any forced conversion but did not directly mention Jews;40 there was, however, a clear policy of support in place for Jews who had already converted. The diplomatic sources addressing conversion differ considerably from the narratives we encountered in Peter von Dusburg’s Chronicon. In the formulae and diplomas, the act of changing one’s faith itself has already occurred and is undisputed, making it not so much a theological as an economic issue, since conversion also disrupted the previous social and economic networks of the Christian convert families. This is the only issue that the Christian authorities in Prussia addressed. The earliest evidence is a somewhat obscure source, a collection of formulae from the bishops of Warmia handed down in a codex created by the Franciscans in Frombork. A letter from the end of the fourteenth century promises indulgences to anyone who provides financial aid to families that have converted from Judaism, to prevent them from lapsing back into their former faith due to the lack of support. Potential backsliding on the part of Jewish converts seems to have been a constant source of concern that required regular financial measures. It does appear that converts and the Christian communities were in accord about the need. In the bishop’s formula, it is not evident whether the converts were from Frombork or the diocese, or if they had moved there. It also is not clear whether the letter in question, which was subsumed under other letter formulae, addressed a concrete case – as the use of the name ‘Johannes’ to identify the convert suggests – or if it was a formula to be used in other, similar cases as well.41 The bishops of Sambia and Culm also dealt with converts. In the second half of the fifteenth century, Nikolaus von Schöneck (bishop of Sambia, 1442–70) admonished the clergy to prevent the reconversion of ‘J. and K.’, who, with their children, had converted from Judaism, by preaching for almsgiving to support them. Forty days absolution

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was promised to those who helped the family.42 This diploma is also preserved in a collection of formulae, and it resembles the Warmia formula, which is approximately seventy years older, suggesting a long and established tradition of almsgiving to support Jewish converts and absolution as a reward. The precise location of the converts cannot be determined, but it is beyond question that the bishops’ local policies in these cases closely resembled the policy the Teutonic Order applied in its territories. Also Bishop Arnold of Culm found it suitable to support neophytes with certain benefits, mainly consisting of letters to the believers asking for charity. He recommended a certain Barbara to the charity of the believers. Barbara was, according to an inserted diploma by Bishop Johannes of Kujawy (Kropidło, 1402–21), a Jewish convert previously named Cossena de Ankel and had left the ‘Jewish blindness’ (judaice cecitatis).43 Nothing is said of Cossena’s family. Arnold also allowed two converts and their families, named ‘M. and P. with their wives M. and K. and their children’ to support themselves as beggars in the Culm diocese (‘victum et questum sibi conquirere valeant mendicando’), but only for a limited period of time until the feast of St Martin, and he asked the clerics to talk to their parishioners in this matter so that the converts were granted access to the churches.44 A baptized rabbi lived in Toruń during the fifteenth century.45 There also appears to have been a number of baptised Jews in Marienburg at the time. In 1408 and 1409, the high master’s accounting ledger notes money given to a Jewess and her three children and to a single baptized Jew (‘item 1/2 m. enem getowfeten juden’). In the case of the Judekynne (Jewess), there is no mention of her being baptized; perhaps she was simply a Jewish vagrant.46 In 1436 three Marienburg citizens – Mertin Smalcz, his wife and his mother-in-law – acted as witnesses at the baptism of one Caspar from Kraków, which is said to have taken place in 1415 or 1416. The komtur (commander of a province of the Order) of Marienburg, Hermann Hug, was the witness to their testimonial.47 The letter was likely produced at the request of Caspar himself, who was perhaps experiencing problems because people doubted his conversion, or because he wanted to obtain citizenship, which was always difficult for foreigners without family connections. Forstreuter addresses this case in the context of the discussion of trading restrictions that took place in the Prussian towns in 1435, but it seems very unlikely that trading issues were at play; the testimonial does not mention Caspar’s profession, and although he needed confirmation of his baptism for one reason or another, there is no evidence of any general hostility against recent converts at the time.

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A serious accusation of being a ‘secret Jew’ was made against Tham von Hochberg, who acted as High Master Martin Truchsess’s personal physician for several years around 1485. In a letter to the high master, Tham mentioned rumours circulating that he had been born out of wedlock and was a baptized Jew, rumours he adamantly forswore.48 Tham was a colourful figure who rapidly rose to prominence at the high master’s court until he found himself spurned, forcing him to attempt to discredit various rumours about his profession and education, as well as about his religion. In this case, the accusation of being a ‘secret Jew’ does not seem to have been connected to an actual conversion in either direction, but to part of a broader attempt to destroy his reputation and his career. This proved successful. Tham was removed from his position as personal physician of, and possibly even advisor to, the high master. However, it’s impossible to determine if the ‘secret Jew’ rumour played any role in this. It is, however, worth noting that conversion to or from Judaism could be used, along with other unrelated accusations, to destroy someone’s reputation. If we compare the evidence of the number of Jewish converts in Prussia with the situation in neighbouring Mark Brandenburg, for example, what we find is certainly noteworthy; in Brandenburg, which was home to a number of Jewish communities, both large and small, there are only four known cases of Jewish converts during the late Middle Ages, the first one in 1413 and the last in 1567.49 Although Forstreuter’s interpretation of Peter von Dusburg suggests that there was a fear of conversion in the other direction and of Jewish proselytizing, there are no known examples of either actually occurring in the medieval Prussian sources. One urban source from the end of the fifteenth century indicates that this fear nonetheless existed. The source mentions Jews outside of Prussia giving asylum to a Prussian evildoer: Margaretha from Heilsberg (Lidzbark Warmiński) was detained because she had stolen a tunic. During her interrogation, it was established that she was married to two men simultaneously – or, in any case, she had seduced a man who was also interrogated about what he knew about the first husband, who had not been seen alive for about six months. Under interrogation, this man claimed that he and Margaretha had not had marital relations until they had received information about the whereabouts of the first husband; as far as they knew, he was living in the Jewish quarter in Prague.50 This is only a side issue; the investigation centred on Margaretha’s alleged bigamy. In the end, she was not convicted, but was admonished to leave the second man to avoid excommunication. Nonetheless, the fact that she and the man interrogated claimed that her first husband was in Prague living in

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the Jewish quarter is oddly specific. Did they feel that living in Prague with the Jews was a crime so severe that it seemed to justify immediate remarriage? Or was ‘living with the Jews in Prague’ an expression equal to wo der Pfeffer wächst, which in modern German means ‘very far away in a bad place’? Or, as suggested earlier, does this note from 1498 point to a fear of Jewish proselytizing to convert Prussian Christians – if not in the country itself, then in the neighbouring lands? Maybe none of this mattered, and the only reason for Margaretha to mention her first husband’s alleged new residence was that it would be difficult for the priest interrogating her in Heilsberg to verify. After the Reformation, information about converted Jews declines. On 22 July 1543, a baptized Jew wrote to Duke Albrecht and asked for residency in Königsberg. The duke requested that the town take him in, in the event that he could write and count.51 In 1664, a priest at the Trinity Church in Gdańsk preached about the verstockten Juden (stubborn Jews), complaining that even Jews who were sentenced to death often refused to convert. Around the same time, Johann Salomo converted to Christianity and became a lecturer of Hebrew at the grammar school in Gdańsk, also writing several sermons to encourage other Jews to convert.52 These examples from the Early Modern period no longer have anything do with the sober and purely economic and practical approach to conversion that the medieval formulae and accounts suggest – at least in the case of Jewish converts. Again, the lack of Jews as a specific theme in the Prussian sources seems to be the result of the preponderate focus on other forms of conversion – the conversion of the pagan Prussians, which was consistently presented as the sole reason for the Teutonic Order’s presence in the region. * * * The Teutonic Order both commissioned and inspired the production of a rich historiography that created a narrative meant to legitimize the corporation’s presence in the Baltic, and this historiography was the source of controversy and of counter-narratives, even after the Order left the region. In spite of the later focus on the aims and principles behind the foundation of the Order’s state in Prussia, the contemporary chronicles did not clearly formulate any such principles, nor did they spell out any explicit overarching goals or desires on the part of the high masters or the corporation. Instead of a farsighted plan formulated by gifted high masters, the daily struggle with the pagan tribes dominates the historiographic production. Neither actual contemporary Jews, nor the discursive Jews of narratives, biblical or otherwise, appear in any substantial way in these texts, and they are never mentioned among

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those who must be excluded, converted or killed as part of the establishment of the Crusaders’ state. Peter of Dusburg’s chronicle is the only one that actually refers to Jews, in the seemingly mythical story of the knight dreaming of a religious dialogue in which the Jew triumphs and in the copied story of the conversion of the Toledo Jew, both of which illustrate Peter’s main conversion theme, with the Jews uncharacteristically portrayed as a lesser evil in comparison to the pagans. Peter’s stories of conversion, in which Jews serve as illustrations of both the dangers of lapsing from the Christian faith and the joys of finding it, can be contrasted with the evidence we have of actual conversions; for Prussia, a number of cases of individual converts as well as families are known and mainly discussed in terms of their economic needs. While it’s perfectly understandable that no attempt is made to describe Prussia as a purely Christian territory from the outset, as the focus is on pagans instead of Jews or Muslims, it is nonetheless surprising that the Teutonic Order’s chronicle tradition is generally devoid of references to Jews. The Old Testament model of the Maccabees is presented frequently – interestingly enough, even this seems to become more important in the later texts, with the most important attempt to establish a parallel between the apocryphal Jewish knights and the brethren in the Baltic found in the Jüngere Hochmeisterchronik, which includes no reference to New Testament Jews. As such, the portrayal of Jews is generally of the in bono variety, while the in malo Jews – the Christ killers – who are usually presented as blind and unwilling to recognize the Messiah and convert, are completely absent from this tradition. It might very well be that this focus on the in bono Jews and the absence of the portrayal of in malo Jews was directly connected to a lack of interest in contemporary Jews, either inside or outside of Prussia. As examples from other areas with no stable Jewish population during the Middle Ages show, there is no direct connection between the presence of real Jews and the production of anti-Jewish texts and images addressing the discursive Jew. In medieval Scandinavia, for example, one finds a number of anti-Jewish church paintings as well as textual evidence of anti-Judaism, and in England, anti-Judaism remained a factor even after the expulsion of the actual Jews. Thus, the almost entire absence of discursive in malo Jews from the Teutonic Order’s textual production is remarkable. It cannot, however, be taken as evidence of either the presence or absence of real Jews. What it does clearly show, together with the historiographic tradition, is that the real pagans were a much more palpable threat to the establishment of the Crusaders’ state, making them the main discursive enemy in the chronicles. The occasional use of the term ‘Saracens’ for the

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Baltic pagans does not disguise the fact that the origins of the Order in the Holy Land and its Muslim enemies were, by this point, a closed chapter – Muslims also basically play no role in the Prussian historiographic tradition. Crusading propaganda and historiography are the most obvious sites for the programmatic production of a narrative of legitimation. Be that as it may, the centrality of the portrayal of pagans as both a discursive and real enemy and the absence of Jews (and Muslims) in that regard is reproduced elsewhere: e.g., in both Prussia’s legal and normative sources, as well as in its pragmatic and administrative corpus.

Notes   1. B. M. Kienzle, ‘Preaching the Cross: Liturgy and Crusade Propaganda’, Medieval Sermon Studies 53 (2009): 11–32.   2. See C. Auffarth, ‘Die Makkabäer als Modell für die Kreuzfahrer: Usurpationen und Brüche in der Tradition eines jüdischen Heiligenideals. Ein religionswissenschaftlicher Versuch zur “Kreuzzugseschatologie”’, in Tradition und Translation: Zum Problem der interkulturellen Übersetzbarkeit religiöser Phänomene; Festschrift für Carsten Colpe zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. C. Elsas and R. Haffke (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1994), 362–90.   3. Perlbach, Statuten, 22–26.   4. H. Boockmann, ‘Bemerkungen zu den frühen Urkunden über die Mission und Unterwerfung der Prußen’, in Die Ritterorden zwischen geistlicher und weltlicher Macht im Mittelalter, ed. Z. H. Nowak (Toruń: Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika, 1990), 49.   5. There has been much scholarly discussion of the principles behind the Teutonic Order’s state, the reasoning of High Master Hermann von Salza in founding it and certain developments in the Order’s history and in Prussian history in general, usually working from the assumption that certain high masters made conscious, strategic decisions – for example, Hermann von Salza is said to have held the establishment of territorial authority in Prussia as a personal goal, even though he himself had never been there. U. Arnold, ‘Hermann von Salza’, Theologische Realenzyklopädie, 36 vols. (Berlin: deGruyter, 1986), 15:97–100 (with further references).   6. S. Shepkaru, ‘The Preaching of the First Crusade and the Persecutions of the Jews’, Medieval Encounters 18(1) (2012): 93–135.   7. R. Rist, ‘Papal Protection and the Jews in the Context of Crusading, 1198–1245’, Medieval Encounters 13(2) (2007): 281–309; A. S. Abulafia, ‘AntiJewish Crusading Violence and the Christianization of Europe’, Journal of Progressive Judaism 7 (1996): 59–77.   8. M. Tamm, ‘How to Justify a Crusade? The Conquest of Livonia and New Crusade Rhetoric in the Early Thirteenth Century’, Journal of Medieval History 39(4) (2013): 431–55.

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  9. A. Ehlers, ‘The Crusade of the Teutonic Knights against Lithuania Reconsidered’, in Crusade and Conversion on the Baltic Frontier, 1150–1500 , ed. A.V. Murray (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 21–44. 10. For further discussion of the topic, see C. Heß, ‘Himmelskönigin und Geburtshelferin: Marienverehrung im spätmittelalterlichen Preußen’, in Cura animarum. Seelsorge im Deutschordensland Preußen, ed. S. Samerski (Cologne: Böhlau, 2013), 185–99. 11. See, for example, Päsler, Deutschsprachige Sachliteratur, 25–26; and most recently the contributions in the anthology B. Jähnig and A. MentzelReuters (eds.), Neue Studien zur Literatur im Deutschen Orden (Stuttgart: Hirzel, 2014). 12. A. Mentzel-Reuters, Arma spiritualia: Bibliotheken, Bücher und Bildung im Deutschen Orden (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2003), 154–58. 13. A. Masser, ‘Heinrich von Hesler: “Evangelium Nicodemi”’, http://www. handschriftencensus.de/werke/157. 14. A. Masser, ‘Heinrich von Hesler: “Apokalypse”’, http://www.handschriftencensus.de/werke/488; see also K. Klein, ‘Beobachtungen zur Überlieferung der ‘Apokalypse’ Heinrichs von Hesler’, in Jähnig and Mentzel-Reuters, Neue Studien, 129–30. 15. Mentzel-Reuters, ‘Heinrich von Hesler’, 57–58. 16. Cf. S. Jagodzinski, Die illustrierte Apokalypse Heinrichs von Hesler im Deutschen Orden: Studien zu Bild, Text und Kontext (Stuttgart: Ibidem-Verlag, 2009). 17. S. Ehrich, Die Apokalypse Heinrichs von Hesler in Text und Bild: Traditionen und Themen volkssprachlicher Bibeldichtung und ihre Rezeption im Deutschen Orden (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2010), 212–19. 18. K. Helm (ed.), Das Evangelium Nicodemi von Heinrich v. Hesler (Tübingen: Litterarischer Verein in Stuttgart, 1902). 19. M. Dorninger, ‘“Von dem grossen vberschlag deß Judischen Wuchers”? Notizen zum Bild des (Wucher-)Juden im (Spät-)Mittelalter’, Aschkenas 20(2) (2012): 67; M. Wüst, Studien zum Selbstverständnis des Deutschen Ordens im Mittelalter (Weimar: VDG, 2013), 181–82. 20. Hackmann, Ostpreußen und Westpreußen, 19. 21. J. Wenta, Kronika Piotra z Dusburga: Szkic źródłoznawczy (Toruń: Wydawn. Universytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, 2003). 22. V. I. Matuzova, ‘Mental Frontiers: Prussians as Seen by Peter von Dusburg’, in Murray, Crusade and Conversion, 253–59. 23. E. Weise, ‘Der Heidenkampf des Deutschen Ordens’, ZfO 12 (1963): 420–73. 24. For a discussion of the Chronicon as a medium for shaping a corporate identity, see E. Feistner et al., Krieg im Visier: Bibelepik und Chronistik im Deutschen Orden als Modell korporativer Identitätsbildung (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2007). 25. Peter von Dusburg, Chronicon terrae Prussie, SRP, vol. 1, 28. 26. Narratio de primordiis ordinis theutonici, SRP, vol. 1, 220–25. For a discussion of the relationship between these two texts, see Wenta, Kronika, 28–34. 27. A. V. Murray, ‘The Saracens of the Baltic: Pagan and Christian Lithuanians in the Perception of English and French Crusaders to Late Medieval Prussia’, Journal of Baltic Studies 41(4) (2010): 413–29.

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28. E. G. W. Strehlke (ed.), Di Kronike von Pruzinlant des Nicolaus von Jeroschin (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1861); SRP, vol. 1, 564–65; Dusburg, Chronicon, 231. 29. R. Szpiech, Conversion and Narrative: Reading and Religious Authority in Medieval Polemic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 217. 30. Dusburg, Chronicon, 58. 31. J. R. Lumby (ed.), Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden, Monachi Cestrensis together with the English Translation of John of Trevisa and of an Unknown Writer in the 15th Century, 9 vols. (London: Longman, 1882), 8:247. 32. S. Saalfeld (ed.), Das Martyrologium des Nürnberger Memorbuches (Berlin: L. Simion, 1898), 286. 33. Szpiech, Conversion and Narrative, 218. 34. Dusburg, Chronicon, 46–47. 35. W. Hubatsch, ‘Die Staatsbildung des Deutschen Ordens’, in Preußenland und Deutscher Orden, 127–52. 36. Ibid., 175. 37. G. Signori (ed.), Dying for the Faith, Killing for the Faith: Old-Testament FaithWarriors (1 and 2 Maccabees) in Historical Perspective (Leiden: Brill, 2012). 38. Jüngere Hochmeisterchronik, SRP, vol. 5, 45–46. 39. R. Stapel and G. Vollmann-Profe, ‘Cronike van der Duytscher Oirden’, in The Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, ed. R.G. Dunphy (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 328–29. 40. F. Hipler, ‘Geschichte und Statuten der ermländischen Diöcesansynoden’, Pastoralblatt für die Diöcese Ermland 27(7) (1895): 77. 41. ‘Formeln aus der Zeit der Bischöfe Hermann von Prag (1338–1349), Johann I. von Meißen (1350–1355) und Johann II. Stryprock (1355–1373)’, Cod dipl Warm, vol. 2, no. 306, 316. 42. R. Biskup (ed.), Formelbuch aus Uppsala. Das spätmittelalterliche Formelbuch der preussischen Bistümer – Formularz z Uppsali. Późnośredniowieczna księga formularzowa biskupstw pruskich (Toruń: TNT, 2016), no. 287, 225–226. An older abbreviated edition is A. Kolberg, ‘Ein preußisches Formelbuch des 15. Jahrhunderts’, ZfGAE 9(1) (1887). Printed according to Codex Upsaliensis fol. CI. The bishop is only named as ‘N’: most likely Nikolaus von Schöneck, ep. 1442–70, is meant, he was on the side of the Prussian estates in the 13 Years War, but in in 1455, he pledged allegiance to the high master. R. Biskup, Das Domkapitel von Samland (1285–1525) (Toruń: Verl. der Nikolaus-Kopernikus Universität, 2007), 479–82. 43. ’Item pro Iudea conversata’, Formelbuch aus Uppsala, no. 254, 187. 44. ‘Item pro Iudeo converso’, Formelbuch aus Uppsala, no. 255, 187–189. 45. SRP, vol. 3, 76, note 3; G. v. Bunge et al. (eds.), Liv-, Esth- und Curländisches Urkundenbuch nebst Regesten, 17 vols. (Reval: Kluge und Ströhm, 1873), vol. 6, no. 3088. 46. E. Joachim (ed.), Das Marienburger Tresslerbuch der Jahre 1399–1409 (Königsberg i. Pr: Thomas & Oppermann, 1896), 501; 551. 47. GStA, XX. HA, Findbuch 66, OF 13, 340, 13 May 1436. 48. ‘Ich hab vornomen … mein ere bereczend war das ich sall ein basthart sein, oder das ich sall ein reissther Jud sein und mit anderen unworheit mere’.

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49. 50.

51. 52.

(I have heard … depriving my honour that I should be a bastard, or that I should be a baptized Jew, and other falsities.) 11 March 1487. OBA 17311. W. Heise, Die Juden in der Mark Brandenburg bis zum Jahre 1510 (Berlin: Ebering, 1932), 146–47. ‘Eodem anno 27 januarii, cum incarcerata fuisset quedam Margaretha uxor pellificis … ab isto die usque ad festum Pasce non cohabitarent, sed uterque interea operam daret ad investigandum, si maritus ille profugus in vita adhuc foret, qui Prage in platea Judeorum dicebatur habitare.’ (The same year on January 27, when a certain Margaretha was incarcerated, the wife of the fur maker … they had not been together from this day until Easter, but she made utterly an effort to investigate whether the husband on the refuge might still be alive, and she found out that he was living in Prague, in the street of the Jews.) ‘Memoriale domini Lucae’, Scriptores rerum Warmiensium, 2:112–13. J. Saalschütz, ‘Zur Geschichte der Synagogen-Gemeinde in Königsberg 2’, Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 5 (1858), 168. ‘Geschichte der Juden’, 213.

2 Chapter 6 Absent Victims, Absent Violence Persecutions and Blood Libel

If we turn our attention to texts other than the normative sources and political propaganda, what we find is contradictory. As indicated in the previous chapters, it can be clearly established that the Teutonic Order did not impose a general ban on Jewish settlement, not in 1309, the early days of its coherent territorial power, and not during the fifteenth century, a tumultuous phase when it was struggling to maintain its legitimacy. If Jews residing in the Order’s territory did not commit crimes against the lex natura that drew the attention of those with secular or papal jurisdiction, they were to be left in peace. But was there actually anybody to leave in peace? Many of the Jewish communities that did not produce written documentation of their own became visible in times of persecution and expulsion. Thus, if there were any Jews in medieval Prussia, it seems likely that they would have been victims of pogroms, blood libels, accusations of host desecration and the like. Events like this were well known in the Prussian lands, as is indicated by the frequent mention of the pogroms in Prague and Wrocław in Prussian historiography and in the communication of the Teutonic Order, for example. However, evidence of anti-Jewish pogroms in Prussia is extremely scarce and stems, at least partially, from the same obscure historiographic tradition as the presumed ban on Jewish settlement. In the context of this complete lack of reliable evidence of established Jewish communities, which would have meant that there was no real reason for such laws, the relationship between tradition and any actual persecution must be re-thought. If we assume that, in reality, there were no Jews living in Prussia, we come face to face with the phenomenon of antisemitism without Jews. How would the Prussian population have recognized the possibility of scapegoating Jews for diseases? Did stories of blood libel from neighbouring regions arrive in and spread throughout Prussia? Did the Prussian population know of and visit pilgrimage sites connected to host desecrations and the like? We have already seen that anti-Judaism was an extremely rare feature in the Teutonic Order’s literary production. Given the scarcity of anti-Jewish sources from other institutions,

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social groups and protagonists in the region, it seems that the tradition of anti-Jewish stereotypes as the basis for pogroms was also extremely rare in Prussia. If, on the other hand, we assume that there were actually a few, badly documented Jews living in Prussia, the investigation of sources regarding pogroms must take a different tack. If there were Jews, and people knew about blood libel and scapegoating, why were there no major, coordinated expulsions or trials? Depending on our preoccupations and assumptions, the evidence can be read in a way that shows Prussia to be yet another example of a region where the Christian heritage and religion transmitted anti-Judaism as an integral cultural reality, or it can be read as an unusual example of peaceful coexistence, despite this heritage.

Jews as Scapegoats for the Black Death in Prussia? Despite his bulwark theory, Kurt Forstreuter acknowledged the evidence of Jews in Prussia in the light of the sources in connection with the Black Death in the 1350s and assumed that Jews had been held responsible for the pandemic in Prussia as well. The two versions of his article realign when the sources regarding the Black Death in Prussia are addressed. In this case, Forstreuter bases his conclusions on a superficial reading of the Chronicon Olivense and the Braniewo liber civitatis. For some reason, there is a shift in Forstreuter’s opinion; in 1937, he asserted that there had been no pogroms against Prussian Jews since there were no Jews in Prussia, while in the later text he argues that there had been pogroms in response to the poisoning of wells by Jews mentioned in the sources. This in return would have meant that there were sizeable Jewish populations that could fall victim to pogroms, but as I will show, this interpretation goes too far when it assumes the actual presence of Jews.1 I interpret the sources differently; there is no actual evidence of anti-Jewish pogroms in Prussia, even though the scapegoating of Jews played a well-established role throughout Europe, and was even taken up by contemporary Prussian chroniclers. The Jews as scapegoats for the Plague provides an example of this absence, oscillating, as it does, between asserting their presence and claiming their non-existence. The connection between Jews and sorcery, however, which is invoked in these sources from the fifteenth century onward, was firmly established in Prussian monastic circles and writings by the mid-fourteenth century. Carlo Ginzburg has analyzed the persecution of Jews in con-

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nection with the Black Death alongside the growing persecution of witches,2 and several other scholars have commented on the similarity of the theological arguments targeting Jews, witches and heretics in the Late Middle Ages.3 While all of these arguments draw upon evidence from areas where Jewish communities had been present for centuries, the sources from Prussia and the Hanseatic area regarding the Black Death also suggest that this interconnection of resentments was familiar to people at the peripheries and was even applied in cases where no actual Jews were present.4 Prussian chronicles report major pestilentiae at least three times during the fourteenth century, around 1320, around 1349 and in the 1380s – this was accompanied by other hardships, such as famines and fires that created havoc during these decades. The pandemic of the 1350s does not seem to have been the unique major catastrophe that it would later be presented as – some chronicles, especially those produced by the Teutonic Order, do not address it at all. In fact, the Black Death takes a backseat in the chronicles to the descriptions of battles in the on-going conflict with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, particularly in the Samogitian lands. Considering the broad historiographic tradition about the Black Death, those few cases in which chroniclers mention Jews must be seen as exceptional, particularly as most of them were not produced in Prussia itself. The oldest example is the Chronicon Olivense, written in 1351 by a Cistercian monk at the Oliva monastery. While most of the chronicle relies primarily on older sources, such as Peter von Dusburg, the account of the Prussian Plague is original and has no parallel tradition.5 The chronicle covers the history of the Duchy of Pomerelia and the neighbouring areas in the years 1184–1350, with a section about the Black Death being added in 1351. The Chronicon Olivense was later used as a source by several Teutonic Order chroniclers, but they omitted the part dealing with the Black Death and the Jews. As far as the description of local Jews goes, it might be relevant that the chronicle was written within an institution that had been struggling for its independence since the Teutonic Order had occupied Pomerelia in 1309, but which also frequently turned to the Order for support in negotiations and for protection.6 Being situated in the vicinity of Gdańsk, the author would surely have known about anti-Jewish pogroms in the town, had they occurred. The Chronicon Olivense dates the Plague to 1351 and claims it originated in India and followed an apocalyptic course of events: bad air, horrible sounds and fire and mist descending from the sky, infecting and killing the people. Prussia is specifically mentioned as a place hit hard by the Plague, and the Jews are immediately blamed, along with

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‘bad Christians’. The account of the disease’s spread is very detailed, as is the description of the anti-Jewish pogroms – no trials are mentioned, however, in connection with the complete ‘annihilation’ of the Jews in Germania, Alemania and Poland. The description seems to be a synopsis of various accounts the author has heard or read, from which he draws the information most important to him. The ‘secret’ Jews, that is, those who only superficially accepted baptism, are held responsible along with those who remained Jewish. The Jews are identified as entirely separate from the Christian communities – they poison the water the Christians have to use – and special emphasis is put on the different ways they were killed, suggesting both spontaneous pogroms and death penalties issued at trials. The fact that the author of the Chronicon Olivense lived during the pandemic and was an inhabitant of Prussia gives this account a certain authority regarding the lack of evidence of pogroms in Prussia. He mentions the region as hard hit by the Plague, but not as a site of anti-Jewish violence. The Jewish conspiracy is instead connected to the German lands and Poland, which indeed were the sites of pogroms, as the author probably knew. This Cistercian chronicle did not become a text model for later Prussian historiography, at least not regarding the scapegoating of the Jews for the Black Death, and thus the Chronicon Olivense is one of the very few Prussian historiographic accounts mentioning Jews at all – even if not actual Prussian Jewish communities, but, instead, Jews outside of Pomerelia. They are portrayed as devilish, setting up an intrigue against Christians, and extremely hostile and dangerous, with a particular focus on the conspiracy of Jews and Jewish converts. Extra-Prussian traditions use the same figure of thought but otherwise do not resemble the account in the Chronicon Olivense, as the example of the Detmar Chronicle from Lübeck shows. In 1385, two Lübeck city council members commissioned a chronicle, since the urban historiography had been largely laid to waste since the Black Death. The lesemester (lector) Detmar spent the following ten years with the compilation and composition of a town and world chronicle, stretching from 1101 until his lifetime.7 Since Lübeck lacked a stable Jewish community in the Middle Ages, as did most of the less densely populated areas in the northern German lands, his chronicle can be read as paradigmatic for the treatment of Jews in a region with no or few actual Jews. Nevertheless, Detmar knew the legend of the Red Jews – a legend only known from German texts that combined the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel with the people Gog and Magog of the Apocalypse.8 His accounts of scapegoating are interesting insofar as they also mention the Plague in Prussia and anti-Jewish pogroms, but

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they make no explicit connection between the two. There are very few pogroms reported in the entire German Baltic coast area during this period,9 but Detmar, nonetheless, blames the Jews for the pandemic. Detmar had first-hand access to urban administrative sources in his hometown for the years of the Plague. In the case of the other places he mentions, especially the other Hanseatic towns and Prussia, he particularly relied on the Toruń anonymous Annales and another chronicle of Prussian origin that aspired to embrace world history, the Chronik des Preußenlandes by Johann von Posilge/Johann von Rheden.10 The Detmar Chronicle placed some emphasis on a disease that was supposedly the Black Death, which occurred between 1346 and 1350. Detmar has an informed view of the geographical origin and spread of the pandemic and discusses different explanations, such as mankind’s sinful state, stellar constellations and the Jews. On two occasions, Detmar explicitly identifies Jews to be punished in connection with the disease. He first mentions baptized Jews, who were said to have poisoned people, subsequently confessing under torture to propagating and spreading the disease. The Black Death is described in several paragraphs in one version of Detmar’s chronicle, the one used by the Lübeck city council. He mentions 1346 as the year of the first outbreak of the pandemic, describing the spread of the disease from the Holy Land, where it had killed thousands of heathens (‘which was not much to moan about, since they are the enemies of God’), thereafter spreading to Christian lands, such as Hungary, Italy and France, followed by England and Flanders, then Sweden, Norway and Sealand (Denmark), and spreading from there to Prussia, especially Königsberg and Elbląg. He mentions that ‘baptized Jews’ were burned for this in many places.11 Several paragraphs later, a second occurrence of the Black Death in 1348 is mentioned in the Detmar Chronicle, and here an astronomer’s explanation of the disease as the result of a particular constellation of planets in 1345 is recounted, even though Detmar himself does not believe the stars to be responsible for anything, being nothing more than signs of things to come. He says, however, that the Jews knew of this constellation and decided to use it to kill all the Christians by poisoning them while they were already dying, in order to become kings over the Christians.12 Detmar’s description of the alleged Jewish conspiracies related to the Black Death are not particularly detailed. For example, the common accusation of poisoning wells and water is not mentioned, no details are provided about the form and preparation of the poison, and so on, and no location of the trials and confessions is offered. This makes it unlikely that Detmar possessed actual copies of trial documents from which he was directly quoting, as was the case in

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the south of France where summaries of trials were copied and sent to other towns, becoming models for chroniclers’ accounts of the events.13 Consequently, this source provides no useful information about antiJewish pogroms – and thereby the existence of Jews – in the northern German lands and Prussia. The third relevant source regarding anti-Jewish violence in Prussia in the 1350s is a letter from the Lübeck town council to Duke Otto von Lüneburg.14 There is no actual date on the letter itself, but it has been situated in the context of the Black Death in the Baltic Sea region and, therefore, dated as 1350 by the editors of Lübeckisches Urkundenbuch, a dating that has not been challenged in subsequent research. The council members from Lübeck tell the duke about the trial of a certain Keyenort, who was burned at the stake in Lübeck, and about a woman who prepared poison from snakes she kept in her house. No Jews are mentioned in connection with the woman, but Keyenort confessed to receiving three solidi from the Jews to poison people in all the lands from Prussia to Lübeck on their behalf – no mention is made of the location of the trial. Council members from Rostock and other Hanseatic cities also reported Jews confessing to poisonings in their cities and in ‘the Slavic countries’. This letter also quotes yet another letter from the council of Visby, describing the trial of a certain Tidericus who was burned after having confessed to receiving money and poison from a Jew named Aaron, son of Solomon, in Hannover, and having used it to poison numerous wells and fountains in a number of towns in Hannover county. While he was gambling with his blood money in Lübeck, Tidericus was approached by another Jew, named Moyses, who gave him more money. As a result, he travelled to Prussia, specifically Frombork, and killed forty people, and a further forty in Memel (Klaipėda), Hasenpoth (Aizpute), Goldingen (Kuldīga), Pilten (Piltene) and Windau (Ventspils) before travelling on to Curland.15 The council members add a few short lines of particular interest regarding Prussia: The council members of Toruń also wrote to us about many baptized Jews who were caught in their town, and they all remembered that the trial had its origin in this mode of total intoxication by the Jews.16

This otherwise mysterious sentence at least proves the existence of baptized Jews in Toruń and their persecution, although in a very vague way. Were the council members recalling a concrete trial against the baptized Jews of Toruń or another trial? When did it take place? Three letters that were circulating in the Hanseatic towns on the Baltic coast around the same time reported trials against and death penalties for Jews or people who confessed to having been paid by

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Jews, and these letters asserted that these persons had travelled around Prussia. This can be treated as relatively solid evidence that Jews were held responsible for the diseases in these areas as well. It is, however, remarkable that none of the trials was the result of the casualties in the town where the trial was held – the accused in Lübeck were punished for casualties in Prussia, and the accused in Visby for casualties elsewhere in Sweden and in Prussia. A fourth account of somewhat mysterious origin adds to the impression that Jews were thought to be responsible for the Black Death in Prussia, but in this account the suspicion is not said to have led to any sweeping persecution. It is undated and mentions a baptized Jew named Rumboldus travelling in Prussia and killing many people – actually no pestilentia is mentioned.17 The report mentions people having been held responsible for the deaths, but it does not make explicit whether or not Rumboldus himself was punished by death at the stake. The report itself is preserved in the oldest liber civitatis of Braniewo (Braunsberg), but Braniewo is not among the many towns mentioned as having been hit by the poisoning.18 Blaming Jewish converts is a recurrent feature in the reports. In the Detmar Chronicle, they are said to be pretending to be Christians and living off Christian alms. Those accused of the poisonings are obviously poor beggars and vagrants and, thereby, even without the Jewish ascription, belong to a marginalized group – a pattern similar to persecution in France, which initially focussed on paupers and only subsequently on Jews.19 The Chronicon Olivense points to Iudaeos occultos (secret Jews), and in the case of Rumboldus, a traveller or a vagrant is accused of the poisonings. In both cases, the accused are ascribed the status of Jews, although they claim to be Christian or are even living as converts and receiving alms as a result of their status – in the case of Prussia, there are several reports of the high master himself, as well as the bishops of Sambia, providing converts and their families with monetary aid in order to prevent them from returning to the Jewish faith.20 In the letters from Lübeck and Visby, on the other hand, ‘bad Christians’ are blamed, and they claim to have been paid and misled by Jews to perform the deeds. In almost all of the sources, the terms ‘sorcery’ and ‘witchcraft’ are used: incantations, whispering words in someone’s ear, secret things. This, of course, is of interest in light of the historiographic tradition mentioning an anti-Jewish ban in connection with a ban against sorcerers and black magicians; this means that the connection between Jews and sorcery had been established in Prussia long before these chronicles were written – and probably without any real Jews to project such accusations onto.

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Rumboldus is presented as a lone killer, while the other sources suggest a far-reaching Jewish conspiracy. Reasons for the crimes are, in the cases of the bad Christians, money and being bewitched, and in the case of the Jews and converts, hatred of Christians and the wish to enslave them under Jewish rule as revenge for their own present enslavement under Christian rule. Samuel Cohn has pointed out the social circumstances of anti-Jewish violence during the Plague years, which most often was staged by local authorities rather than being spontaneous outbreaks of hatred by the lower classes or peasants. In the Prussian sources, we learn little about the perpetrators – both the Jews and the Christians accused in the Prussian and Hanseatic sources were, as such, poor people and vagrants, and it is likely that this fact was actually the primary incentive for blaming them. The identification with the Jewish religion is very vague in most cases, suggesting that they were probably primarily perceived as social outsiders, not religious outsiders, and were persecuted during the Black Death for that reason, as we know was the case in southern Europe. The sources mentioning Jews in connection with the Black Death in Prussia are contradictory and not particularly telling regarding the actual presence of Jews in the medieval territory of the Teutonic Order. They do, however, point to the presence of Jews, actual or imagined, in the thinking and writing of the monastic authors – who probably did not know for certain whether or not there were Jews living in the towns outside the walls of their monasteries. Even the sources of urban secular origin, letters and town books, are evidence of a certain familiarity of the people with Jews, real or imagined. The accounts of Jews in Prussia or in Prussian sources are, thus, primarily evidence of the authors’ knowledge about Jews as potential scapegoats. This knowledge could have stemmed from innumerable sources recounting the burning and expulsion of Jews in Poland and the German lands. As a postscript to the Black Death of the 1350s and its consequences for European, as well as possibly Prussian, Jews, a 1432 letter from Prague should be mentioned, in which the connection between Jews and disease makes a powerful return. A Teutonic Order official wrote to the high master about the Hussites in Prague and added a peculiar story about a plogh (sickness, epidemic) in the town. I also inform you that the epidemic which happened in Prague had been foretold to the people of Prague by a Jew, and he let himself be put in prison, if it did not happen, then they should decapitate him, but if it did happen, they should give him ten schok, and this the people of Prague promised to do.21

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Events would prove the adventurous prophet correct in trusting in his skills but wrong to trust the people of Prague. When the town was, in fact, hit by an epidemic, the townspeople wanted to kill the Jew. He was saved by the intervention of other Jews and was finally released and allowed to leave town – without the promised payment, of course. This story is not handed down in parallel chronicles or other sources. To sum up, none of the accounts of the Black Death in Prussia mention anti-Jewish violence as a result of blaming Jews for the spread of the Plague. Since both chroniclers and town officials obviously were aware of this scapegoating elsewhere, this is either clear evidence for the non-existence of resident Jews – or for the lack of conflicts which resulted from their residency.

Schwetz and Elsewhere: Host-Desecration Stories Back to Early Modern historiography in Prussia, where there is more evidence of the authors being familiar with Jews, and particularly with alleged Jewish misdeeds. Whether these later accounts can be taken as evidence of the presence of actual Jews is, it must be repeated, doubtful, but it is worth mentioning that the same chronicles that claim that there was a ban on Jewish settlement in 1309 also claim that there was a host desecration followed by the expulsion of Jews in the 1340s. As was the case with the connection of Jews with sorcery in the accounts of the Black Death, the imagined host desecrations committed by Jews seem also to have been familiar to the Prussian authors, as several Prussian medieval chronicles comment on host-desecration accusations from outside of Prussia. Simon Grunau was, however, the first to report a similar event occurring in Prussia, in the town of Schwetz/ Świecie. Historians have observed and discussed the Landordnung of 1309, first mentioned in Grunau’s chronicle, and have treated it as historical evidence, but, up to this point, no one has paid attention to the other episodes involving Jews in Prussia – even though they have been just as frequently repeated in later chronicles. Emil Hollack is the sole exception; he discussed the Grunau version of the episode as well as the later additions to it.22 Even Kurt Forstreuter paid some attention to the Świecie blood libel. The 1981 version of his article examines Prussian history in the period 1309–40, in the context of the Prussian-Polish conflict over Pomerelia, briefly touching upon the host-desecration incident recounted in Grunau’s chronicle. Forstreuter does not even fully paraphrase Grunau’s account, making only a perfunctory mention of a ‘Jew who had performed magic’. Thus the overall significance of

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host desecration and blood libel stories escapes him. Instead, for him the definitive evidence of Jewish immigration into Prussia during this period is the role Jewish travellers played as messengers between the Order and the surrounding areas, places that, in Forstreuter’s words, had been ‘übervoll’ with Jews – a term not used in the 1937 version. All of this is an easy fit with the terminology of floods and bulwarks. The flaws and necessary doubts regarding Simon Grunau’s chronicle have already been touched upon in the discussion of the Landordnung, which he maybe invented or maybe coped from another obscure source. While the Landordnung has been treated as historical fact despite its dubious origin, the Grunau chronicle has, for the most part, in all other regards been considered a work of fiction. It is considered a barely reliable source of Prussian history during the Teutonic Order’s reign, as Grunau often confused names and dates, used sources that were either made up or lost and generally focussed on colourful stories. Several scholars have tried to follow the text models of the different episodes he recounts, but with a strong concentration on the events considered important for the history of the Teutonic Order – high masters, battles, diplomacy. Miracle stories and the like, which are abundant in the Grunau chronicle, have been deemed of much less historical importance and, as a consequence, have received less attention. Max Toeppen, the first scholar who tried to find potential sources for Grunau’s chronicle, describes him as a storyteller, travelling around in Prussia, especially Warmia, and collecting orally transmitted tales and stories from the rural population23 – a method rejected by positivist historians, but nonetheless interesting with regards to narratives of blood libels and miraculous hosts. The specific dates Grunau assigned to a particular story are, however, extremely unreliable. As a Dominican monk from the area around Elbląg who preached in Gdańsk, Grunau was close to the confessional conflicts of his time. He wrote his chronicle between 1517 and 1529, and his assessment of the history of the Teutonic Order is influenced by this period. For earlier Prussian history, he used the Annales Olivensis, and a chronicle written by Erasmus Stella, a Riesenburg official, as well as many other sources, including now lost or unknown diplomatic sources and possibly even oral sources. Udo Arnold claims that the most recent sources he used were the now-lost Elbinger Mönchschronik and the Ferber-Buch.24 The number of miracle stories and the amount of gossip has added to Grunau’s reputation as a storyteller who is sometimes referred to as ‘Lügenmönch aus Tolkemit’ (the lying friar from Tolmicko). However, this traditional, fact-based way of assessing a sixteenth-century chronicle ignores the importance that the contemporary authors assigned to

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events of less immediately apparent political significance; most of these were faithfully copied by later chroniclers who are seen as much more ‘reliable’ than Grunau, but who obviously saw these events as just as historically relevant as the election of a new high master. Their significance is easy to assess from the point of view of narrative value, which adds to local identity, group identities and also entertainment. The story of the peasants in Lichtenau who made a priest give the Last Rites to a pig and fried a monk,25 or of the murderer in Gdańsk who said he had killed about seven hundred people just because he enjoyed it, or of the countess who had nine sons at once as a punishment for having said to another woman with triplets that they must come from different fathers – all of these seem to be intrinsic elements of a tradition that was ‘made up’ by Grunau and copied by Caspar Schütz, Bartholomeus Wartzmann, Ebert Ferber, Lucas David and many others. We do not know the origin of these episodes, but they became a substantial and relevant part of the collective memory of the Prussian chroniclers.26 An episode of host desecration became part of this collective memory in a similar way. Simon Grunau writes: There were Jews living in Prussia, and they did what they used to on the basis of their nature. One of them taught a poor fisherman to take the body of Christ and mount it onto a piece of wood and to attach this to his net, and the ill-fated fisherman did so and caught unduly large masses of fish and became rich and proud, and he lived in Schwetz. It happened that the Jew was caught because of other things and was tortured for more information, during which he confessed. Servants were sent out and were supposed to catch the fisherman, but when he saw a lot of strangers approaching, he was afraid they wanted to catch him, and he relied on his swimming skills and jumped into the Vistula and escaped. So it was not known in which piece of wood it was, but at nighttime a light was seen above the wood, in which they found it and consumed it with devotion. Since this time, no Jew has been allowed to live in Prussia, under the threat of the town where they were granted housing losing its rights.27

This is a peculiar story in many regards. Its source is unknown,28 and since it comes from Simon Grunau, it has simply been treated as pure fiction, if not ignored entirely. But even in the genre of fiction it is peculiar. Grunau dates it to the tenure of High Master Ludolf König (1342–45), right before the presumed arrival of the Plague, but almost thirty years after the alleged ban on Jewish settlement – Grunau explicitly mentions this episode as the reason for an expulsion of the Jews. Although it is impossible to verify Grunau’s dating, the period was an initial peak in anti-Jewish pogroms related to host-desecration stories in Ashkenaz, pogroms that spread rapidly through the German

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lands after first occurring in Paris in 1290.29 The closest chronologically was probably the Armleder Pogrom, a wave of mass murders that hit Jewish communities in Franconia after an impoverished member of the lower nobility, known as ‘King Armleder’, had mobilized a large mob of peasants and small craftsmen.30 At first sight, the story resembles a typical host-desecration story – the misuse of the host by a Jew and the miraculous discovery of the holy object point in that direction. However, while normally the Jews accused of host desecration stab or otherwise attempt to defile the host, the Jew in this episode seems to be aware of the miraculous power of the body of Christ and advises a Christian to use it for his own profit. There is no mention of the Jew being paid or any explanation of where he had gotten the host – the buying of sacred hosts from impoverished or corrupted Christians is an established feature of host-desecration stories.31 In this case, the guilty Christian – the fisherman – escapes, remaining the only one who profits from the misuse of the host. As well as profiting from the misuse of a holy object, he falls into the sin of pride, but his punishment is left to God. He escapes by swimming across the Vistula, or maybe he drowns in the flood. The focus of the story is the trial of the Jew – the host desecration would not have been discovered if he had not been arrested for other misdeeds and confessed under torture to the defilement. There is no parallel tradition for this trial, or for the subsequent expulsion of the Jews. When the host reveals its presence in the wood of the boat in the form of a light seen at night, it is not returned to a church but is, it seems, immediately consumed. This explains why no visible evidence of this miraculous host remains in Świecie or elsewhere; apparently, this host-desecration story did not lead to the establishment of a pilgrimage site where the object could be seen and the story of its rescue be retold. In this regard, the invention of the Świecie host-desecration story differs from other Early Modern attempts to invent a tradition in order to assign more spiritual significance to a church or holy site founded thereafter – the Świecie drama lacks this physical link between the past and the present. The source value of this story is highly doubtful, and one possible way of dealing with it is simply to dismiss and ignore it as pure fiction. But if we generally accept the idea that Simon Grunau drew on local oral narratives, now-lost written sources and other, today entirely obscure traditions, we should try to dissect those elements of the story which might have led to its conservation in the Dominican chronicle. What is the nucleus of the narrative, which Grunau picked up or read, or just wanted to convey? Maybe a Jew was captured and tortured and

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forced to confess several misdeeds, including misleading the fisherman – since host desecration was considered the worst misdeed one could confess to, it is strange that this is the first time it arises in a chronicle. The torturers would have to have known about the connection between Jews and host desecration, and it’s not a given that that would have been the case in Prussia at that time. The sixteenth century Dominican Simon Grunau definitely knew of the connection, but the differences between his story and the usual structure of host-desecration accusations are considerable, pointing to an independent source for this episode. However, neither the common European tradition nor the immediate Prussian and Polish traditions of exempla offers a model. Each of these traditions includes exempla that discuss miraculous hosts, Jewish host desecration and animals recognizing the holiness of the host, but not in the particular combination found in the Grunau chronicle. In the Index exemplorum, we find exempla about fishermen who feed the host to fish,32 along with numerous other ways of desecrating a host, but not the connection of a Jew to a fisherman in a host desecration like the one in Grunau’s story. The fish being attracted to the host in the net adopts the motif of ‘simple beasts attesting the divinity of the host, whereas blind or evil humans fail to do so’. This is a recurrent theme in exempla, often without the presence of a Jew33 – the wrongdoer might also be a woman or a peasant or, as in this case, a simple fisherman. The combination of these motifs in the Grunau chronicle is unique. In keeping with Toeppen’s thesis that Grunau collected orally transmitted stories from the rural population, this might have been a story that circulated in the area. The events are said to have taken place in Świecie, in Pomerania, on the left side of the Vistula River, where we know there was a church as early as 1198. There is a relatively good medieval source tradition for the town from the fourteenth century onward, due to the presence of the Teutonic Order. The Teutonic Order took control of Świecie in 1310, and it was governed by the Culm legal code beginning in 1338. It was the seat of a komtur, who resided in a stone built castle that was constructed between 1335 and 1348 on a site overlooking the town. The komturs of Świecie at that time were Eberhard von Bruningsheim and Günther von Hohenstein. A liber civitatis is preserved from the years 1374–1454; it does not contain a single hint of Jewish inhabitants.34 Despite the relatively sound documentation for this period, there is no parallel tradition for the host desecration and the trial – which, at a minimum, makes dating to the years 1342–45 doubtful. The explanation for this is based in Grunau’s general knowledge of miracle-working hosts and host desecrations during that period. To reiterate, the body of knowledge that lies behind this account

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needs to be mapped out in order to assess the relevance of this story in regard to Jews in Prussia. In Prussia itself, there were stories of miracle-working hosts, but no pilgrimage site. The Wilsnack miracle did involve miraculously emerging hosts after a fire, but no Jewish or Christian evildoers. Wilsnack in Brandenburg was not far from Prussia, and during its most popular period in the final decades of the fourteenth century, it was frequented by inhabitants of Prussia, as we know from the miracle collection of the local saint, Dorothy of Montau.35 An episode similar to the Wilsnack miracle is reported in the chronicle by the Riesenburg official (earlier identified as Johann von Posilge); a host was miraculously saved and found unharmed when the church in Elbląg burned down in 1400.36 Grunau copied this episode, as did Kaspar Hennenberger.37 The Riesenburg official’s chronicle also tells the story of a man who, in 1401, stole the host and took it with him to a brothel in Konradswalde (Konradów, Lower Silesia) – but it does not mention Jews as perpetrators.38 This tradition is enthusiastically pursued by Early Modern chroniclers; Kaspar Hennenberger, in particular, mentions several episodes of misuse of consecrated hosts by both inhabitants of Prussia and their enemies, but only in the case of Świecie is a Jew identified as the perpetrator. Again, the tradition is richer in the areas surrounding the Teutonic Order’s territory, and in some cases, the later addition of an anti-Jewish aspect to a legend of a miracle-working host is obvious. A bleeding host had been venerated in Nova Marchia beginning in 1247, following a trial related to its desecration in 1243, but only the late medieval historiographical tradition introduced the burning of Jews into the story. A bleeding host that had an anti-Jewish legend connected to it was also reported in Pritzwalk. Both towns had Jewish communities until the sixteenth century,39 which means that either the expulsion of Jews was only temporary or that the introduction of Jews into the legends of the bleeding hosts was of much later origin – which seems to have been a common late-medieval phenomenon. In Güstrow in 1330, Jews were accused of desecrating the host, and twenty-three people were burned at the stake – the same happened in Krakow am See (Mecklenburg) in 1325.40 This means that in the period of time specified by Grunau for his host-desecration story, there were a good number of similar cases said to have occurred in the western neighbouring areas of Prussia, Nova Marchia, Mark Brandenburg and Mecklenburg. From Grunau’s perspective, it might not have made any difference whether there was an actual trial reported or if the accusation of Jews occurred at a later date than the miracles in question; he might simply have been aware

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that the first decades of the fourteenth century were a high point for this sort of accusation. Even after the pogroms related to the Black Death, host-­desecration stories flourished in the region and led to expulsions. Johannes Długosz mentions a host desecration, followed by a trial of Jews in Poznań, in 1399.41 Here again we lack a medieval tradition for the story, in which a woman is said to have stolen three consecrated hosts from the Dominican church and sold them to local Jews, who stabbed them and then tried to bury them in a swamp, from which the hosts re-emerged. The Corpus Christi Church was eventually built at the site by the Carmelites. The woman and the Jews are said to have been punished by the magistrate, but there is no evidence of a trial, no courtroom documents or any contemporary chronicle tradition. The legend arose in the sixteenth century, promoting the cult of the ‘Most Holy Blood of Christ’ in a church on the Jewish street.42 There are reports of other host desecrations in the northwest of the German lands: Teterow in 1492; Sternberg (in Mecklenburg) in 1492; Berlin (in Brandenburg) in 1510.43 A more narrow intertextual examination of Grunau’s text only points to a few Prussian chronicles that include potential sources of information about host desecrations, and none of them is at all similar to the Świecie incident. A case in Prague in 1389 is briefly mentioned in the Riesenburg official’s chronicle (from the 1420s); he does not say much more than that the desecration of the host occurred on the evening before Easter Sunday and the schlachtunge (killing) on Easter Monday.44 This text is not considered a Teutonic Order chronicle – even though it was written by one of the Order’s officials. Instead it is regarded as a Prussian chronicle.45 The fact that the author includes several blood libels from the surrounding areas points to a certain awareness of and interest in the killing and expulsion of Jews from Bohemia, Brandenburg and Poland. The lack of similar episodes from Prussia would seem to indicate that there were, in fact, no expulsions or pogroms, at least not during the period covered by the chronicle, 1360 to 1419 – later than the alleged host desecration in Świecie. Culm town scribe Conrad Bitschin (author of an addition to the Chronicon by Peter von Dusburg, written in 1435) copied the Prague host-desecration case from the Riesenburg official, with just as few details. Some details are, however, known from other chronicles; for example, the Detmar Chronicle from Lübeck mentions that the Jews of Prague attacked a priest who was taking the host into the Jewish part of the town to give it to a sick Christian. In Detmar’s version, the Jews beat the priest, stole and desecrated the host and were immediately

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attacked by a group mainly made up of students, who were then joined by burghers. This group burned down a good number of houses.46 The case in Berlin in 1510 is mentioned in a chronicle ascribed to Bernt Stegemann in the Scriptores rerum Prussicarum series, from the Gdańsk urban tradition in the first half of the sixteenth century.47 In Berlin, the victims from the village Knobloch were burned, where a Christian tinker named Paul Frome stole the host from the church and sold it to the (unnamed) Jews. Evil Christians (plural) are said to have been tortured with fiery tongs and burned with the Jews.48 The same chronicle discusses the 1516 accusation in Wrocław, Silesia; a bell ringer was said to have sold the host for thirty gulden to Jews, who tortured the sacrament. Four hundred Jews are said to have been burnt in retaliation.49 Wrocław had already become the site of anti-Jewish violence connected to host-desecration accusations earlier than this. Johannes de Capestrano had preached in Silesia in 1453, leading to far-reaching pogroms and expulsions of Jews, both in Silesia and in Nova Marchia.50 The Annales Wratislavensis clearly name blasphemias factas deo in sacramento eucharistie as the reason for the burning of the Jews in Wrocław on 1 May 1453, only two and a half months after Johannes delivered his sermons.51 There is direct evidence that people in Prussia knew of these events, since the high master had to address an appeal from one of his subjects, a Jew from Soldin, in Nova Marchia, who was incarcerated with the Wrocław Jewish community.52 Even outside the narrow circle of Teutonic Order officials, Capestrano’s travels and the usual effect his sermons had, first on the public and then on the Jewish communities, were well known, making it likely that an oral tradition about the events in Silesia was maintained for at least several decades. What is lacking entirely, however, are Prussian texts that use the documents from the trials for propaganda purposes, as was popular in host-desecration cases both before and after the Wrocław pogrom.53 A discussion of the interrogation protocols and the confessions of the accused, often using verbatim quotations from these documents, as well as accounts from the authorities involved, were common aspects in the narrative treatment of anti-Jewish violence. They do not, however, arise in the Prussian texts, neither in the contemporary chronicles nor in Grunau’s later adaptation. This indicates a relative geographic and chronological distance from the events and their common narrative tradition. There are other examples of host desecration in Grunau’s work, and in that of later chroniclers, but in these, Jews are not the evildoers – for example, in the incident of the Polish attack on the town Fischhausen/

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Primorsk. The Poles steal the monstrances from the church after having placed the host on the altar, and they are punished when their ship is driven back onto land and into the arms of the high master’s army.54 In a separate episode, the pagan king Witold of Lithuania brags about having stamped on the host.55 The Hennenberg chronicle from 1558 has a woman twice taking the host from the priest and spitting it back into his face before screaming for a jug of wine. ‘She was buried in the field next to Judenkirchen’, is the chronicler’s final comment.56 The fact that all of the cases of host desecration and burning of Jews during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are reported in different degrees of detail in most of the Prussian historiographic accounts, as well as in those in the surrounding areas, points to a general interest in these episodes. The chroniclers who mention them were a secular priest in the office of the Pomesanian bishop, a town scribe from Culm, a canon from Kraków and a Franciscan from Lübeck. They were also mentioned later in the Gdańsk urban chronicle tradition – a broad clerical and secular tradition in Prussia, Poland and the North German lands that shows a general interest in the anti-Jewish pogroms throughout the region. However, none of the Teutonic Order chronicles address these events or any other similar ones – another sign that the Order was definitely less interested in Jews than the rest of the population. To sum up, it is likely that Grunau knew of contemporary and medieval host-desecration accusations, but it is not possible to see a direct link between the episode he describes and any other legend from the region or the exempla tradition. Nonetheless, the episode in Świecie became part of the Early Modern Prussian chronicle tradition. The Protestant Lucas David (1503–83), who is celebrated as one of the first to assess his sources critically, copied Grunau’s story about the fisherman but added a more detailed explanation of its legal consequences. The Jew was sentenced to death because of his misdeed and judged, and since he had confessed many not insignificant misdeeds, and since he did not only sin against the people, but also against God and the Holy Sacraments, the lords and other estates of the land, because of these blasphemous deeds, have [declared that] all Jews are forbidden not only to live in the land of Prussia, including Pomerelia, but also to trade and travel there, except for in Thorn, where they are allowed to enter only for the market at Three Kings, wearing a certain sign which allows them to be recognized. Thus, the Jews have forfeited with the mentioned blasphemy their residency and all trading in Prussia, as Grunau says. But I think that this habit and custom of not tolerating the Jews in Prussia must be older than this regulation, because one does not find any reference to or presence in the written sources of them being tolerated anywhere in Prussia.57

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It is unclear where David found the market regulation for Toruń that he mentions, or what period it applied to. Lucas David compiled his history of Prussia around 1575 from older sources, which he assessed critically, but the result was more or less consistent with earlier and later chronicles. He is sceptical of Grunau’s claims of the complete expulsion of Jews from Prussia at that time, but he fails to note the peculiarities of the host-desecration story. Furthermore, his opposition to Grunau is a negative one; there is no evidence of Jews being tolerated anywhere, so the ban must actually have been older. Interestingly, he does not mention the Landordnung in this context as a potential earlier ban. Kaspar Hennenberger (1529–1600) also copied Grunau’s story; his reputation as a historian is much worse than David’s, since he in no way critically assessed his collection of source materials – but he comes to the same conclusions as the critical historian. In the Hennenberger version, the fisherman drowns in the Vistula. Missing from his text, however, is the debate around settlement and trading restrictions. He does, though, add two sentences to the Grunau version: ‘Because of this, no Jew is allowed to live in Prussia. They are neither allowed to ride or drive into a town, but must go by foot.’58 Emil Hollack deems this information reliable, but dates it to Hennenberger’s own time, the end of the sixteenth century – we have no parallel tradition supporting this. Assuming that there was a trial against a Jew involving a host desecration in Prussia in the 1340s, it is unlikely that the Teutonic Order’s chroniclers or the chroniclers of the Cistercian monasteries in Oliva and Pelplin knew about it and did not mention it. If Grunau’s source for this episode is the presumed version X of the Prussian history, it is unclear why he copied it but Wartzmann, Rheden and the other Gdańsk chroniclers did not. It is most likely that the Świecie hostdesecration story emerged in a way similar to the Poznań one: as a sixteenth-century explanation for medieval events, in which an antiJewish aspect is added to an existing cult of a bleeding host or to a narrative nucleus or situation. In the Poznań case, the Carmelites needed a medieval legend for their church and its cult; in the case of Świecie, the chroniclers might have felt the need to give historical legitimacy and background to the contemporary – that is, mid-sixteenth century – regulations against Jewish settlement, which gained momentum in Prussia after the Reformation. Given Protestant preaching against the Catholic veneration of the host in the region, an imagined medieval host-desecration trial might also have served to remind the population of the power that had been assigned to the host, even in the recent past, and in this way also allow

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them to take a stance in opposition to the Protestants. In this light, it is interesting that the Protestant chroniclers Schütz and Hennenberger followed the Dominican text; both used imagined medieval anti-Judaism as a model for their own contemporary anti-Judaism, which no longer actually needed the host-desecration accusations. In this way, however, the Prussian historiography of both Christian confessions added to the image of the Teutonic Order’s state as a monolithic Catholic construct from the mid-fourteenth century onward.

Simon Grunau: a ‘Judenfreund’? Grunau’s chronicle is the first Prussian example with an abundance of references to Jews, both biblical and contemporary. There are both colourful episodes about and short references to biblical Jews, which primarily serve to portray Grunau as an author who is very familiar with the broader German Christian and folkloric narrative tradition. The text thereby fulfils a crucial role in the merging and spreading of information about medieval Prussian Jews. It is here that the presumed ban from 1309 is written down first, and it is also here that the only known medieval host-desecration accusation in Prussia is mentioned. Both events might be pure fiction, but they both came to play a significant role in the later regional historiographic tradition, while other episodes he recounts remained his alone. Considering the otherwise striking absence of Jews in earlier Prussian texts, Grunau’s significance as a thematical forerunner becomes even more obvious. In the end, however, taken together, the references in the chronicle present a more nuanced picture, one that provides an additional framework for assessing the host-desecration story. Kurt Forstreuter suggests that a possible reason for the issue of Jews arising in Grunau’s text may have been a desire to present the Teutonic Order in a bad light; Grunau, he reasons, was clearly ‘kein Judenfeind’ (not an enemy of the Jews), given that he presents the Old Testament Jews as laudable examples of monotheism and faith on several occasions. On this basis, an anti-Jewish ban on the part of the Teutonic Order would have indicated a lack of religious sentiment. This explanation freezes in a simple good/bad antagonism: if one is to hate Jews, he will never say a positive word about them. If one is to love Jews, he will find expulsions evil. Grunau, since he presents the people of Israel in the Old Testament as laudable, must love Jews, ergo he invented or narrated the Teutonic Order’s ban in order to present them in a bad light. Given that Forstreuter bases much of his bulwark theory on this ban, this is again an adventurous interpretation.

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Grunau’s referencing to Old Testament Jews as well as to more or less contemporary Prussian Jews is indeed rich, albeit contradictory, and devoid of the simplistic condemnation of Jews as evil, Christ killers, etc. However, the positive references to the Old Testament warriors are nothing more than a reflection of the Teutonic Order’s own reference system. It is likely that Dominican Simon Grunau had a more complex relationship to Jews in general than would be suggested by the contradiction between ‘positive Old Testament Jews’ and ‘the Teutonic Order’s expulsion of Jews in 1309’ – actually, there is no contradiction given the different ideological functions served by biblical Jews and contemporary Jews, including within the Dominican tradition. One miracle story in Grunau’s chronicle mentions Jews en passant, in a context involving the devil. The time is not quite clear, as he dated it to ‘when High Master Theodericus had invaded Poland’, but there was no high master named Theodericus. The miracle is about a pious woman who died in Culm ‘and was buried by the Jews’; she then reappeared on a street corner close to Gdańsk and talked to the komtur of Mewe (Gniew), who had known her when she was alive and who knew she had died. The woman told him she had been in hell and seen many Teutonic brothers there, and that they had asked her to return and tell of their suffering. The komtur had her burned at the stake to make sure she did not return a second time.59 In this story, which was not copied by later chroniclers, the Jews are directly connected to the woman’s return from the grave. The fact that she is said to have been pious during her lifetime makes her return as a revenant even more evil. Why the Jews would have buried her remains a mystery – the editors of Grunau’s chronicle even suspected a spelling mistake as the explanation. Grunau mentions Jews in Prussia again in the context of the late fourteenth-century reign of High Master Ulrich von Jungingen, in a chapter on a new Kirchenzucht (church discipline) that the Order issued in reaction to a heretical Prussian movement led by a certain Leander. According to this new regulation, all men who lived with a woman without being married to her, and all blasphemers, defilers of the priesthood and those who did not respect the ban, were to be ‘treated like the Jews’.60 Again, there is no known text model for this regulation, and to be ‘treated like the Jews’ probably just meant ‘not being part of the Church’, or perhaps it meant ‘treated like the Jews in other parts of the Empire’. In any case, it is unclear how Jews were generally treated in Prussia in either the 1390s or the 1520s, so the reference goes nowhere. About fifty years later, during the Order’s conflict with the Prussian estates, the historical bases for the Prussian confederation are referenced, and one of them is that the brothers had the pope issue a ban on

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the Prussians. The Prussians had a right to appeal this ban, a right that was also extended to Jews, according to Grunau.61 So, in this case, the right to appeal the ban seems to apply to both pagans and Jews alike, but that does not necessarily mean that both groups were to be found in Prussia, nor is it clear who granted them the right to appeal. Simon Grunau made a habit of referring to Jews, both to the people of Israel in the Old Testament and to contemporary Jews, in his chronicle. In the introduction, he praises the Jews as the first and most laudable people to believe in one God and suffer for it62 – remarkably, this quotation refers to Jews in general, not specifically referencing the Old Testament, so it might also have been meant to encompass contemporary Jews. The biblical people of Israel are also mentioned favourably several times, both as righteous warriors and as monotheists. There is not, however, any consistency in Grunau’s references to either ‘good Jews’ or ‘bad Jews’; the references are fairly random, and in the case of certain biblical episodes referenced, the tone is neutral, with Jews assigned neither guilt nor righteousness. The label ‘Judenfreund’ is obviously a hasty conclusion based on the fact that Grunau is the first Prussian chronicler to make a variety of references to both biblical and contemporary Jews. The Teutonic chronicles, on the other hand, basically ignored contemporary Jews and, when making references to the Old Testament, avoided specifically mentioning that these were references to Jews. Grunau’s approach is, however, more complex than that. He is also perfectly prepared to use references to Jews as Christ killers, traitors and liars if they illustrate or reinforce his judgement of his contemporaries. On one occasion, he uses the analogy ‘They sat on their Lutheran heresy like an old Jew on his usury.’63 In other cases, the Lutherans are compared to the Jews who were present at the death of Christ and attempted to hide his body.64 The fact that Grunau uses a broad variety of references to biblical and contemporary Jews with different connotations suggests that he does not mention Prussian Jews on the basis of a distinct and consistent pro- or anti-Jewish attitude. It is striking, however, that his chronicle includes many more references to Jews and more complete episodes involving Jews than either the earlier chronicles he relies upon or the later ones that draw upon him (or, perhaps, from a common source). The most likely explanation for this is the author’s Dominican background, which is unique among Prussian chroniclers of that period. Regarding the stories about actual Jews in Prussia, it is striking that all of them are situated in the fourteenth century, a period of outward expansion and inward consolidation for the Teutonic Order’s d ­ ominion,

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and ­presumably the period when this institution would have had the capacity to enforce a ban on Jewish settlement, eventually gaining the support of the Prussian towns, which at that point still had generally friendly relations with the landlord. Grunau himself does not seem to recognize the discrepancy between the ban on Jewish settlement and the episodes of host desecration, and neither, it would seem, do the later Protestant chroniclers who follow him. None of them seems to believe that the Landordnung of 1309 was an actual legal document that was enforced from the outset and remained relevant throughout the fourteenth century. So, even if the later stories are taken to be a product of either Grunau’s or the Prussian oral tradition’s imagination, the narrative structure of the chronicles, which include both the Landordnung and the host-desecration story, provides strong evidence of how much importance the chroniclers assigned to the Landordnung – not much. As far as later assessments of the question of Jewish life in medieval Prussia go, Simon Grunau’s chronicle seems to have done more harm than good. Because he had such an abysmal reputation as a historian, it was easier to deem the episodes concerning Jews to be pure fiction – for example, Forstreuter failed to mention that the same episodes were also reported and discussed in later chronicles that are considered to be more reliable. An entirely new assessment of the anti-Jewish legends in the Grunau chronicle would require a completely new approach to the totality of the Prussian historiographic tradition, one that would not only verify the uniformity of dates, places and names but would also attempt to reconstruct the narrative patterns and functions of all the stories that have been ignored as pure filler in other chronicles, while at the same time helping to shape the negative reputation of the Grunau chronicle. A research tradition that took the entire narrative logic of the texts into account would be very profitable to the analysis presented here. Lacking that, the episodes mentioning Jews cannot simply be contextualized within the chronicles themselves, requiring instead references to Jews in other types of sources and text genres – and it is increasingly obvious that these are scarce.

Notes   1. A longer version of this chapter was first published in C. Heß, ‘Jews and the Black Death in Fourteenth-Century Prussia: A Search for Traces’, in Fear and Loathing in the North: Jews and Muslims in Medieval Scandinavia and the Baltic Region, ed. C. Heß and J. Adams (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015), 109–25.

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  2. C. Ginzburg, Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath (New York: Pantheon Books, 1991).   3. See especially the contributions by Anna Foa and Ronny Po-chia Hsia in J. Cohen (ed.), From Witness to Witchcraft: Jews and Judaism in Medieval Christian Thought (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1996).   4. ‘Membership’ in the Hanseatic League did not automatically mean a unified policy regarding Jewish settlement. Rostock and Wismar, for example, had Jewish communities before the Black Death pogroms, but legislation established during the epidemic calling for the expulsion of the Jews remained in force even after the epidemic had passed.   5. The Chronicon Olivense was edited twice, first in SRP vol. 1, 669–74, 686– 726, and then, after several new manuscripts were found, in SRP, vol. 5, 594–95. One of the major differences between these two editions is the lengthy paragraph about the Black Death, which was only found in what is probably the oldest remaining manuscript, dating to the fifteenth century, and held by a library in Lviv. Max Perlbach, whose investigation of the chronicle remains the most comprehensive study of the text, had worked with a much newer manuscript version and thus did not comment on this episode – which, not least of all, changed the dating of the chronicle from 1348 to 1351. Hirsch 1874; M. Perlbach, Die ältere Chronik von Oliva, dissertation, Göttingen, 1871; M. Perlbach, ‘Über die Ergebnisse der Lemberger Handschrift für die ältere Chronik von Oliva,’ Altpreußische Monatsschrift 9 (1872): 18–38; J. Wenta, Dziejopisarstwo w klasztorze cysterskim w Oliwie na tle porównawczym (Gdańsk-Oliwa: Kuria Biskupia, 1990); ‘Fontes Olivenses’, http://www.geschichtsquellen.de/repOpus_02260.html.   6. C. F. Weber, ‘Chronica Olivensis’, in Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, ed. R. G. Dunphy (Leiden: Brill Online, 2015).   7. The chronicle was only ascribed to Detmar later; the text mentions only a lesemester in Sunte Franciscus orden (lector in the Order of St Francis) who wishes to remain anonymous. A second author seems to have continued the chronicle until 1400, when a break in updating the chronicle is apparent. A later hand subsequently continued the chronicle, updating to 1482. See the introduction to the printed edition: F. Grauthoff, ‘Vorwort’, DetmarChronik, vol. 1, xvii.   8. SRP, vol. 3, 405; A. C. Gow, The Red Jews: Antisemitism in an Apocalyptic Age, 1200–1600 (Leiden: Brill, 1995); R. Voß, ‘Entangled Stories: The Red Jews in Premodern Yiddish and German Apocalyptic Lore’, AJS Review 36(1) (2012): 1–41.   9. An exception is Königsberg in Nova Marchia, where a pogrom took place in 1351. C. Cluse, ‘Zur Chronologie der Verfolgungen zur Zeit des “Schwarzen Todes”’, in Geschichte der Juden im Mittelalter von der Nordsee bis zu den Südalpen: Kommentiertes Kartenwerk, ed. A. Haverkamp (Hannover: Hahn, 2002), 240. 10. C. Putzo, ‘Detmar von Lübeck’, in Dunphy, Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, 519, with further references and the signatures of the three known surviving manuscripts. 11. Detmar-Chronik, 505.

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12. Ibid., 514. 13. Common patterns of anti-Jewish violence connected to the Black Death are described, for example, in Ginzburg, Ecstasies, 68. 14. UB Lübeck, vol. 3, 105. 15. Cod dipl Warm, vol. 3, no. 633, 634, quotes the letter incorrectly, confusing the trials in Lübeck and Visby. The full text of the letter is printed in UB Lübeck, vol. 3, 104, no. 110 A. No. 110 B, 105–6, includes a different letter that also mentions the Visby trial. This letter resembles more closely the actual letter preserved from Visby, which was sent by the council of Rostock to the Duke of Mecklenburg. 16. ‘Eciam consules Thurunenses scripserunt nobis de pluribus Judeis baptizatis in civitate eorum deprehensis, et omnes recognovissent, quod huiusmodi operacio intoxicacionis totaliter a Judeis ortum habet processum.’ Ibid., 105. 17. ‘Rumboldi memoria et malicia. Anno domini M.ccc.xl. nono a festo pasce vsque ad festum galli fuit in terra pruscie Rvmboldus Judeus qui dixit se esse baptizatum. Qui per intoxicaciones veneni et per incantaciones diuersas multos interfecit et precipue in Elbingo vbi a festo Bartholomei vsque ad nativitatem christi plus quam nouem Milia hominum veneno quasi morte subitanea interierunt. Item in eodem anno in Konigisberg multitudo hominum interiit non computata. Item in marienburg similiter. Item in Hollandia. In Heiligenbil. in Vrowinborg. In Molhusin. Item in terra Sambye multi prutheni veneno perierunt.’ (Of the Remembrance and Evil Doings of Rumboldus. In the year of the Lord 1349, from Easter until the feast of St Gallus, the Jew Rumboldus was in the land of Prussia, who said he was baptized. He killed many with mortal poison and with various spells, particularly in Elbing, where more than 9000 people died between the feast of St Bartholomy and the Nativity of Christ. Also in the same year a multitude of people died in Königsberg, they were not counted. The same in Marienburg. And in Preußisch Holland. In Heiligenbeil. In Frauenburg. In Molthusen. Also in the area of Sambia a lot of Prussians died.) Cod dipl Warm, vol. 2, 152. 18. This account is quoted in A. Sommerfeld, ‘Juden im Ermland’, in Zur Geschichte und Kultur der Juden in Ost- und Westpreußen, ed. Brocke et al. (Hildesheim: Olms, 2000), 43, but lacks a clear assessment of what it means about the existence of Jews in Warmia. 19. Ginzburg, Ecstasies, 65. 20. Cod dipl Warm, vol. 2, 316–17; Joachim, Marienburger Tresslerbuch, 501, 552. 21. ‘Auch las ich ewch wyssen das dy phlog dy czu prag ist gescheen do hat eyn jud den pregern geweysaget und hat sich heyszen eyn seczczen in das gesenknus ab es nicht gesche als er gesayt hat so solden sy y mden kopp abhawen, gescheez awer so solden sym ym czehen schok geben und das gelobten die preger czu tun.’ OBA 6174, 3 August 1432. Postscriptum in a letter about the Hussites in Prague. 22. Hollack, ‘Zur Vorgeschichte’. 23. M. Töppen, Geschichte der Preußischen Historiographie von Peter v. Dusburg bis auf Kaspar Schütz (Berlin: Hertz, 1853), 127.

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24. Arnold, Studien, 168–69. 25. Perlbach, Simon Grunaus Preussische Chronik, vol. 1, 717–21. 26. A complete collection of these episodes from early Prussian historiography can be found in W. J. A. Tettau and J. D. H. Temme, Die Volkssagen Ostpreußens, Litthauens und Westpreußens (Berlin: Nicolai, 1837). 27. ‘Es wonten Juden in Preussen und dise tetten irer nattur gnug. Einer ein armen vischer lernete, und er solt nemen den leichnam Jhesu unnd solt in in ein holtz spynnen und solt in an sein garn hangen, und der unselige vischer es teth und er fieng ausz der massen vil visch unnd er wart reich unnd stoltz und er wonte zur Schwetzau. So quam es wie diser Jude mit andern sachen wart begriffen und er umb me erfarung gemartert, in welcher er bekennte. So wurden ausgeschickt knechte, unnd sie den vischer fangen solten, sonder alsz der vischer sah, wie frembdt volck quam, er es wol sorge hette, man wurd in wollen fangen, und er verliesz sich auf sein schwymmen unnd springt in die Weichsel und entrynnet. So wust man nit, in welchem holtze es war, so hat man in der nacht gesehen ein liecht aber dem holtze, in welchem sie es funden und es mit andacht consumirten. Sint der zeit kein Jude in Preussen het mocht wonen, bey verlust der statrechte, wan man im heuser vergonnte.’ Perlbach, Simon Grunaus Preussische Chronik, vol. 1, 600. 28. Zonenberg, who has determined many of the sources for the Grunau chronicle, has nothing about the episodes discussed here. S. Zonenberg, Kronika Szymona Grunaua (Bydgoszcz: Wydawn. Uniwersytetu Kazimierza Wielkiego, 2009). 29. The case in Paris is generally acknowledged to have been the first instance of a host-desecration accusation. See M. Rubin, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), for comparative analysis of narrative patterns in several medieval accusation cases. Earlier cases such as Beelitz in 1245 and Heiligengrabe around 1287 were originally legends of miraculous blood, which only in later centuries were charged with anti-Jewish accusations. See M. Blum, ‘Hostienfrevel’, in Handbuch des Antisemitismus, ed. W. Benz (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010), 3:127–30. 30. J. R. Müller, ‘Armleder-Pogrome’, in ibid., 4:16–17. 31. See W. Treue, ‘Schlechte und gute Christen: Zur Rolle von Christen in antijüdischen Ritualmord- und Hostienschändungslegenden’, Aschkenas 2(1) (2009): 95–116. 32. F. C. Tubach, Index Exemplorum: A Handbook of Medieval Religious Tales (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1969), no. 204, no. 2072, fisherman gives the host to a fish. 33. M. Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 123–24. 34. F. Benninghoven, ‘Das Stadtbuch von Schwetz 1374–1454’, ZfO 21 (1971): 42–96. 35. R. Stachnik et al. (eds.), Die Akten des Kanonisationsprozesses Dorotheas von Montau von 1394 bis 1521 (Köln/Wien: Böhlau, 1978), 42, 45, 246, 397, 456. See also: C. Heß, Heilige machen im spätmittelalterlichen Ostseeraum: Die

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36. 37.

38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

51.

Kanonisationsprozesse von Birgitta von Schweden, Nikolaus von Linköping und Dorothea von Montau (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2009), 296, with a list of evidence in the acts. SRP, vol. 3, 238. ‘Anno 1400 brandte aus in grundt, die schöne ausgemauerte spittal kirche fürm elbing, zu s. georgen genandt, aus verwarlosung armer leute. Und weil damals im auffreumen, die gesegnete hostien unverletzet gefunden ist worden, so doch das silber verschmeltzet war: hat bruder helwig schwan die kirchen fürder stadt zum heiligen leichnam gebawet.’ (In the year 1400, the beautiful brick hospital church in Elbing, called St George, burned to the ground because of the neglect of poor people. And since the blessed Host was found unharmed during the cleaning, while the silver had melted, brother Helwig Schwan built the Corpus Christi church in front of the town.) K. Hennenberger, Erclerung der Preussischen grössern Landtaffel (Königsberg: Osterberger, 1595), 113. This closely follows Simon Grunaus Preussische Chronik, tract. 14, cap. 4. SRP, vol. 3, 248. Heise, Juden, 470. D. Drewelow et al., ‘Güstrow’, in Wegweiser durch das jüdische MecklenburgVorpommern, ed. I. Diekmann (Potsdam: Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, 1998), 128–41. J. Długosz, Ioannis Dlugossii Annales seu Cronicae incliti Regni Poloniae Liber X (Warszawa: PWN, 1978), 231–32. M. Teter, Sinners on Trial: Jews and Sacrilege after the Reformation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 89–91. D. Kurze, ‘Der Berliner Prozess und die Vertreibung der Juden aus der Mark Brandenburg im Jahr 1510’, Der Bär von Berlin 59 (2010): 25–52. The main Jewish source for this pogrom is the elegy by Prague Rabbi Abigdor ben Isaac Kara (died 1439); he recounts that during the pogrom, the rabbi and others killed their families and then themselves, and that the synagogue was burned and the graveyard desecrated. H. Graetz, Geschichte der Juden von Maimuni‘s Tod (1205) bis zur Verbannung der Juden aus Spanien und Portugal (Leipzig: Leiner, 1864), 57–59. G. Vollmann-Profe, ‘Johann von Posilge’, in Dunphy, Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, 922. Annalista Thorunensis, SRP, vol. 3, 158. The often-criticized editorial practices of the older SRP volumes make it difficult to see which manuscript and tradition actually was the basis for this part of the text. (Bernt Stegemanns) Danziger Chronik, SRP, vol. 5, 502. Ibid., 504. See E. Rymar, ‘Średniowiecznymi śladami Żydów w miastach Nowej Marchii’, Przegląd Zachodniopomorski 17 (2002): 7–19; M. Bałaban, Dzieje żydów w Galicyi i w Rzeczypospolitej Krakowskiej 1772–1868 (Lwów: Połoniecki, 1914), 35–36. ‘1453. In carnisprivio [February 13] venit venerabilis pater Iohannes Capistranus Wratislaviam. eodem anno in die Sanctorum Philippi et Iacobi

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52. 53.

54.

55. 56.

57.

[May 1] capti sunt Iudaei ob blasphemias factas deo in sacramento eucharistiae et igne iudicati sunt.’ (1453. On Shrove Tuesday, the laudable father Johannes de Capestrano went to Wrocław. The same year, on the day of the saints Philip and Jacob, the Jews were captured because of the blasphemy they had committed against God in the Eucharistic sacrament, and were judged by fire.) A. Arndt (ed.), Annales civitatis Wratislaviensis: Monumenta Germaniae historica, Scriptores (Hannover: Hahn), 19:530. See the discussion in chapter 7. See, for example, the case of the 1492 Sternberg pogrom, from which the Urfehde of the accused and doomed victims became a popular broadsheet, which was translated and printed in several editions. C. Heß, Social Imagery in Middle Low German: Didactical Literature and Metaphorical Representation (1470–1517) (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 304–9. ‘Anno 1462 für bartholomei lag der hoemeister für der frawenburg, da machten sich die elbinger mit etzlichen polen zu wasser nach fischhausen, erlieffen das stedlein, plünderten ez, die polen erbrachen die kirchen, die gesegneten ostien legten sie auff den altar, namen die monstranzen. aber es bekam ihnen übel, denn dieselbige barse trieb an das land, mit 40 polen, der hoemeister nam ihnen die güter und lies sie radtbrechen, als kirchenreuber.’ (In the year 1462 on St Bartholomy, while the High Master was standing in front of the Frauenburg castle, the people of Elbing went with a lot of Poles on the water to Fischhausen, conquered the town, looted it; the Poles broke into the church, put the blessed hosts on the altar, took the monstrances. But it did them no good, because their boat drifted off to the shore, with 40 Poles, and the High Master took their goods and let them break on the wheel, as church robbers.) Hennenberger, Erclerung, 130, according to Perlbach, Simon Grunaus Preussische Chronik, chap. 14. ‘König witte trit die consecrirte ostien mit füssen.’(King Witte sparks the consecrated host with his feet.) Hennenberger, Erclerung, 489. ‘Dis jahr ist … ein fraw von wenig ehren gestorben, welche dem caplan nach reichung des heiligen sacraments, das h. sacrament zweymal unter die augen gespie, und geschrien hat eine kanne wein her. ist auffs feldt bey judenkirchen begraben worden.’ (This year … a woman of little honour died, who had spit the host in the chaplain’s eyes twice after the presentation of the Holy Sacrament, and screamed ‘bring me a jug of wine’. She was buried on the field near to Judenkirchen.) Ibid, 186. ‘Der Jude wart seiner Mißhandlung nach zum Tode verurteilt und gericht und weil er etliche nicht geringe Ubelthaten bekant, haben die Herren und andere Stende des Landes von wegen solcher gotteslästerigen Thaten und weil er nicht alleine wider Menschen, sonder auch wider Gott und die heilgen Sacrament mißgehandelt, ist allen Juden nicht alleine die Wonung im Lande Preussen, damit auch Pomerellen gemeinet worden, sonder auch aller Handel und Wandel dorinne vorboten worden, außgenommen Thorn, dahin sie nur im Jarmarkt trium regum doch mit Geleite und mit einem gewissen Zeichen, daran sie mögen erkannt werden, zu kommen Inen ist zugelassen worden. Also sollen die Juden auß bemelter Gotteslästerunge verwirkt haben, wie Grunau sagt, die Wonung und allen

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58.

59.

60.

61.

62.

Handel und Wandel in Preussen. Aber mich düncket, daß dieser Brauch und Gewonheit, die Juden in Preussen nicht zu dulden, älter sei dann dies Vorbot, weil man nirgendt Anzeigung findet, noch vorhanden sein in Schriften, daß die an einigem Orth in Preussen geduldet gewesen.’ E. Henning (ed.), Lucas David’s Preussische Chronik nach der Handschrift des Verfassers, 8 vols. (Königsberg: Hartungsche Hofbuchdruckerei, 1814), 6:153. ‘Für Zeiten woneten auch Jüden unter dem Orden / da lerete ein Jude einen armen Fischer / er solte eine Consecrirte Ostien in holtz spünden / und mit an das Garn hengen / so würde er viel Fische fangen / und reich werden/ und dis geschach auch. Der Jud ward ander sachen halben eingesetzt / in der Pein bekante er auch dis / und da die Diener den Fischer holen solten / und ihr der fischer gewar wurde / wil er dauon / und durch die Weissel schwimmen / aber er erseuft darinnen / nun wuste man nicht in welchem holtze die Ostien war / doch hat man an einem Lichtlein / so des nachts ob dem selbigen Höltzlein brante / es gemerkckt. Die Consecrirte Hostien hat man consumiret. Derethalben mus kein Jude in Preussen wonen. Dörffen auch in keiner Stadt einreitten noch fahren / sondern nur zu fus gehen.’ Hennenberger, Erclerung, 143. ‘Von einer totten frawen und begraben, und wart doch anderstwa wider lebendig gefunden.’(Of a dead woman who had already been buried, but was seen alive elsewhere.) Perlbach, Simon Grunaus Preussische Chronik, vol. 1, § 4, 580. ‘In solcher masz man nam ein iglichen, der nit ein weib vertraut hette unnd het doch sonnst eine, einen itzlichen gotteslesterere und schennder der pristerschaft, und der den bann verachte, unnd diese wie juden wurden gehaltenn.’ (In this way they took all those who were not married but still had a woman, all the blasphemers and defilers of priesthood, and those who ignored the ban, and they were kept like Jews.) Ibid., cap. XVI, § 2, 677–79. ‘Der heilige vatter, der babst, underricht von den b., gab eine bulle des bannes uber die preussen, die nit haben kunth komen zu antwurt. uber das solch appellieren, alsz die preussen gethann haben, denn juden auch vergonnt wird.’ (The Holy Father, the pope, advised by the b[rethren], put a ban on the Prussians, who could not answer it. The form of appellation which the Prussians used is also granted to the Jews.) Ibid., vol. 2. tract. XVI, cap. VI, § 3, 181. ‘Vier ding sein, dovon sich berumen die nationes der menschen ... das erste ist vom rechten glauben ken einen warhaftigen gott, in welchem stucke die Juden als Hebreer die ersten und loblichsten sein, wen von anbegin der glaube in einen waren gott in ihrem geschlechte geblieben ist, umb des willen sie mechtig vil gelidden haben.’(There are four things which the human nations are proud of … the first is the true faith of the one true God, in which the Hebrews are the first and most laudable ones, because from the beginning, the faith in one true God has remained in their kind, and they have suffered a mighty lot for this.) Ibid., vol. 1, tract. I, § 2, 2.

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63. ‘Von erleuchtung des luteranischen vorstandes ym geiste.’ (Of the enlightenment of the Lutheran understanding in the spirit.) Ibid., § 14, 334–35. 64. ‘Von eynem andern sermon von dissem bischoffe pasche 1524.’ (Of another sermon by this bishop, Easter 1524.) Ibid., §2, 405–6.

2 Chapter 7 Beyond the Bulwark Traces of Jewish Life in Medieval Prussia

Since evidence of both literary and historiographic references to Prussian Jews is extremely rare, but neither is an explicit ban traceable, the question remains: Where were the Jews? Considering the partly adventurous conclusions which Kurt Forstreuter draws from his material and the lack of respect for the sources in Prussia which has been exercised during the war, it is fair to assume that there might be other sources as well that he ignored. Forstreuter’s work was fairly complete regarding the literary tradition as well as the collection of incoming correspondence (Ordensbriefarchiv), which he himself has been cataloguing for the GStA. Also relatively complete are his sources from the Acten der Ständetage Preussens edition, but since he misses out on additional sources and a lot of context, his conclusions always end up at the same point: there were no Jews in medieval Prussia because of the Teutonic Order’s policy. The additional sources relevant for this question include the entire urban tradition, which is accessible via several series of Polish source editions; legal sources such as town books, law books and willküren; and the sources from Nova Marchia and Nowa Nieszawa, which Forstreuter excluded in the older version of his article in favour of the narrow Prussian heartlands, but which actually nuance the picture of Jewish life in Prussia considerably. Even with these additional sources, no sudden detection of previously forgotten communities was possible. The results point towards possible areas of residence, map a number of individuals who travelled and resided in Prussia for different amounts of time, and shed light on Teutonic Order officials’ relation to these travellers. What also becomes apparent from the structure of the remaining sources, as well as from comparison, is that even if there had been Jewish communities, they would most likely have gone undocumented. Particularly in the area of urban law, there is a danger that Jews disappear in the categories of ‘foreigners’ and ‘guests’, which comprised all non-citizens who resided in the towns for shorter or longer periods and to whom different areas of law applied than to citizens and inhabitants. Thus, there is a theo-

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retical possibility that unprinted sources in the archives of minor towns would reveal evidence of Jewish life there, but it is unlikely, given the structure of the documentation. Some parallels to potential Jewish life in Prussia can be drawn from the status of Jewish communities in Early Modern Poland. First of all, even in the areas with old stable communities, it is difficult or impossible to estimate the numbers of the population. Before the Union of Lublin (1569), less than one third of the Polish population lived in urban centres of settlement. Of these town-dwellers, about half were farmers who worked the surrounding fields. In those towns which did not allow Jewish settlement officially within the walls – for example Kraków, Lublin and Warsaw – Jewish communities developed in the surrounding suburbs, since they were allowed in the towns for fairs and the like. Places of Jewish settlement were also the much smaller towns which did not have the same restrictions as the large economic centres. Documentation of these settlements and communities in Poland stems from not earlier than the mid-sixteenth century.1 Considering that Prussia was less densely populated, less urbanized and had a different administrative structure, it seems improbable that there would have been documentation about communities within or next to smaller towns, or on the countryside. The extant sources give no definite answer to this – they only hint at potential places for Jewish residencies and settlements.

Town Books, Law Books and Judeneide It has often been stated that the Prussian towns forbade Jews to obtain citizenship, for various reasons: because they had been founded under Lübeck town law; because they belonged to the Hanseatic League and most of their cities did not allow Jews; because of the general ban on Jewish settlement in Prussia. None of these assumed reasons holds in general. Instead, the larger Prussian towns Königsberg, Gdańsk, Elbląg, Toruń and Braniewo all provided different legal frameworks for potential citizens. But since only a minority of the inhabitants of medieval towns obtained citizenship, the potential of other legal forms of existence also needs to be discussed. There are a number of law texts that could potentially have provided a framework for Jewish communities in the Prussian towns – or at least they hint at their possible presence. The town laws were codified in a variety of kinds of texts, such as willküren, Schöffensprüche and privileges. For the most part, the oldest of these documents related to

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the Prussian towns have not been preserved.2 The ones that have survived do not explicitly mention Jewish settlement, but some do include specific regulations and formulae that suggest the presence of Jewish inhabitants; there are still others that indicate that inclusion in town communities generally proved difficult, if not impossible, for foreigners and non-Christians. Those that fell into this latter category lived in the towns but fell under guest law and are thus badly documented.3 The newer, surviving willküren do not specifically mention Jews. The oldest Malbork willkür established the conditions for becoming a citizen: free and legitimate birth and being of German origin. Others do not explicitly demand German roots, although some of them did develop more complicated conditions for citizenship later on in the fifteenth century. A willkür for Gdańsk from between 1385 and 1455 includes two articles regarding citizenship, one demanding letters attesting to free birth, the other stating in a general way that anyone who comes to the town and is worthy of citizenship could potentially receive it.4 Another version of the Gdańsk town law from 1435–48 demands legitimate birth and faith in a Christian confession from prospective citizens, as well as a letter of recommendation proving free birth. It also included the requirement that the potential citizen own fire protection gear and weapons, and it imposed the obligation that he marry within one year of receiving citizenship. Later, Gdańsk would complicate conditions for citizenship in the extreme, making also owning real estate in the town a precondition and rejecting any form of dual citizenship.5 Toruń received a new privilege for its jurisdiction in 1346; no Jewry law was mentioned.6 Many town books and most early urban written administrative records do not include evidence of a Jewish presence and do not specifically mention Jews. There is no mention of Jews in the Culm town book,7 in the Tuchola (Tuchel) tax book8, in the komtur’s book of Gdańsk9 or in the Świecie liber civitatis. There is an ambiguous entry in the Jungstadt Gdańsk town book from the year 1417. It reads: Also Hannus Kruger and Austyn Losebecker, his bailsman, came to Gdańsk after an admonition regarding the goods from the Keiserische, which Austyn Losebecker had received, 1417 etc.10

Vertical marginalia next to this entry reads, ‘Iude Iud’. This might indicate that either Hannus or Austyn or both were Jews, a detail that the scribe who wrote the initial entry had failed to mention, and which was added later. It might also mean that there were other cases where the religion of a person was not explicitly noted in the town books, which would make a large number of dark figures possible. It’s also possible

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that ‘Iude Iud’ was just a random doodle. Finally, it might have been the scribe’s way of expressing distaste for Hannus or Austyn. Another person named Augustyn with the last name Iude appears in the Toruń town books some thirty years later.11 A number of other town books include various people named Iude or, more frequently, Iode.12 Iude seems to have been the prevalent orthography for people of the Jewish faith, while Iode is, for example, the last name of a Toruń council member, which means it is extremely unlikely that this name denoted a person’s religion. There are, however, also cases in which the same person’s last name is alternately spelled Iude or Iode,13 or in the case of women, Iudessche or Jodessche.14 As a result, none of these examples is particularly convincing one way or the other with regards to Jewish life in the towns, and the town books in general do not allow for a clear conclusion to be drawn about the presence of Jews in the towns. What can be safely assumed is that it was difficult for all foreigners to become citizens, and in some cases entirely impossible for Jews, but this did not automatically mean that Jews were excluded from the towns entirely, since the town laws did not explicitly prohibit their presence and there are some proven cases of Jewish involvement in financial affairs. Citizens or not, Jews and other foreigners were addressed in local law books, which usually had one or several chapters and paragraphs dedicated to potential lawsuits involving a Jewish plaintiff or defendant.15 The areas that needed to be regulated were basically the same as in canon law: cohabitation of Christians and Jews; the prohibition on Christians marrying Jews; rules for Jews employing Christian household personnel; trading restrictions and specific rules for Jews acting as pawnbrokers; mission, conversion and forced baptism; dress codes; the general question of Jewish access to the courts. This last point included the relationship between Jewish and Christian claimants, the question of whether or not Jews were allowed to testify against Christians and the infamous Judeneide (Jews’ oaths). These regulations were included in the majority of manuscripts of law books but could vary considerably in content – some simply noted a different oath formula for Jews, using the Torah and performed in a synagogue, while others, especially from the second half of the fourteenth century onward, included humiliating formulae and rituals, such as forcing the Jew to stand on a pigskin or otherwise touch non-kosher material. The tradition of Prussian law books has been well researched, mostly due to the interest legal historians have in the eastward spread of Magdeburg law during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries16 – yet another bone of contention between German and Polish historians over

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the centuries, since German law did not automatically mean German settlement and a German population as völkische scholars have claimed. The Culm legal code, which was heavily dependent upon the Magdeburg law, was the most influential and widely adopted legal code in the Prussian towns.17 It regulated the initial legal framework and privileges of newly founded towns, as well as their subsequent legal practices. It provided an attractive framework for the relationship between new settlers and townspeople and the landlord; even the Polish king privileged a number of new towns in West Prussia and Poland Minor on the basis of the Magdeburg and Culm laws.18 The Ostprogramm of the Prussian archival administration interpreted this as far as labelling ‘the town’ in general as a German Kulturleistung (cultural achievement) and dedicated several research projects to the distribution of town foundations according to German law in Warthegau.19 It has long been acknowledged that some of the Prussian manuscripts in which Magdeburg legal texts were copied for use in Prussia, and of those that were produced in Prussia for local use, both include urban legal codes (Elbląg, Toruń) and feature chapters on Jewry laws and the Judeneide. Guido Kisch, one of the first scholars to systematically address the issue of medieval German Jewry law, used a number of manuscripts produced in Prussia – but he never discussed the implications of these sources for the legal situation of Prussian Jews or Jews who found themselves in Prussia. The legal texts are thus an aspect of Jewish-Christian relations in the region that was imported to Prussia from the western parts of the empire. Even though it is difficult, to some degree impossible given the war losses, to reconstruct the exact content of the Prussian Jewry law, it seems obvious that a legal code produced in Magdeburg and adopted in Toruń and Culm constituted a form of cultural transfer regarding the relationship between Jews and Christians into an area with no stable Jewish communities; the Jews were to receive the exact same legal treatment as members of the communities in Magdeburg and elsewhere, with the same sentences being applied as were applied in the Magdeburg Schöffensprüche. It is interesting that several of the law books copied or collected in Prussia before 1500, as well as during the sixteenth century, included specific chapters on Jewry law at all considering that there were no stable Jewish communities, although there was obviously enough contact with Jews to make a legal code seem necessary. Some of these books contain only short entries with Jewry law, such as an Early Modern Prussian codex containing Culmian law and prohibiting Jews to be witnesses in cases of robbery.20 Others had more sophisticated elaborations on the topic. Generally, the precise contents of the Prussian texts

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on Jewry law are of no great importance here, as they did not differ from the text models from Magdeburg, etc., which Guido Kisch and later Christine Magin have extensively researched.21 More relevant is the question why the books would contain Jewry law if there were no Jews to apply it to. It is presumed that the most complete extant version of these chapters is that found in the Elbinger Rechtsbuch, written before 1470 and handed down in one single manuscript, which was destroyed during World War II. Fol. 66v–68v included a chapter entitled ‘Item von den Juden’; its contents can no longer be entirely reconstructed. Emil Steffenhagen, who thoroughly described the manuscript and identified its sources, traces the chapter on Jews back to the Schwabenspiegel (chapter 214).22 According to him, the Elbinger Rechtsbuch included comprehensive regulations on trade between Jews and Christians; the usual rules for moneylending against stolen items or res sacrae (holy things, property of the Church); the prohibition on forced conversion, support for converts and punishment for apostates; the prohibition on Jews eating, going to the bathhouse or celebrating weddings with Christians; the requirements for Jews to keep their windows closed on Easter and wear certain hats wherever they went; the prohibition on Jews having Christian servants and eating with them; the subjugation of Jews to both secular and canon law. Steffenhagen makes no mention of the Elbinger Rechtsbuch deviating in any way from the model text, making it a Prussian source that included not only a Judeneid but comprehensive Jewry law. For the oath, a Jew was required to stand on a pigskin and have his hand stuck inside a Torah up to his wrist, cursing himself sevenfold in the event that he were to violate his oath.23 Since the manuscript is lost, it is futile to speculate about the degree of uniformity between the chapter about Jews in the Elbinger Rechtsbuch and in the Schwabenspiegel. What is, however, obvious is that council members in Elbląg, a town under Lübeck law, saw the need to copy a fairly comprehensive list of regulations concerning Jews and Jewish-Christian interaction at some point during the fifteenth century. Many town books, even in places with Jewish communities, included only a small selection of the regulations from Schwabenspiegel and Sachsenspiegel.24 There are two more examples of Judeneide in Prussian law books, one from Gdańsk and the other from Toruń. The Gdańsk example, dated to 1537, is comprised of a sixteenth-century set of privileges and regulations (willkür) for the town including a Judeneid.25 The same is true of the second example, from Toruń, a collection of 230 Magdeburger Schöffensprüche that includes a Judeneid.26 It is roughly dated to the

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fourteenth or fifteenth century, making it a much earlier example than that from Gdańsk. It belongs to a group of manuscripts in which the Magdeburger Urteile are collected and written down in German (there are other groups in this tradition in Polish, Latin and Czech). There are more examples: During the same period, specifically 1400–1402, the Neun Bücher Magdeburger Rechts, also known as the Poelmannsche Distinctionen, were compiled by Toruń town clerk Ekhardi von Bunzlau. He included a large section of Jewry law regulations from the Meißener Rechtsbuch.27 Even the abridged version of the original manuscript, shortened of the commentaries of the Sachsenspiegel, still contained two entire articuli on Jewry law, one with forty-five distinctiones, the other with ten.28 The title of the first chapter identifies the regulations as a Judenrecht, das sich ettlicher Massen in Schuldrecht zeuhet, als man die in etlichen Landen leget, als zumal noth ist zu wissen (Jewry Law, Which to a Large Extent is Law of Obligation, as It Is Applied in Many Lands, and is Necessary to Know) and, as such, does not establish a clear connection to local Prussian Jews, but instead to the necessity of knowing Jewry law. The first twenty of these distinctiones deal with different aspects of Jewish pawnbroking, another ten outline how Christians and Jews can serve as each other’s witnesses or bailsmen. In addition to the rules from Schwabenspiegel and the Elbinger Rechtsbuch listed above, the distinctiones state that Jews are not allowed to build new schools, although they are allowed to repair the ones they already have. They also prohibit violent access of Christians to these schools (art. 16, dist. 8). Violence committed by a Jew against a Christian or vice versa is also mentioned, establishing that killing or beating a Jew is a crime equal to killing a fellow Christian. The Judeneid (art. 15, dist. 44) does not include the requirement to stand on a pigskin or any other specifics of the ritual. Distinctiones 39 and 40 mention the existence of specific Jewish courts, located in or at the synagogues (in der Schule oder vor der Schulen), and thus reflect a much more advanced stage of Jewish community establishment and organization than is the case in the regulations addressing the relationship between Christian residents and Jewish visitors. Furthermore, anti-Jewish stereotypes are more developed in this text version, where the possibility of the ritual murder of Christian children to satisfy Jewish bloodlust is mentioned. However, if a Christian were to kidnap a Jewish child for the same purposes (bloodlust), he should also receive the death penalty, according to distinctio 41. These examples make it clear that there was no direct connection between the kind of Jewish-Christian relationship the law books describe and the historical reality of when and where the books were

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produced. In the early years of the fifteenth century, Toruń hosted a number of Jewish converts and had experienced small-scale pogroms or expulsions before the Black Death; however, neither the description of a Jewish court in the synagogue nor accusations of ritual murder had any practical applicability in the Prussian town – when the printed version of the Distinctionen was produced in 1574, there was still no sign of an established Jewish community in Toruń to provide a basis for this level of administrative organization. Nevertheless, the production and diffusion of the Neun Bücher Magdeburger Rechts in Toruń and throughout Prussia is additional evidence backing the thesis that the towns hosted a number of Jewish merchants and travellers, at least on a temporary basis, despite efforts to restrict residency for Jews and other foreigners, and that the towns even went as far as to make a specific formulaic oath obligatory for temporary resident Jews. Unlike the Hanseatic merchants, the temporary-resident Jews probably could not appeal to their own court in the event of a conflict requiring judicial mediation; even their involvement in local judicial processes required they take the abovementioned oath. There is no evidence of a specific local adaptation of or change to the Jewry law as it was formulated in the model texts from the areas with stable Jewish populations. This probably means that those who compiled and copied the Prussian law books did not have a specific idea about a particular legal and social status for local Jews – if there had been a thorough ban on Jewish settlement and residency, it would certainly have been mentioned somewhere when the legal procedures governing daily life were being drafted. Jewry law was seen as an aspect of local customary law that was necessary to know, because Jewish-Christian relations were a fact – as the Distinctionen put it. There is also a practical example of this sort of contact in the Altstadt Toruń Schöffenbuch, dating from 1464. The Jew Elyas from Brześć Kujawski came before the Toruń court and said that he had a certain amount of wood for Heinrich Kruger, which was supposed to be delivered to the latter in Gdańsk. The payment had not been made to Elyas yet, but to ensure that he did not fail to provide the agreed-upon amount of wood, part of his payment, in form of a certain amount of cloth, would be left with Mathis Teschner, a local Teutonic Order employee. Elyas’s brother-in-law Aaron was also involved in the affair that Elyas bekante (swore) before the court.29 From this record, it is obvious that Elyas was a regular visitor in Toruń who maintained business relations with the local upper class. It is not obvious whether his relative Aaron was a resident in the town, who might have provided

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­ ousing for Elyas during his visits and whose domicile there would h indicate more stable Jewish settlement. The examples show that the Jewry law contained in the Prussian law books and Schöffensprüche was not entirely hypothetical or abstract knowledge, but met an actual need to codify existing legal relations between Christians and Jews. Whether this points to local settlements or barely to the need to regulate relations between inhabitants and temporary residents remains unclear. However, Toruń, which already appeared as a potential site of Jewish settlement in the sources regarding the Black Death and those regarding conversions, also has produced a number of sources from town administration and town law which contain Jewry law or mention legal relations between Christians and Jews.

Against Jewish Merchants? Trading Restrictions It has often been claimed that medieval towns had a general interest in avoiding Jewish residency, restricted it and used both religious and economic arguments to keep Jewish merchants away from their spheres of interest. The same has been claimed about the Prussian towns – ­specifically, that they repeatedly requested anti-Jewish legislation to avoid competition with Jewish merchants. There is a bit of flawed logic in this argument, given that it arises in a situation in which the Teutonic Order was allegedly already prohibiting Jews from entering the country. In the Prussian sources, Jews as targets of trading regulations appear for the first time in the beginning of the fifteenth century, in the context of negotiations of peace treaties between Prussia and Poland-Lithuania. Kurt Forstreuter outlines the same argument of a general antipathy and places it in the context of emerging opposition to the Order on the part of the towns and estates; he sees the debates around the potential anti-Jewish regulations of the fifteenth and sixteenth century as an expression of growing influence of the estates and towns, which he presumes were generally more anti-Jewish due to trade competition.30 Forstreuter’s 1937 version appraises the estates’ claims as follows: ‘The idea that foreign Jews in Prussia should enjoy the same privileges as Prussian merchants in Poland and Lithuania was abhorrent to the Prussian estates.’ He deemed this paragraph as unsuitable for the postwar version of the text. However, by simply excising this passage he fails to provide any explanation for the anti-Jewish demands made by the Prussian estates in the wake of the Polish-Prussian peace treaty of 1422. The argument feeds off the idea that anti-Judaism was the

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natural thing to do – for the Teutonic Order, for the town councils, for merchants in general – which in itself has an antisemitic flavour. ‘In the fifteenth century, the Prussian towns pushed for anti-Jewish trading restrictions’ is as much a commonplace as the idea that ‘there were no Jews in Prussia’. Nevertheless, Forstreuter had a remarkably good grasp on the complicated situation of trading regulations, particularly during Duke Albrecht’s reign – a situation that is very difficult to appraise today, as the duke’s archive, which is held by the GStA (Herzogliches Briefarchiv and Ostpreußische Folianten), is only very superficially registered, partly by Forstreuter himself. He must have gathered his evidence from documents he never made accessible in the registers of the archive he worked on. The actual number and content of trading restrictions in the Prussian Hanseatic towns has yet to be investigated, but there, nonetheless, seems to be an established, common understanding; the Teutonic Order was certainly anti-Jewish, but the towns were even more anti-Jewish and thus demanded additional restrictions. The written recesses and protocols of the Prussian diets during the fifteenth century do not support this interpretation; there is, however, an aspect of negotiating the towns’ independence that can be seen in the way trading restrictions developed. Initially, the Teutonic Order was the target; then, after 1454, it was the Polish king.31 No attention has been given to three important issues that arise in this context: a comparison of Jewish merchants from Poland and Lithuania with other, Christian foreigners who were usually governed by the same regulations; the fact that Jews already resident in the towns were never mentioned in the regulations discussed from the 1430s onward; that the regulations were discussed, but in most cases no decisions were made. The assumption of a general anti-Judaism on the part of the towns and estates mirrors the idea that non-Prussian Jews were seen as a greater source of competition than other merchants from outside of Prussia, which cannot be proven using the available sources and, as such, rather derives from modern ideas of Otherness. The Prussian sources instead show that the towns made demands for trading and settlement restrictions for all foreigners – English, Scottish, Flemish, Nurembergish and Jewish are generally clumped together – as one way among others of asserting their autonomy in trading issues. The restrictions functioned on several levels: the right to obtain citizenship; the right to settle under the foreigners’ law; taxation; access to the towns during market times and when the markets were closed. The Prussian Hanseatic towns – Gdańsk, Königsberg, Braniewo, Elbląg, Toruń and Culm – played a major role in organizing the Prussian

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estates.32 One of the main complaints against the Teutonic Order targeted frequent violations of the general toll exemption that had been granted in the Culm legal code.33 The Teutonic Order was, particularly during the fifteenth century, torn between these privileges and concessions that had to be made towards Poland in several peace treaties, and the towns used this strife in order to advance their autonomy from the landlord. As was the case in all Hanseatic towns, foreign merchants were both necessary and feared, and the local urban elites restricted their settlement and, at the same time, were dependent on them. While this was not specific for Prussia, only here the urban elites were mostly identical with the German ethnic minority, which enjoyed a superior legal status – i.e., better than that of the Prussians, Poles, other Slavs, Baltic people and even travellers from the West. In many cases, religious difference was irrelevant; the issue was status as foreigners – or ‘guests’ as they are called in the sources. In Prussia, demands for more comprehensive trade restrictions were periodically brought to the high master by the towns, but these demands only really escalated shortly before the Prussian Federation was formed in official opposition to the Order, and that was when Jews were first mentioned as part of these demands. At the same time, the on-going struggle of the Order against the Polish crown led to a shifting legal situation in some Prussian towns; after 1410, Gdańsk, for example, initially pledged allegiance to the Polish king, then shifted back to the Order, then shifted back to the Polish king again, resulting in various legislations and privileges that were partly contradictory, of which trade restrictions were always an element. Jews, however, were only mentioned for the first time in 1435, in connection with the Eternal Peace of Brześć Kujawski/Brest. After years of on-going struggle, the Teutonic Order, the Polish king and the grand duke of Lithuania basically acknowledged the borders established in the Peace of Melno/ Melnosee in 1422. In the Prussian territory, the articles of the treaty were discussed beforehand and had to be confirmed by the estates.34 On 23 October 1435, the Prussian delegates assembled in Toruń with a list of twenty articles they wanted the delegates to take back to their towns, discuss and then take a decision about during the next diet. This was the response to a request from the high master and the Gebietiger (the Order’s commanders situated in the hierarchy directly under the high master) to the estates to discuss and propose a list of articles they wanted to have incorporated into the Eternal Peace Treaty, which was under negotiation at that point. The towns were particularly asked to discuss certain trade regulations that the Poles demanded be incorporated into the peace treaty: e.g., free admission for Polish and

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Lithuanian merchants into the Prussian lands and the right to unfettered trade. This was the issue that particularly enraged the Prussian towns. The twenty articles that were to be discussed in the towns dealt with trading relations between Polish merchants, particularly from Kraków, and Prussian merchants, as well as with shipping on the Vistula. The fourth of these articles includes several regulations for travelling merchants (as well as establishing whose jurisdiction they fell under), a regulation governing taking over someone else’s debt and the demand to forbid Jews admission into Prussia for trading purposes, according to long-established custom.35 This is the first time Jews are mentioned in the (printed) acts from the Prussian estate assemblies that took place during the fourteenth century; these eventually became the arena for organizing the towns and estates to oppose the Teutonic Order. Forstreuter paraphrased this as ‘the towns demanded that the high master ban Jewish trade’, but that is not the case; the articles were not demands, but rather a list of issues to be discussed in the towns. An undated note from the high master’s chancery may well allude to this process; it provides a list of issues that need to be addressed: Also the memorandum of the people of Gdańsk. About the Jews who are trading here. Also about the merchants from Lithuania, that they shall not trade here in this country in the houses with the houseowners, such as the English and the like. Also that the guests are not to trade with each other.36

This note might well refer to an entirely different incident. But all of the mentioned issues arose in the recesses of the Prussian diets several times during the 1430s, primarily addressing trading regulations that would target groups of foreigners who seemed particularly threatening to the local economy at that moment: Polish and Lithuanian Jews, the English, Lithuanians and any guests who trade with each other (rather than with the town dwellers). The conglomerate of foreigner-related trading issues jotted down here reoccurs in the negotiations of the towns. The twenty articles that the estates brought back after discussion were addressed on 6 December of that same year, 1435, at an assembly of Polish and Prussian representatives in Brześć Kujawski directly related to the peace treaty and specifying the towns’ privileges within the context of that treaty. The recess of this meeting does not specifically address all of the original twenty articles, but no article in the decision protocol mentions a ban on Jewish trade. The Eternal Peace of Brześć was finally signed on 31 December. It was recorded in several German,

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Polish and Latin versions, and excerpts of particular articles and translations were also copied separately. Two articles that deal with foreign trade remained from the negotiations earlier the same year: article 14 grants free admission to Prussia for all inhabitants of all Polish lands and vice versa; article 28 exempts them and the inhabitants of Masovia, Lithuania and Rus from a variety of taxes in the Prussian towns, particularly the Pfundzoll and the Lobegeld. Jews are not specifically mentioned in any of this.37 Thus, the first alleged demand of the towns for a restriction on Jewish access was actually an attempt to restrict the comprehensive tax exemptions and trade freedoms that the Poles and Lithuanians were demanding for themselves in the peace negotiations – the Prussian towns did not prevail, neither in the case of Jews nor of Christian Polish merchants. The reciprocal free admission and liberal taxation policies established between Prussia and Poland-Lithuania was one part of the peace treaty that held for the next 150 years. It was also one that the Prussian towns and the high master regularly tried to circumvent, as the recurrent notes addressing conflicts indicate. The next time an anti-Jewish trading regulation appears in the acts of the Prussian diets is three years later, at a meeting in Malbork on 5 April 1438, when the estates met with the high master to discuss a number of articles. However, the only conclusion they seem to have reached was about the trade in horses, while a number of other regulations, including one proposing Jews and citizens of Nuremberg be banned from trading in Prussia, were returned to the towns for further discussion before the next meeting.38 At the next meeting, held on 26 April in Gdańsk, many of the articles from the 1435 and 1438 lists of demands were reintroduced and finally settled. These included regulations on shipping on the Vistula and on the import of bad cloth and honigseym; nothing is said about the Jews or any potential ban on their trading. This might mean that Jewish merchants were only considered a minor problem, or that the towns and the high master could not agree on the issue and unanimously decided to let it go. Although the ‘Eternal’ Peace of Brześć Kujawski was signed by the high master, after receiving the approbation of the Prussian estates, not all members of the Order approved of the treaty, and it proved to be a source of unrest, both among the brothers and within the estates. The towns were once more especially concerned about the comprehensive toll exemptions for foreigners. Then, in 1441–42, rumours spread across the country that the high master had promised to extend exemption from the Pfundzoll to merchants from England and Holland, or even

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that this privilege had already been granted. The komtur of Toruń wrote to the high master (no longer Paul von Rusdorf, who had signed the Eternal Peace, but his successor Konrad von Erlichshausen), informing him that there was a rumour that the Poles had explicitly demanded an article in the Eternal Peace Treaty granting tax exemption, free admission and full trading rights for Jews.39 No such article is to be found in the Prussian versions of the contract, nor were the English or the Dutch entirely exempt from the Pfundzoll, as the towns feared.40 In any event, during the years following the Peace of Brześć Kujawski, there were abundant minor and major conflicts between the estates and the high master regarding the trading practices of various groups of foreigners in the Prussian towns, and this is the only explicit mention of Jews. In sum, there were two attempts by the Prussian towns to restrict Jews, along with other foreigners, from trade and to delimit their rights and privileges regarding toll exemptions. These attempts occurred in the context of the high master’s conflict with the increasingly organized estates. Neither of them were resolved and ratified in the recess of an annual meeting, which points towards their low importance in comparison to other issues. Additionally, the Eternal Peace of Brześć Kujawski constituted an intense backlash in response to any attempts of trading restrictions. At the same time, the question of Jewish merchants obviously never played a particularly important role in negotiations at the Prussian diets, since the demand was never integrated into any general legislation. It appears that by 1438 it was no longer an issue. There is no further support for, or even discussion of, anti-Jewish trading regulations in the acts of the Prussian diets under Teutonic Order rule until 1525. Thus, the sources supporting the idea of actual bans and trading restrictions are insubstantial in the extreme. Nevertheless, German and Polish scholarship has previously interpreted the evidence in terms that assumed a general anti-Jewish agenda in the towns. Heimann Jolowicz claimed that almost all Prussian diets demanded anti-Jewish regulations after they came under Polish rule. However, he does not disclose his sources, making his argument difficult to accept given that it is not supported by the known sources.41 On the other hand, Polish scholars in particular have interpreted the Prussian towns’ requests for anti-Jewish regulations as something that more or less disappeared when the Polish king replaced the Teutonic Order as their landlord.42 This interpretation makes sense within the framework that understands the Teutonic Order as a generally antiJewish institution and the Polish king as a generally pro-Jewish legislator – indeed, Poland had extraordinary pro-Jewish regulations

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beginning in the thirteenth century, but the king did not automatically apply the laws of his kingdom to his newly acquired territories. Independence from their landlord was a major issue in the struggle of the Prussian towns, and Casimir IV Jagiełło seemed to have been well aware of this fact, and to recognize how important it was to grant the towns a good deal more autonomy than the Teutonic Order had done to maintain their loyalty. Jewish settlement and trade were minor issues in the diplomacy. Besides demands for restrictions being extremely rare, and even more rarely successful, there is another aspect that mitigates against the towns’ presumed anti-Judaism. Attempts at establishing trading and settlement restrictions were always directed at foreigners in a more general way, and the explicit mention of Jews quickly faded away and does not turn up in later versions of these demands. All of the anti-Jewish regulations under discussion here also targeted other foreigners and, thus, would not have affected Jews already living in Prussian towns; the Prussian towns gradually adopted policies similar to those of other Hanseatic towns on the Baltic coast. These restrictions tended to encompass merchants who resided in the towns seasonally but excluded foreigners who were permanent residents. As such, the trading restrictions always targeted foreigners who were not citizens or permanent residents of the towns. It is safe to assume that there were Jews among them throughout the Middle Ages; both the demands for restrictions and occasional conflicts between Jews and locals make this apparent. Throughout the fifteenth century, letters were exchanged between Polish and Teutonic Order officials regarding goods stolen from Jewish merchants in Prussia. Sources sometimes allow us to follow the development of these conflicts over a decade or more. While the Order seemed particularly reluctant to return the goods, its officials never based this reluctance on any particular anti-Jewish resentment. The restoration of stolen goods and free conduct for Polish inhabitants – including Jews – were addressed in specific articles in the Peace Treaty of Brześć Kujawski, but violations were obviously routine. In 1451, King Casimir appealed to the high master on behalf of the Jew Schabdey from Grodno, who had been double-crossed by burghers in Gdańsk.43 Two years later, he again wrote a letter to Ludwig von Erlichshausen to appeal on behalf of the Jew Slomo, also from Grodno. He mentions that Slomo had been travelling and trading in the Prussian lands on the request of Casimir himself, and had even received letters from the high master promising him free return. Despite this, robbers had captured him with the knowledge of the officials of the

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castle of Wełk and stolen his goods and money, amongst these six cloth dresses of medium quality, a silver belt, and various herbs and spices. According to Slomo, the goods were brought to the castle and hidden there. A note included with this royal letter states that it was brought to Marienburg by ‘vier iuden us Mazouien’ (four Jews from Masovia) and that the high master had asked Zurnlicke, an official from Wełk, who was also present, to return whatever was left of these goods and to punish the robbers, if he knew who they were. The high master also offered them a letter, written by Kuntcze Brantenstein, ‘den wolden sie nicht haben und czogen also weg’ (which they did not want to have and thus left).44 In this case, the religion of the victim obviously played no role at all, besides the fact that his allies who delivered the letter were also Jews from the Polish realm. The high master was interested in settling the matter and offered both compensation and probably something like an excuse from his official. In other cases, reconciliation did not go smoothly. In the 1470s, the Teutonic Order was harshly admonished by Stenzel, the Polish king’s bailiff, to return goods that had been stolen the year before from Jewish merchants – some of these goods had belonged to the Jews, and some had belonged to Stenzel. The letter also demanded that the merchants be granted free admission to and safe conduct in Prussia, particularly in the towns of Gdańsk and Königsberg and the surrounding countryside, privileges they had enjoyed only a year before and which they wanted reinstated. He pointed out that he would not rest until this case was settled according to his and the Jews’ wishes.45 There was a similar case involving the belongings of the Jewish tollkeeper Jaczko from Brest-Litowsk, whose case lasted over twenty years (if it was the same Jaczko or Jackzko). At the end of the fifteenth century, the Lithuanian Jews had a monopoly on tollkeeping at the Lithuanian borders. In 1451, Casimir wrote for the first time to the high master, forwarding Jaczko’s complaint against two burghers from Gdańsk, Imbracht and Gregor of Elbląg. The same year, this or another Jaczko from Lithuania received a letter granting him and another Jew named Schaude free conduct in Prussia for the purpose of trading – it is hard to determine why this was necessary, since Poles and Lithuanians already had free conduct in Prussia.46 On their behest, a number of Lithuanian officials (the bishop of Vilnius, several voivodes and captains, as well as some dukes) wrote sharp letters to the high master, demanding that the stolen goods be returned.47 A year later, the Polish king demanded the pending payment for goods delivered by probably a different Jaczko (from Grodno) – in this case a timber deal made with the high master gone wrong. In this correspondence, the Polish and Lithuanian side is

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quick to mention that for many years merchants, including Jews, had been trading and travelling freely in Gdańsk and Königsberg, carrying both their own goods and goods they have been contracted to trade on behalf of Polish and Lithuanian officials.48 On 30 June 1472, several dukes and lords of the Duchy of Lithuania once again wrote to the high master requesting the return of Jaczko’s goods.49 Heinrich von Plauen obviously did not clear his debts during his lifetime since, in 1475, the Polish nuntius reminded the new high master of a number of unresolved issues, among them the case of two Jews and the timber that Heinrich had never paid for.50 Martin Truchsess von Wetzhausen, the subsequent high master, also failed to resolve the issue.51 Cases like Jaczko’s occurred at a point, the second half of the fifteenth century, for which extant documentation of communicative and administrative processes is relatively comprehensive. But even earlier instances are known. For example, in 1417, a similar letter from Duke Witold of Lithuania was sent to the high master demanding the return of gold two burghers from Gdańsk had taken from the Lithuanian Jew Jacob Scholomicz. The available sources do not tell us how this case was resolved.52 These letters mentioning Jewish merchants from Poland and Lithuania being robbed by burghers of Gdańsk and Königsberg have nothing to do with trading restrictions. On the contrary, they prove that foreign traders regularly came to the Prussian Hanseatic towns and stayed long enough to conduct business both for themselves and on behalf of their landlords. Since they fell under the guest law, we have no documentation about these travelling merchants, how long they stayed, where they resided, whether they had any Jewish community structures to turn to or where they were buried in the event that they died during the trip. Without these conflicts, they would be invisible. In the Teutonic Order’s territory, regulations on Jewish trade and settlement was not an issue that arose again until the Reformation. It should be noted that there are very few extant sources related to individual privileges of free admission and trading rights for foreign Jews in Prussia. The unfortunate consequence of this is that there is no way to document their existence or the areas where they were to be found, which makes sense given the general legal framework for travelling merchants established between Prussia and Poland-Lithuania after 1422. The situation of merchants, who did not require individual privileges, can, nonetheless, be fruitfully compared to the situation of physicians and diplomats, who did. Michalina Broda has collected the sources addressing Jewish doctors or physicians privileged by the high master before the Reformation.53

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She discusses two cases of Jewish physicians working in Prussia: Mayer/Meyen/Maher and Jacob. In 1454, the latter acted as a diplomat and a negotiator between Grand Master Ludwig von Erlichshausen and Mikołaj Szarlejski, the starost of Bydgoszcz and the voivode of Brześć and Kujawy/Kujawien, receiving several letters of safe conduct for his travels to Marienburg castle.54 Mayer, a Jewish physician from Nieszawa/Nessau, was called upon several times to provide his services to specific people in Toruń and Kwidzyn. To this end, he received privileges and letters of safe conduct from the Teutonic Order in 1446 and 1448 – on occasion an unnamed Jewish companion was included. The case of Mayer is unique – there is no other preserved evidence of pre-Reformation letters of safe conduct for a Jewish physician (or other professional). What this proves, nonetheless, is that consulting a Jew was not a taboo for the Order’s officials. Additionally, these few letters of safe conduct for diplomats and physicians show that they fell under different legislation than merchants, who were able to travel without specific privileges.

Gdan´sk and Königsberg As large harbour towns and members of the Hanseatic League, Gdańsk and Königsberg were most likely attractive places for large-scale merchants to settle. During the fifteenth century, Königsberg was the smaller of the two, making Gdańsk by far the most appealing coastal urban environment for new settlers active in the Baltic trade. (Memel was also an attractive location, connecting Prussia and Livonia, but, circa 1500, it still only had about twenty-five burghers.) By the end of the fourteenth century, Gdańsk maintained a Hansekontor in Kaunas and dominated trade with Denmark, including Skåne (Falsterbo and Skanör, which had their own Witte beginning in 1368), and Finland (Viborg and Åbo/ Turku). Gdańsk was also the main transhipment point between the eastern traffic routes and the Netherlands. Erich Keyser has published the most extensive material about the medieval history of the town of Gdańsk. He often mentions the Judengasse, located in the Altstadt and known by this name beginning around 1430 – the Judengasse was part of what formerly had been known as Milchkannengasse, located between Koggenbrücke and Hopfengasse, making it a central area in the Altstadt.55 However, he never elaborates on the topic. His numerous publications about Gdańsk’s architecture and architectural history, town structure and demographics have a distinctly revisionist tone. As is the case with

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Forstreuter, antisemitism only plays a minor role in Keyser’s distinctively anti-Slavic and anti-Bolshevik ideology. His neglect of the issue of Jewish inhabitants in medieval Gdańsk might stem from his general focus on the perceived clash between the German and Polish ethnic groups in the town. Around 1500, approximately seventy years after the Judengasse was established in Gdańsk, a hill outside of the town was called Judenberg.56 This does not mean anything definitive about Jewish citizens, but it tells us that town dwellers were familiar with real or imaginary Jews. The few examples of Jews in the written sources all indicate the same thing; during the fourteenth century, relations between the town’s citizens and various foreigners, including Jews, were smooth, leaving almost no trace in the sources before the later attempts to renegotiate general trading restrictions for all foreigners when Gdańsk came under Polish rule. The legal framework and the history of the town are determined by its shifting landlords and struggle for autonomy. Gdańsk was founded under Lübeck law in 1294, then it received Magdeburg law in 1346, and while the town was under the Teutonic Order’s authority (between 1309 and 1454), it was governed by Culm law. The legal code was adapted to local needs (for example, regulations governing shipping [Waterrechte] were added and codified in the 1420s and 1430s).57 After Gdańsk came under the authority of the Polish crown, it was relatively independent, making clear the different set of standards in Polish legislation and in Prussian town legislation. Insofar as it was possible to do so, the Altstadt, Jungstadt58 and Rechtstadt sections of Gdańsk sought to prevent most foreigners from gaining citizenship or residency rights. Immigrants from other Hanseatic towns in the German lands and the Low Countries had relatively easy access to these rights, but non-Hanseatic immigrants faced considerable difficulty when trying to obtain citizenship. The English, for example, maintained a trading colony in Gdańsk throughout the fourteenth century but were primarily subjected to the laws governing foreigners. Only a few Englishmen obtained citizenship during this period, even though they formed a cooperative in Gdańsk with its own gubernator, under the protection of the English crown, and thus must have been fairly well established in the town. The laws governing foreigners and guests restricted the trading activities of anyone who was not a citizen of Gdańsk: for example, regulations specified the number of days a guest was permitted to store and display goods in the town and established rules governing trade among guests. Since Gdańsk was the largest and most vital of the Hanseatic towns in this area and had easy access to the north-south sea trading

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routes from Poland, it was necessary to create there both a legal space and an actual geographical location for foreigners from overseas and the surrounding territories. One solution to the Hanseatic town’s restrictive settlement policy was the foundation of the Altschottland colony directly outside of the town walls, on the territory of the bishop of Kujawien/Kujawy, who had a residence on a nearby hill. The colony was established during the reign of High Master Winrich von Kniprode (1352–82) and initially housed weavers from Scotland, but it subsequently became a centre for foreign settlement in general. The concept proved fruitful. The areas surrounding Gdańsk belonged in part to the bishop of Kujawy and in part to the abbot of Pelplin, and the Schottenhof suburb located there became both a centre of settlement for those excluded by the fifteenth-century Prussian town laws and a trading centre. This site served as a jumping-off point for foreigners who subsequently settled in the suburbs of Gdańsk, even though the relevant official prohibition was renewed in 1595. The suburbs were a constant source of discontent for the town, due to the relative freedom and privileges enjoyed by their inhabitants, and when they were burned down in 1520, during the war with the Teutonic Order, the Gdańsk town council offered the bishop a certain sum of money as incentive not to rebuild Schottland and Hoppenbruch.59 Ashkenazi from Poland and Sephardi, who had left Portugal to settle in the Netherlands and who traded in Iberian goods, had settled in this area by the sixteenth century, at the latest.60 Eighteenth-century tax lists indicate that, by that point, Jews had settled in the two aforementioned suburbs, as well as in three other suburbs of Gdańsk.61 An anonymous scholar published in the Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums in 1857 an account of an interesting incident that occurred in these settlements, unfortunately without mentioning his/her sources. In an undated plea to the Gdańsk town council, two Jews from Poznań complained that they were not permitted to enter the town during the annual fair but were forced to remain in Schottland, which probably means that they were staying with Jewish families that had already settled there. As ‘delegates of the Jewish nation’, they requested the right of Jews to enter the town on both St. Dominicus’s Day and St. Martin’s Day, in order to trade with the citizens.62 Without any option of assigning a proper date to this event, it additionally indicates that Jews might have settled in the three parts of Gdańsk and in the Altschottland suburb without requiring special documentation or privileges, since they fell under the general foreigners’ law and, like the English and other foreigners, never obtained citizenship.

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Even in other towns, the surrounding friheiten (suburbs, also: part of the town for which the dwellers did not have to pay taxes) were a potential place of settlement for foreigners and a source of irritation for the city dwellers. In Königsberg, friheiten and suburbs were found outside of all three sections of the town, Altstadt, Löbenicht and Kneiphof.63 There was also a friheit in the vicinity of the castle, which was more closely connected to the urban population and the administration, in comparison to other Prussian towns, even before 1466, when the high master moved his residence to Königsberg. The actual town was inhabited by merchants and craftsmen, who were citizens; the suburbs were home to administrative personnel and a variety of foreigners. This demographic structure remained more or less stable until the seventeenth century. The regulations governing trade, which established distinctions between burghers and guests, applied both to the town and to the lastadie (the loadings quays), as was established in a 1385 Altstadt-Königsberg willkür.64 During the fifteenth century, the affiliation of the towns with the Teutonic Order faded. In 1454, eighteen Prussian towns rejected the Teutonic Order as their landlord, instead pledging loyalty to the Polish king, Casimir. This sparked the Thirteen Years’ War, which ended with the Second Peace of Toruń, in which the Order lost large parts of its former territory, including Pomerania, Gdańsk, Culmerland and the castle Marienburg. It is possible that under Polish rule the anti-Jewish regulations took a different form in these territories, and there are differing scholarly opinions about that issue. Older research by scholars who assumed that there was an anti-Jewish settlement restriction from 1309 onwards usually concluded that there was Jewish trade in spite of this, accompanied by individual privileges for Jewish merchants, especially after 1466 when major parts of the Order’s territory had come under the rule of the Polish crown.65 It is a fact that the Polish crown’s legislation for the Prussian towns differed from what had existed under the high master. There were two obvious principles at play: first, a very generous attitude towards Polish Jews; second, a very generous attitude towards the Prussian towns. These principles eventually conflicted, and it seems that the towns took the opportunity to renegotiate the generous rules governing trade and tax exemptions for Polish, Lithuanian and Prussian travellers that had been ushered in by the Eternal Peace of Brześć Kujawski. The legislation governing Jewish merchants was only one part of the towns’ attempt to regain control of foreign trade. Casimir had renewed the privileges of the Polish Jews in 1447, granting them free admission and trading rights throughout the Polish realm, guaranteeing them that they would

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not be obliged to pay any taxes not also applied to Christians and explicitly permitting social contact between Jews and Christians. He also forbade accusations of ritual murder and host desecration, except in cases where there were four Jewish and four Christian witnesses to the crime.66 This privilege had to be revoked in 1454 when, following a visit of Johannes de Capestrano to Kraków in 1453–54, pressure was brought to bear by the Kraków clergy, but it was renewed in 1467. It should be mentioned that far-reaching pogroms and expulsions occurred in Wrocław and Kraków and affected the Jewish population of Silesia and Poland, in general, but there were no similar outbreaks of violence or serious attempts to expel Jews reported in Prussia, even though a visit of the Dominican preacher had caught the interest of the high master, as will be discussed later in this chapter. In the case of Gdańsk, the town was now allowed to control the settlement of Jews, people from Nuremberg, Scots, the Flemish, the Dutch, Lombards and other foreigners. The German version of the privilege did, however, only forbid these foreigners to trade or to settle in the town of Gdańsk without the knowledge and approval (an wissen, willen und volborth) of the town council, the mayors and the community. While the 1435 recess mentions that Jews had been travelling and trading in Prussia on the basis of old and established custom, this privilege only mentions Jews settling in Prussia recently – i.e., in the mid-fifteenth century.67 This should not be read as indicating a general interdiction on Jewish and other foreign settlement, but rather in the context of the greater freedom and independence from the landlord that the towns had requested and which the Polish king had granted them; royal privileges were not to interfere with any autonomous measures adopted by the towns to exert control. The Privilegium Casimirianum, which granted Prussian towns control over the settlement of foreigners, was to be contravened by Casimir himself very soon after it came into effect; in 1474, Casimir renewed the privilege for all Jews under Polish authority, including freedom of settlement and of travel and the right to establish communities, thereby contradicting the law enacted for the Prussian towns.68 Then, in 1476, the king privileged two Jews, named as Zub and Michael, to trade in all of the Prussian lands.69 Thus, the legal situation of Jews in the large Prussian Hanseatic towns remained a shifting reality, caught between contradictory royal and urban legislation until the Reformation, but, nonetheless, the silence of the sources seems to indicate a lack of actual serious conflicts around the issue.

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Finally: Moneylending in Neumark, Nessau and Elsewhere While the towns were struggling with tax privileges and autonomy, the Teutonic Order itself maintained comprehensive trading activity, documented in the Großschäffer’s tax lists, as well as in communications between the high master and local officials, or among local officials themselves. These sources make it obvious that Jews were integral to the Order’s affairs. The majority of letters to and from the Teutonic Order that mention Jews do so in the context of trading affairs; only a few of these letters refer to moneylending and pawnbroking, mostly involving Jews from the neighbouring areas of Silesia, Bohemia, Lithuania and Poland. This resembles the results by Michael Toch, Giacomo Todeschini and, most recently and comprehensively, Julie L. Mell, for example, who strongly reject the common assumption that moneylending was the primary or even only source of income for medieval European Jews, and who trace this assumption back to antiJewish religious texts and modern projections.70 Solomon Luria wrote in the mid-sixteenth century that the majority of Polish Jews made their livings through affairs with debt and merchandise71 – the frequent contact of Teutonic Order officials with moneylenders and pawnbrokers supports the impression that the Polish-Jewish population engaged in various businesses and also debt-related practises, the latter making only a small percentage of the general business contacts. Due to the nature of the letter tradition, most of the cases addressed occurred in the mid-fifteenth century. It becomes obvious that there was no taboo on Jewish moneylending in the different towns and regions. Nonetheless, it is difficult to estimate the importance of Jewish moneylenders compared to their Christian counterparts, since in most regulations involving moneylending, usury and interest, Jews are not mentioned separately, or are not mentioned at all.72 Regarding the collection of incoming Order correspondence, the OBA, Forstreuter’s list of sources is fairly complete: the Jewish physicians travelling and working in Prussia; the conflict between Lithuanian Jews and an official of the Order who had stolen their goods; and also the following cases in which the high master mentions debts he has to Jews in the neighbouring areas. In the largely pragmatic letters between different Order officials regarding financial affairs, the stereotype of Jewish usury rarely arises, or, more to the point, it is only found in those cases where the Order is attempting to build a case against a plaintiff or claimant. Such was the case with Witche von Wilsdorf, the heir of Hans Küchmeister, an

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amtmann in Jägerndorf/Krnov. Witche brought his case against the town of Olmütz/Olomuc to Emperor Sigismund, who intervened with the Order on his behalf. In an attempt to explain the situation to the high master, Duke Ludwig II of Brzeg wrote about the lies and tricks used by Jewish businessmen in Legnica to gain property: Now, Witche, whom we never believed, has the treasure in his power, and has pawned it to the Jews, and has resolved the hypothec only in the last day with several Jews, who did not recognize the hypothec, and has also with the resolution given a new house to the Jews, as it was included in there … When the treasure was found, we were told secretly where it was to be found, but we could not get hold of it otherwise than by a purchase within a week, and we had to give the money to the Jews, with great loss and pressure caused to our poor people.73

Ludwig II of Brzeg makes use of some signal terms that belong to the repertoire of traditional antisemitism and encompass both the Jews themselves and their Christian ally: they are dishonest and not to be trusted; they make secret deals among themselves and deal in property they do not own; they demand prices from the Christian lords that inevitably place a greater burden on subordinates. Despite all of this, the case is not specifically against the Jewish moneylenders and pawnbrokers in Legnica, but against Witche.74 The duke’s hostile attitude towards the Jews and their financial affairs in the wake of the conflict with Witche found its counterpart in the expulsion of all Jews from Silesia only thirty years later – which also affected the Teutonic Order’s Jewish subjects. This example can, however, not prove anything beyond the general insight that Christian landlords were affected by anti-Jewish stereotypes and used them when they seemed to help their cause. The sources point out some areas bordering the Prussian heartlands as focal points of contact between Teutonic Order officials and Jewish moneylenders – the aforementioned case suggests Silesia, others particularly Nowa Nieszawa, close to Toruń, and Nova Marchia, west of Prussia. For the latter, the documentation of Jewish communities is extant from sources outside the Teutonic Order, while the Order’s sources mainly mention the Jews of the area as moneylenders who maintained business relations with the landlord. Nova Marchia is thus both an example of an area incorporated into the Order’s realm in which Jewish communities flourished and of financial relations of a Christian corporation with professional moneylenders of Jewish faith. Nova Marchia, acquired by the Order in 1402, was a region of considerable economic concern to the Order in the 1440s and 1450s; demands for money appear frequently in the sources concerning both Christian

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and Jewish claimants. At the same time, other bailiwicks also began having financial difficulties following the military losses suffered by the Order during the first half of the fifteenth century; at this point, the high master in Prussia began to receive regular reports of financial affairs involving Teutonic Order officials and Jews throughout the empire.75 In 1451, the visitator of the German and Roman (welsche) lands, Georg von Egloffstein, reported the miserable financial condition of the bailiwick of Thuringia to High Master Ludwig von Erlichshausen and discussed possible solutions. A particular problem raised by the visitator was that Duke Friedrich von Sachsen had ‘gefangin, geschatzt unde uß yren landin vortrebin’ (caught, expropriated and expelled from his lands) all the Jews, and this raised an unresolved debt to the Order dating back to 1432; Georg mentioned that the issue would take about a year to resolve and would require Duke Wilhelm III to advocate on behalf of the Order.76 This is a peculiar message, since there is no parallel tradition about a planned and systematic expulsion of the Saxonian Jews, only evidence of the discontinuation of settlements for reasons that are not entirely clear.77 The Jewish communities in Nova Marchia – the major one being in Königsberg in der Neumark/Chojna – shared for the most part the legal situation of similar communities in the rest of the Mark Brandenburg, with one exception: in Nova Marchia a certain privilege was granted to Jews by Margrave Ludwig, on 30 November 1349, and was renewed in 1350 – the privilege specified that the city councils were to protect Jews, grant them free passage throughout the land and accord them the same rights and privileges as other town dwellers. Jews were assessed a moderate tax, but exempted from all other taxes. As well, those indebted to Jews were asked to pay their debts, and the bailiffs of the towns were instructed to help them to exercise their rights. These comprehensive privileges were particularly remarkable since they were issued during the Black Death pogroms and presumably encouraged an increase in Jewish settlement.78 At the same time, Königsberg in der Neumark was the sole site in the region of an anti-Jewish pogrom during the years of the Black Death. When the Teutonic Order took over Nova Marchia fifty years later, it quickly became a source of constant financial concern for the new landlord, who showed little interest in the newly acquired area but had to deal with recurrent financial claims by the bailiff, mostly for ransom money of hostages. Not only were large sums of money involved when purchasing the freedom of hostages, but money also had to be sent to cover their personal needs while in captivity.79 This strip of land on the eastern edge of the Mark Brandenburg had been home to several

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Jewish communities, and the Order’s brief rule, which only lasted until 1454, seemed to have little significant impact; these communities survived intact until two host desecration accusations, one in 1492 and the other in 1510, which led to the expulsion of all Jews from Mecklenburg and the Mark Brandenburg. ‘The Jews in Nova Marchia’ appear frequently as moneylenders and bail bondsmen in the Order’s letters. The bailiff of Nova Marchia admitted to the high master in 1445 that he owed two hundred marks to Jews in Nova Marchia and Prenzlau (in Brandenburg),80 and the komtur of Toruń mentioned in a letter to the high master the possibility of attaining large loans from the Jews in Nova Marchia, who were in contact with others in Poznań – a loan of one thousand gulden was necessary to meet the Order’s needs. The komtur also mentioned that the same Jews held comprehensive pledges in the area.81 We have no normative or legal sources addressing the relationship between the Jews in Nova Marchia and the Teutonic Order’s bailiff, who was their formal landlord. Some instances might even indicate a particularly positive, or at least nonchalant, attitude of the Order. In 1446, all Jews were (temporarily) expelled from the rest of the Mark Brandenburg, but those in Nova Marchia, who were still under Teutonic Order rule, were not affected. Early Modern chroniclers narrate the events like this: Such a thing [an expulsion] has happened once in the fourteenth century … by command of Prince-Elector Ludwig, when all Jews were burned, probably because of the outbreak of the Plague. … Later, after this expulsion of the Jews, some of them have come back here, after a while. For example, the town council has made an agreement with the two Jews Moses and Gazam, on 5 November 1435, that they, their sons and daughters shall pay each year 1 schock bohemian groschen to the town. And on 4 July 1452, there were negotiations again between the town council and Jews regarding the taxes they have to pay annually for their stalls.82

These are the first documents to prove that Jews resettled in Königsberg in der Neumark during the Teutonic Order’s reign. In 1452, the Order’s short period of dominion came to an end, with the sale of the land to Prince Elector Friedrich II von Brandenburg. During the fifty years Nova Marchia belonged to the Teutonic Order, there were no reported expulsions or pogroms against the local Jewish communities. While the Jewish-Christian coexistence was quiet and peaceful in Nova Marchia itself, some of the inhabitants, when travelling, fell victim to the sweeping pogroms initiated by Johannes de Capestrano in Silesia during the years 1453–54.83 In this situation, we see the Teutonic Order’s role as landlord in protecting the Jews it governed,

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and particularly the moneylenders, despite its obvious sympathies for the preacher himself. Shortly after Johannes de Capestrano had preached in the area, host-desecration accusations were staged in Wrocław, leading to the burning of forty-one Jews on 2 June 1453 and the expulsion of all Jews from Silesia. These events raised some interest in Prussia; in March of that year, the komtur of Toruń had informed the high master of the presence of a ‘holy man’ in Wrocław and expressed some interest in meeting with him.84 Soon thereafter, Ludwig von Erlichshausen had asked the preacher to come and provide counselling regarding the obnoxious inhabitants of the Prussian towns, sending both letters and a priest from Elbląg to support the request. However, Johannes de Capestrano was so busy in Wrocław that he had to decline the high master’s request, even though he had made the acquaintance of a priest brother, who was a highly placed Order official, a year earlier.85 The various attempts to attract the preacher’s attention and invite him to Prussia failed. Johannes excused himself on the basis of physical infirmity and the important task the Holy See had assigned him in Bohemia. He advised the high master to keep the peace and preserve the unity with his subordinates and encouraged him to remember his sapientia et prudentia (wisdom and moderateness), but remained in Wrocław. The letter was written by Johannes’s orator Jacob and sealed with Johannes’s manu propria in shaky letters.86 Johannes’s important task in Bohemia and Silesia included intense public preaching of the sort that had already led to anti-Jewish pogroms all over Europe, as was the case in Wrocław. While the anti-Jewish violence was a concern to town authorities in many places, they welcomed Johannes’s appeals for moral improvement. The high master was obviously hoping that were Johannes to preach in Prussia, he would deliver a thorough reprimand to the Order’s subjects, who were busy organizing resistance against their landlord. However, the consequences for local Jews of the holy man’s visit were not even appreciated within the Order. Bishop Franciscus von Braunsberg and the komtur of Elbląg, Heinrich Reuß, included a report about the danger to the Wrocław Jews in a lengthy letter to the high master on 21 June, in which they also listed a number of assaults on Prussian burghers and merchants by Poles and discussed the actions of the traitorous Toruń city council, which had acted against the Order. ‘Also, they are going to burn all the Jews of Breslau, because of strange things they did with the body of the Lord.’87 In the light of this and the other information the men provided the high master, they asked for him to intervene with the emperor as soon as

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his delegate was able to come to the court. It is peculiar that the bishop and the komtur wanted the high master to intervene on behalf of the Wrocław Jews and that they presented the attempted murder of Jews as equivalent to other offenses committed by King Ladislaus and the Poles against the Prussian authorities – is it possible that the Teutonic Order perceived the Wrocław Jews as part of their dominion? There were definitely inhabitants from the Order’s lands among the victims of the Wrocław pogrom. The accounts of the trial mention accused Jews and converts in Wrocław, Opole/Oppeln, Świdnica/Schweidnitz (all in Silesia), Löwenberg (in Mark Brandenburg), Legnica/Legenitz and Głogów/Glogau, Karłowice/Ketzendorf, and Oleśnica/Oels (in Lower Silesia).88 A particular case indicates that financial concerns might have been the reasoning behind the delegates’ wish for intervention. David from Soldin/Myślibórz was an influential moneylender who, among other things, did business with the Teutonic Order. He and some of his fellows seem to have been in Wrocław during the pogroms and were caught and incarcerated. The bailiff of Nova Marchia wrote to the town of Wrocław on their behalf and received an answer clarifying that David and the others were not considered to have taken part in the crime the Wrocław Jews were accused of – a host desecration. Letters addressing the matter were exchanged between the Wrocław city council and Christoffel Eglinger, the Teutonic Order’s official in Nova Marchia. We have received your letter and intent about your Jews and Jewesses, and we have eagerly brought the case before the messengers and ambassadors of our dear lord, King Ladislaus, regarding the Jews, and they have told us that they are reluctant to deal with these Jews, because they mean that they are innocent of the deeds committed here by other Jews, and as soon as the case of the Jews has come to us here, we hope that the case will be over soon and that they leave your Jews free and physically intact and let them go soon. But for now, they need to sit in there together for a short while and wait for the case to be resolved, and their friends and bail bondsmen need to be patient, since so many things have to be written in this matter, but we are willing and eager to acknowledge your good will and interest in them, which is the foremost reason for them to be let free. Given on Monday before All Saints Day in the year 53. Councilmen of the town of Breslau.89

The Wrocław city council joined the king’s ambassadors and Johannes de Capestrano himself in questioning and torturing the local Jews, who were forced to admit that they had not only desecrated the host in their synagogue but that they had also sent pieces of the Sacrament to Jews in other towns in Poland, which also made foreign

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Jews targets of this sweeping trial. Thus, the bailiff of Nova Marchia did not believe ‘his’ Jews would soon be returned and asked the high master to directly intervene – the reason for the bailiff’s concern was that the David in question had carried a number of highly valuable pledges with him, and David’s wife, back in Soldin, was unable to satisfy the economic expectations of those who had given him the pledges. Christoffel included a copy of the abovementioned letter in which the Wrocław councilmen had promised to dismiss David and his fellows with his letter, but Georg did not believe this would actually happen and feared there would be serious consequences for himself and for the high master. His letter expresses the distress he suffered: These two letters from the caretaker of Nova Marchia came to Marienburg … in the year 54. They speak about the Jew David and his wife, who were captured in Breslau, and include also a copy of a letter from those from Breslau and one by Claus Sparren who offers his help. I ask your honour to know that they have captured one of the Jews of your grace named David, from Soldin and other Jews and Jewesses and brought them into prison and keep them away from me, and your honour and others from Nova Marchia suffer great losses from this, because the named David has their silver pawns with him, and his wife does not know how to resolve this. Regarding this, they have asked me to bring this in front of your honour and ask you to write to those of Breslau because of the named Jews, so that your people get their pawns and silver goods back. … I am begging your honour to write on behalf of the named Jew and also the Jewess and admonish those of Breslau to set your Jews free. I also send your honour with this letter a copy of the letter from those of Breslau, in which they tell me that they had planned to set the Jews free, but still, they do not follow my wishes, from which your honour suffers great and large damage. Given in Königsberg, Friday before Epiphanias 1454. Bailiff of Nova Marchia.90

His fears were well founded. The confiscation of the Jewish property had already started on 26 June 1453, and the final expulsion was pronounced on 30 January 1455; the Jews from Soldin, who fell within the Teutonic Order’s dominion, were still incarcerated at that time. The sources do not tell us whether David and the others were finally freed. King Ladislaus’s ambassadors compiled a list of confiscated goods, pawned items and obligations, but not the names of their former owners, who by this point had been killed, making it impossible to determine whether this list includes David’s and the other Soldiner’s goods. Since their names also do not appear among those of people who had their confiscated goods restored (for example, ‘a Jew who belonged to Duke Bernhard’, having his goods with another Jew from

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Wrocław, from whom it was confiscated and given back),91 it is unlikely that they were freed. Whatever the fate of David and his fellows might have been, Cristoffel Egloffstein’s intervention and his communication with the high master in this matter prove that the Order had the same attitude towards his Jewish subordinates as most other landlords: they were necessary as a financial asset and, in some cases, as loan providers; as a result, they had to be protected both because they were a kind of necessary property and because it was a general duty of the landlord. When other landlords or peoples threatened their safety and compromised their capacity to fulfil the Order’s economic needs, the Order was willing to take official measures to protect and save ‘its’ Jews. This might not have been the case for the Prussian heartlands, but when the Order took over Nova Marchia, it also took over the landlord’s obligations towards the local Jews – which in case of kidnapping were the same obligations as he had for his Christian subjects. Just as was the case in Nova Marchia, the Teutonic Order allowed Jewish settlement on the border of the Polish crown’s lands during the brief period that it controlled the region, also maintaining business relations with the local Jews even after it had lost the territory. Nessau/ Nieszawa, which is mentioned for the first time in 1230, was the site of the Teutonic Order’s southernmost Komturei until the 1422 Treaty of Melno, which awarded the county of Nieszawa to the Polish crown. The town was torn down and rebuilt in a slightly different location, still close to Toruń but deeper into the area controlled by the Polish crown, which renamed it Nowa Nieszawa or Neu-Nessau. Sławomir Jóżwiak discovered that a Jewish community existed there, possibly from the beginning of the fifteenth century, but certainly no later than 1440.92 Members of this community maintained economic relations with the Teutonic Order and with the towns; 93 in 1444, the towns acknowledged numerous loans from the Jews in Nessau and Poznań. Additionally, many individual citizens had deposited mortgages with them.94 In 1446, the komtur of Toruń wrote to the high master regarding economic difficulties, saying that he hoped that the Jews in Nessau might provide some money in exchange for an official letter and seal. Three years later, the captain of Kujawy sent Magister Maier to the high master with a letter issued in Nessau, which probably means that the magister came from Nessau.95 This scattered evidence of economic relations between the Teutonic Order and Jews clearly supports the image of a certain medieval normality that reigned between the Christian corporation and non-Christian moneylenders – normality in this case meaning the maintenance

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of business relations with Jews both inside and outside of one’s own territory and, within the context of these relations, a willingness to protect the Jews in their status as solvent partners. The two incidents of Jews who had a business relationship with the Order falling victim to a pogrom (or who were at least believed to have fallen victim to a pogrom), one in Wrocław and the other in Saxonia, are also the only evidence of the brethren discussing anti-Jewish violence – otherwise, expulsions and other forms of violence from the 1350s to the end of the fifteenth century completely escaped the interest of the brethren in Prussia – at least that is what their correspondence suggests. In both cases in question, the Order’s interest only arises because of the threat the pogroms pose to a business partner – Teutonic Order officials do not express either a positive or negative opinion of anti-Jewish sentiment, as such.

Expelling the Non-existing: Albrecht and the Towns When High Master Albrecht converted to Protestantism, the by then heavily reduced territory of the Teutonic Order suddenly became the secular Herzogliches Preußen. Albrecht pledged the oath of allegiance to the Polish king and thereby turned Prussia into a hereditary feudal tenure. The estates had agreed to his conversion and accepted the Reformation for all of Prussia. This had no immediate impact on the existence or non-existence of Jewish communities – however, the topic was taken up again, and the sources suggest that the towns and estates were slightly more interested in a solution than during the Order’s reign. Their recurrent pledges for a comprehensive ban on Jewish settlement suggests that by that time the merchant’s communities had become a bit more stable and permanent. In 1528, the towns again complained about Jewish trade and begged their landlord to issue regulations. At the diet of 9 May 1528, the estates asked king Sigismund I via his delegates to reinforce the laws regarding taxation of goods bought on the countryside in Prussia and mentioned that many Jews and others frequently passed the borders without paying the royal taxes; they also asked for the starosts to pay attention towards these violations.96 One year later, a delegate from Gdańsk travelled to Vilnius in order to meet the king and explain to him various concerns of the towns. One of these concerns was about Jewish trade, which, despite the fact that especially the small towns had complained several times before, was still present in Prussia in growing numbers. ‘There had been complaints about the Jews previously, particularly by

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the small towns, and there was no change visible; instead, the number of the Hebrews, who without any shame pursue their bargaining, had grown, and so the petition was repeated.’97 The tone of these edicts is already shaped by early modern anti-Jewish terms – schacherey, Hebräer, ohne Scham – but this can be due to the form of their tradition since they are only preserved in an eighteenth-century paraphrase. Later negotiations and conflicts show that the most important diploma regarding foreign trade was contained in the Renovatio pacis et concordiae perpetuae (Renovation of Perpetual Peace and Unity) between Sigismund the Old and Albrecht, from 21 June 1529. It confirmed the borders between Prussia and Lithuania and Samogitia and stated: Similarly, free shall be the transit and road for merchants and inhabitants of the lands, as well as the lords of the Order, that is, of the Duke of Prussia, with their goods and fruits, whichever grains and things and of whichever condition … in and to the empire of Poland, the lands Lithuania and Samogitia.98

The sources are contradictory regarding the next step of anti-Jewish regulations. Another eighteenth-century collection of diplomas lists a general ban on Jewish settlement in the Prussian lands, issued by the king on bequest of the towns on a Prussian diet in Marienburg in 1551. It complains about the ill-willed methods of Scots and Paudel-Krämer, small peddlers, of selling things of poor quality to the naive rural population.99 The foreign traders are also accused of misappropriating furs which rightfully belonged to the authorities and of gaining great profit from buying them from the rural population and then selling them; in order to prevent them from utterly disturbing the economic order of the land, Jews and Scots are forbidden to settle in Prussia. even though there had been a common prohibition that had been published under the seal of the country that no one should tolerate the vagrant Scots and other small peddlers, not in the towns nor in the countryside, who … not only sell bad goods to poor peasants and other simple people, but also gather different kinds of furs and pelts into their possession, which belong to the authorities. … In order to increase the losses of the common towns in this way, lots of Jews settle and root themselves in this country, against the old custom of this land. … Thus we prohibit seriously that any Jew shall be tolerated in the towns, villages and small towns. In the same way, no Scotsman, small peddler or whatever their name may be shall buy or sell outside of the common markets in the countryside, in the towns or in the villages.100

This regulation seems to be mainly directed against petty merchants and peddlers who work on the countryside and thereby drag away profit from the towns and their trading inhabitants, and who prevent

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the rural population from coming to the towns for trading and buying. The settlement restriction is directed against Jews and Scots, while the prohibition of buying up furs is directed at all peddlers. One year later, a similar privilege was granted again and extended by King Sigismund on behalf of the citizens of Gdańsk, prohibiting all foreign traders from importing goods from outside Prussia and selling them in Gdańsk, except if no domestic trader would be able to provide the same goods. In this version, Jews were not mentioned anymore, thus suggesting that, as had been the case before, the trading restriction was not mainly anti-Jewish but generally directed at foreigners, guests and resident non-citizens.101 Maria Bogucka interprets this source in a different direction, pointing out the fact that at the same time as settlement was forbidden, the participation in fairs and markets actually was allowed in this edict: the prohibition of buying and selling for Jews and Scots pertained ‘ausserhalb gemeinen Jahrmarkt’ (outside of the common fairs),102 which means that it was allowed during the fairs. She sees the participation of Jewish merchants in Prussian trade gaining momentum with this regulation, leading to an increased settlement of Jews and other foreigners in the vicinity of Gdańsk in the beginning of the sixteenth century. For the remains of the Prussian territory under the authority of Duke Albrecht, anti-Jewish restrictions were gaining momentum, despite occasional privileges for individuals. Albrecht employed the Jew Abraham Kreski around the year 1548 and granted him free passage in the Prussian lands, because he was to buy horses for the Margrave in Turkey.103 On bequest of the towns, he allowed the three towns of Königsberg in 1566 to claim a Leibzoll (body tax) from Jews, as was the custom in Gdańsk already, and to forbid them to store their goods.104 Without any visible reason or pre-history of negotiations, a Prussian diet on 26 July 1567 ordered all Jews to be expulsed from the Prussian lands within four weeks.105 The Jews shall hereafter not be tolerated in the Duchy, but they have to leave the country within four weeks, if they were to be met after this period, they shall be outlawed, and no letter nor seal shall protect or help them.106

This drastic measure was immediately contradicted by the Polish king Sigismund, who reminded Albrecht on 19 July 1567 about the old contracts mutually granting free trespassing and trade. In most of these letters and especially in the final response of King Sigismund from 18 October 1567, not only Jews but also Tatars, Russians and Armenians are mentioned.107

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Whatever the reasons for this sudden deterioration in JewishChristian relations, it was made permanent by Albrecht in several privileges. They were issued in Klaipėda and repeated in the following decades. While the original expulsion mentioned by Isaac Rülf cannot be found anymore, the subsequent orders attempting expulsion are preserved and testify to the difficulties of Albrecht and the towns to get rid of Jews permanently. In 1571, a willkür for the town of Memel forbade all inhabitants to trade with Jewish tollkeepers in the border areas, nor with any officials from there.108 In 1581, the prohibition for the town and administrative district of Memel was repeated by Georg Friedrich von Brandenburg; it comprised trading and all kinds of business contacts with Jews. For the first time it was mentioned that this trading was not only against previous mandates but also against Christianity in general. Not only the Jews but also the inhabitants of Memel should be punished if they gave shelter and housing to a Jew for more than two nights or otherwise helped them to remain in the town and region.109 In 1596, the duke continuously had heard of Jewish trade, and the prohibition was repeated and reinforced with a penalty of one hundred gulden.110 These expulsions from the ducal Prussia and particularly from Klaipėda may have marked the end of a several-centuries-long period of relatively peaceful coexistence. That the prohibitions for Memel had to be repeated three times at least, and that the punishment was announced for helping Christian inhabitants, not only for the Jews themselves, suggests that it took at least several decades to break up existing bonds and relations. When these had actually started is unknown, both for Klaipėda and for the towns of Königsberg and Gdańsk, who all by then had received de non tolerandis Iudaeis privileges. This development of the late sixteenth century, after the Teutonic Order’s territory had turned into a secular one, rather reinforces the impression that Jewish-Christian relations had been a rarely documented, never discussed and almost never complicated matter in the land governed by the Order. Most of the mandates from the second half of the sixteenth century concern Jewish trade and thus fall under the same precautions as have been discussed previously regarding trading restrictions for foreigners. That the first manifest expulsions of an existing community happened in Klaipėda and also comprised the contacts between Christian town dwellers and Jewish tollkeepers from Lithuania leads back to Kurt Forstreuter’s life-long concern: the mixture of ethnicities and cultures in the Prussian border regions, which despite all efforts persisted from the Middle Ages until the Shoah and Germany’s war of extinction and its aftermath.

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Notes 1. E. Fram, Ideals Face Reality: Jewish Law and Life in Poland, 1550–1655 (Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College Press, 1997), 17–21. 2. Preserved are: Neustadt Thorn 1300, Marienburg 1365, Altstadt Königs­ berg 1394, Culm 1400, Gdańsk 1448. T. Maciejewski, ‘Wilkierze miast lokowanych na prawie chełmińskim w państwie zakonnym (do 1454 r.)’, in Studia Culmensia Historico-Juridica czyli Księga pamiątkowa 750-lecia prawa Chełmińskiego, ed. Z. Zdrójkowski (Toruń, 1990), 361–92; G. Bender, ‘Die ältesten Willküren der Neustadt Thorn’, ZwG 7 (1882): 95–126. 3. The fact that all non-German inhabitants fell under guest law was already mentioned by Kurt Forstreuter in his argument against Jewish inhabitants of the town Tolkemit. Forstreuter, ‘Zur Frage der Juden’, 62. 4. ‘9. Wer burger wil werden. Keynner sal burger werdenn, ehr brennge denne gutte brive, das er frey sey unde elich geborenn sey … 67. von burger recht czu gewinnen. Alle, dy do herkommen in disse stadtt Dannczig unde sich gedenncken mit uns czu neren, die es wirdigk seinn, die sollenn ir burgerrecht gewynnen unde uns geleich unnde recht thun’. O. Günther, ‘Zwei unbekannte altpreußische Willküren’, ZwG 48 (1905): art. 9, 11; art. 67, 24. 5. K. Kopiński and P. Oliński (eds.), Księgi Młodego Miasta Gdańska 1400–1455 [1458–1459] (Toruń: TNT, 2008), lvii. 6. ‘Privilegium über die große und kleine Gerichtsbarkeit für Thorn’. OBA 236, 29 September 1346. For later periods of the town’s history was consulted A. Radzimiński and J. Tandecki, Katalog dokumentów i listów królewskich z Archiwum Panśtwowego w Toruniu: 1345–1789 (Warszawa: Naczelna Dyrekcja Archiwów Państwowych, 1999). 7. Z. H. Nowak and J. Tandecki (eds.), Księga ławnicza sądu przedmiejskiego Chełmna, 1480–1559 (1567) (Warszawa: PWN, 1990). 8. P. Panske (ed.), Urkunden der Komturei Tuchel: Handfesten und Zinsbuch (Danzig: Saunier, 1911). 9. K. Ciesielska (ed.), Księga Komturstwa Gdańskiego (Warszawa: PWN, 1985). 10. ‘91. Item Hannus Kruger und Austyn Losebecker syn burge wurden vor nochmanynge ken der stadt Danczik van der Keiserischen gut wegen, das Austyn Losebecker entphangen hat, XIIIIC XVII etc’. Kopiński and Oliński, Księgi Młodego, 16. 11. K. Ciesielska and J. Tandecki (eds.), Księga ławnicza Starego Miasta Torunia (1428–1456), 2 vols. (Toruń: TNT, 1992), 1:72. 12. Toruń: Niclas Iode. K. Kaczmarczyk (ed.), Liber scabinorum veteris civitatis Thoruniensis 1363–1428 (Toruń: TNT, 1936), no. 1192; Ciesielska and Tandecki, Księga ławnicza, vol. 1, no. 869. Liborius Iode, Jorge Jode: K. Kopiński and J. Tandecki (eds.), Księga ławnicza Starego Miasta Torunia (1456–1479) (Toruń: Wydawn. Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, 2007), no. 786 etc. Elbląg: Tydeke Iode, Nickel Iodyn, Tidemann Iode. H. W. Hoppe (ed.), Das Elbinger Stadtbuch: 1330–1418, 2 vols. (Münster: Historischer Verein für Ermland, 1967–86). 13. Culm: Christof Jude/Christof Jode/Christof Judynne. Z. H. Nowak and J.  Tandecki (eds.), Księga czynszów fary Chełmińskiej, 1435–1496 (Toruń:

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TNT, 1994), no. 298, 360, 361. Gdańsk: Nicolaus Jode. K. Górski et al. (eds.), Akta stanów Prus królewskich T. 1 (1479–1488) (Warszawa: PWN, 1955), 429. 14. Elbląg: Jodessche. M. Pelech (ed.), Nowa księga rachunkowa Starego Miasta Elbląga 1404–1414 (Warszawa: PWN, 1987–89), no. 1133. 15. Again, some had not: Nowak and Tandecki, Księga ławnicza; Kopiński and Tandecki, Księga ławnicza. 16. For a general overview, see F. Ebel, ‘Des spreke wy vor eyn recht … Versuch über das Recht der Magdeburger Schöppen’, in Unseren fruntlichen grus zuvor: Deutsches Recht des Mittelalters im mittel- und osteuropäischen Raum; kleine Schriften, ed. F. Ebel (Köln: Böhlau, 2004), 423–511. 17. The political dimension that was attributed to this is illustrated by the fact that the edition of Magdeburger Schöffensprüche from Poland Minor was printed under the supervision of an editorial board established in 1941 for the research of Magdeburg law in the East, with Albert Brackmann at its head. T. Goerlitz (ed.), Magdeburger Schöffensprüche für die Hansestadt Posen und andere Städte des Warthelandes (Stuttgart, Berlin: Kohlhammer, 1944). Goerlitz himself was an unusual choice for a professorship at the University of Breslau, given his past in the DDP. But once he took over the leadership of the department for the research into Magdeburg law in the East, his publications made it clear that he hoped to legitimize German presence in the Polish territories, with arguments based on the spread of German law and the presumed rejection of Roman law in that region. T. Ditt, ‘Stoßtruppfakultät Breslau’: Rechtswissenschaft im ‘Grenzland Schlesien’ (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 185–95. 18. D. Janicka, ‘Zur Topographie der Städte des Magdeburger Rechts in Polen: Das Beispiel Kulm und Thorn’, in Grundlagen für ein neues Europa, ed. H. Lück et al. (Köln: Böhlau, 2009), 67–81. 19. I. HA, Rep. 178, no. 590. 20. ‘Kein Jude mag gewehre sein … wen bei dem anderen seine habe, die im abgestolen ader abgeraubt ist, so mag kein Jude gewehre sein vor Gerichte, dem cleger dem die habe gestolen ader abgeroubt ist, sondern sie sollen es behalten, hier dem Richter als recht ist.’ Kulmisches Recht in fünf Büchern, lib. 2, cap. 81. XX. HA, Ostpreußische Folianten, no. 13746, fol. 45v; K. C. Leman, Das alte kulmische Recht: Mit einem Wörterbuche (Berlin: Dümmler, 1838), 46. 21. G. Kisch, The Jews in Medieval Germany: A Study of Their Legal and Social Status (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1949); G. Kisch, Die Kulmer Handfeste: Rechtshistorische und textkritische Untersuchungen nebst Texten, zugleich ein Beitrag zur Verbreitungsgeschichte des Magdeburger Rechts (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1931); C. Magin, ‘Wie es umb der Iuden recht stet’: Der Status der Juden in spätmittelalterlichen Rechtsbüchern (Göttingen: Wallstein, 1999). 22. E. J. H. Steffenhagen (ed.), Deutsche Rechtsquellen in Preußen vom XIII. bis zum XVI. Jahrhundert (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1875), for the Elbinger Rechtsbuch’s Jewry law chap. 61, 118–37. 23. W. Wackernagel (ed.), Das Landrecht des Schwabenspiegels (Zürich/ Frauenfeld: Beyel, 1840), chap. 214, 209–12.

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24. Magin, Wie es umb der Iuden, passim. 25. ‘Danzig Stadtbibl. XVIII. C. f. 72, 16. Jh. Danziger Willkür, Danziger Schöffenordnung etc. Judeneid 1537’, HS no. 18 in Steffenhagen, Rechtsquellen, 9. 26. ‘Thorn, Öffentliche Bibliothek, Rps 30, 14.–15. Jahrhundert’. Presumably Wojewódzka Biblioteka Publiczna in Toruń is meant. W. Carls, ‘Rechtsquellen sächsisch–magdeburgischen Rechts im Untersuchungsgebiet Polen’, in Sächsisch–magdeburgisches Recht in Polen: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Rechts und seiner Sprache, ed. I. Bily et al. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011), 91. 27. Kisch, Jews in Medieval Germany, 54. The original manuscript from Königsberg is now lost; five manuscripts of an abridged version from 1408 are preserved, as well as the Albert Poelmann print version. Carls, ‘Rechtsquellen’, 92. 28. A. Poehlmann, Handtbuch Darinnen zu finden/ was sich fast teglichen/ bey Gerichte zutreget (Magdeburg: Giesecke, 1574), Liber nonus, articuli 15 and 16, s. p. 29. ‘[517] eyn Jude, Elyas genant, vom Rewschen Briszk und hat bekant, das her vorkoufft hat Heynrich Kruger desse nochgeschreben ware. … Zcu der czale hiruff hat Heynrich Kruger, dem genanten Juden gegeben an laken und an gelde. … Ouch zo hat derselbe Jude bekant, das her ­dyselben obgeschreben 10 schok nymande geben sal, denne seyme swoger Aaron, und sust nymande keyn breth zcu steet an den trifften, denne alleyne Heynrich Kruger. Actum feria VI ante Barnabe apostoli [8 VI 1464].’ (A Jew from Bresk Litowsk came and testified that he had sold the following goods to Heinrich Kruger. … To pay this, Heinrich Kruger gave the Jew money and cloth. … Additionally, the same Jew has testified that he shall not give the named 10 schok to anyone but his brother-inlaw Aaron, and no one has any claims on the wood other than Heinrich Kruger. This happened on the sixth day before St Barnabas the Apostle’s day.) Kopiński and Tandecki, Księga ławnicza, 118. 30. Forstreuter, ‘Die Juden im Deutschordenslande Preußen’, 278–79. 31. Roman Czaja has published extensively on this subject. See, for example: R. Czaja, Miasta pruskie a Zakon Krzyżacki: Studia nad stosunkami między miastem a władzą terytorialną w późnym średniowieczu (Toruń: Wydawn. Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, 1999); R. Czaja, ‘Patrician Guilds in Medieval Towns on the Baltic Coast’, Acta Poloniae Historica 92 (2005): 31–50; R. Czaja, ‘The Development of the Estates: Assemblies in Livonia, Prussia and Poland in the Later Middle Ages’, ZfO 58(3) (2010): 312–28. 32. For the most recent comprehensive work on the fifteenth-century Prussian towns and how they were organized, with a focus on the activities of the council members, see R. Skowrońska-Kamińska, Posłowie wielkich miast pruskich w latach 1411–1454: Przyczynek do funkcjonowania mieszczańskich elit politycznych w średniowieczu (Malbork: Muzeum Zamkowe w Malborku, 2007). 33. J. Luciński, ‘Przywilej Chełmiński z 1233 r., jego treść oraz dzieje jego postanowień’, in Zdrójkowski, Studia Culmensia, 81–144.

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34. On the complicated procedures surrounding the ‘eternal’ peace, see A.  Rüther, ‘“Ein bisschen Frieden”: Vorformen, Abstufungen und Übergänge des Friedens von Melnosee 1422’, in Od traktatu kaliskiego do pokoju oliwskiego: Polsko-krzyżacko-pruskie stosunki dyplomatyczne w latach 1343–1660; praca zbiorowa, ed. A. Bues (Warszawa: Wydawn. DiG, 2014), 211–26, with further references. 35. AST, vol. 1, 701. 36. ‘Item der danczkir gedechenisse. Von den juden die her in kouffslahen. Item von den littawischen kowfluthen, das die hie im lande nicht kawslageten in den huwsen mit den husen, alse engilschen und der gliche. Item das ein gast nicht koufslahe mit dem andern.’ OBA 6314. 37. The diploma of the peace treaty itself is kept in the central archive of the Order in Vienna. A collection of copies, excerpts and translations is to be found in OBA 7131. 38. AST, vol. 2, 53–55. 39. ‘Sunderlich von den juden walden dy polan das sy her ins land sulden kauffen und vorkouffen, das es eyn artikel des ewigen fredes inne sulle halden das sy sprechen das erer lande leuthe in unsern lande kouffen sullen und vorkouffen.’ (Particularly for the Jews the Poles want them to buy and sell in this country, that it should be an article of the eternal peace, that they say that the people of their country can buy and sell in our country.) Thorn, 18 May 1442. OBA 8130. As this letter seems somewhat misplaced, the easiest explanation for its content would be a misdating. If the date is assumed to be correct, the most reasonable interpretation is that it was written in the context of the rumours about the toll exemptions. These are described in J. Voigt, Die Zeit vom Hochmeister Konrad von Erlichshausen 1441 bis zum Tode des Hochmeisters Ludwig von Erlichshausen 1467 (Königsberg: Gebrüder Bornträger, 1838), 40–44. 40. In spite of being quite low, the Pfundzoll was a constant issue of conflict between the high master and the towns. See J. Sarnowsky, ‘Zölle und Steuern im Ordensland Preußen (1403–1454)’, in Zakon Krzyżacki a społeczeństwo państwa w Prusach: Zbiór studiów, ed. Z. H. Nowak (Toruń: TNT, 1995), 67–81. 41. Jolowicz, Geschichte der Juden, 2–3. Górski, Akta stanów, does not support his thesis. 42. For additional references, see Bogucka, ‘Jewish Merchants’. 43. 20 January 1451. OBA 10553. 44. ‘Kazimierz Jagiellończyk w. mistra wzywa. Grodno 25 października 1453’. A. Lewicki (ed.), Codex epistolaris saeculi decimi quinti, 3 vols. (New York: Johnson, 1965), T. 3: 1392–1501, no. 57, 70–71. 45. ‘Stenczel marschalk des genediges heren koniges vnnd howptman czu Sarter ... wol vornomen haben vnse erste schriffte dy wir euch geschrebin hattin als umb unsern guttern vnde der Juden dy mit vnrecht genomen sint ... wen dy selbige juden vor das nuwe ein jor vorgangen mit anen guttern koffschatczen vnnd habenigen czu Konegsborg vnd czu danczke gewest sind vnnd haben dor uewern landen ffrey gewancket gekoffslaet … geschit is nicht mit gutte und ffrome so wellen wir so lange harnen

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vnnd machen vnnd doroff gedencken wy das wir mochten das vnse vnnd der juden gutter wedir krigen vnnd begeren vmb ein antwort vns dornoch czu richtende.’ (Stenczel, bailiff of the gracious lord the king and captain in Sarter … you have surely received our first letter that we sent you regarding our goods and those of the Jews, which were taken without right … because the same Jews were wandering and trading in Königsberg and in Gdańsk freely with the goods and trading commodities only a year ago. … If it doesn’t happen amicably, we will be insistent and act and think of what to do, so that we get our and the Jews’ goods back, and we desire an answer we can rely upon.) 6 September 1468. OBA 16155. 46. 2 May 1451. OBA 10681. Names based on W. Hubatsch and E. Joachim (eds.), Regesta historico-diplomatica ordinis S. Mariae Theutonicorum, 3 vols. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1948), vol. 1; the original in GStA has been lost. 47. 30 June 1472. OBA 16338. 48. 20 March 1473. OBA 16401. 49. K. E. Napiersky (ed.), Index corporis historico-diplomatici Livoniae, Esthoniae, Curoniae, 2 vols. (Riga: E. Frantzen, 1835), vol. 2, no. 2042, 48. 50. [Ca. 1475]. OBA 16592. 51. ‘Gedechtnis … Item Janicke Jetzkowetz Jude …’. 1488 s. d. OBA 17401. 52. 27 March 1417. OBA 2499. 53. Broda, ‘Żydowscy lekarze’. 54. OBA 12688, OBA 12708. 55. E. Keyser and E. Bahr, Die Baugeschichte der Stadt Danzig (Köln: Böhlau, 1972), 317n10; R. Sprandel, Das mittelalterliche Zahlungssystem: Nach hansisch-nordischen Quellen des 13.–15. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann, 1975), 60–62. 56. W. Stephan, Danzig: Gründung und Straßennamen (Marburg/Lahn: Johann Gottfried Herder-Institut, 1954), 161. 57. E. Frankot, ‘Der ehrbaren Hanse-Städte See-Recht: Diversity and Unity in Hanseatic Maritime Law’, in The Hanse in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. J. Wubs-Mrozewicz and S. Jenks (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 115–16. 58. In 1380, Jungstadt received a town law from the high master; it made no mention of Jews. Printed in P. Simson, Geschichte der Stadt Danzig: In 4 Bänden (Danzig: Kafemann, 1918), 1:59–61. 59. Ibid., 208. 60. Bogucka, ‘Jewish Merchants’, 49. 61. J. Kalik, ‘Scepter of Judah: The Jewish Autonomy in the Eighteenth-Century Crown Poland (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 50–51. 62. ‘Geschichte der Juden in Danzig’, 211. 63. 1394. OBA 527. 64. M. Perlbach, Quellen-Beiträge zur Geschichte der Stadt Königsberg im Mittelalter (Wiesbaden: Dr. Martin Sändig, 1969 [1878]), 16–18. The medieval history of the town must be reconstructed from the sources produced by the Teutonic Order, since the Königsberg town archive and its medieval holdings were destroyed in World War II.

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65. Baczko, Versuch einer Geschichte, 315. 66. ‘Jura Iudaeis per Boleslaum, Ducem Majoris Poloniae, a. 1264 concessa, per Casimirum Vero III. a. 1334 ac per Casimirum IV a. 1447 et 1467 confirmata’, in Jus Polonicum, codicibus veteribus manuscriptis et editionibus quibusque collatis, ed. J. W. Bandtkie Stężyński (Warszawa [s.n.], 1831), 1–21. 67. The privilege reads: ‘Vortmehr wff das die vorgemelte unnsir stat Danczke zcu vorhogeter zeligkeith und wolfart komen moge, vorleyan wir, geben und zculassen, das keyn Nuremberger, Lumbarth, Engelscher, Hollandir, Flamigk, Jude, adir welcherley weszens wsz fremden reichen unde landen eyn iderman ist, in der vorgeschrebenen unnsir stat Danczik macht, privilegia addir freiheit haben sal zcu kouffslagen adir zcu wonen an willen, wissen und volborth der burgermester, radmanne, scheppen und gantcze gemeyne unnsir stat Danczik nachgenumpt.’ (Additionally, for our previously named town of Gdańsk to gain additional salvation and benefits, we state, give and allow, that no Nurembergish, Lombardish, English, Hollandish, Flemish, Jew or whatever kind from foreign empires and countries they may be shall have the privilege or the liberty to trade or to settle in our town of Gdańsk, without the desire, knowledge and approval of the mayors, council members, lay judges and the entire community of our town of Gdańsk.) 6 April 1454. AST, vol. 4, 396–97. For confirmation of the privilege, see ibid., 15 May 1457, 557–62, Simson, Geschichte der Stadt Danzig, 1:114–18. 68. Echt, Geschichte, 14. 69. ‘Geschichte der Juden’, 209; Bogucka, ‘Jewish Merchants’, 48. 70. G. Todeschini, ‘Christian Perceptions of Jewish Economic Activities in the Middle Ages’, in Wirtschaftsgeschichte der mittelalterlichen Juden: Fragen und Einschätzungen, ed. M. Toch and E. Müller-Luckner (München: Oldenbourg, 2008), 1–16; J. L. Mell, The Myth of the Medieval Jewish Moneylender (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). 71. Fram, Ideals Face Reality, 21. 72. For example, ‘Bekanntmachung des HM Konrad Zöllner von Rothenstein über Zinsnahme und -kauf’ does not mention Jews. 2 May 1382. OBA 446. 73. ‘Nu hat Witche daz cleynod von synes selbis macht dem wir nichtes glaubt haben daz cleynod mit hoer und grossen macht vorsatczt und die juden, und erst die vorsatczunge uff den leczten tag vorbottet czu etlich juden die der vorsatczunge loekenten und hat ouch mit der lozunge die juden an uns nye geweyst, als darin billich wer[de …] Do itzcund cleynod vorstanden was do wardh is uns kunth in eynem geheyme wo das stuende und mochte uns nicht ander niden wenn zu eynem wochen kouffe, und musten daz gelt zu judischen hand uff grossen schaden und beswernisse unser armen leuten.’ [3 March 1425] Ludwig von Brieg to High Master. OBA 4399. 74. Six years later, another letter directed at a Teutonic Order official mentions the necessity to talk about a certain Jew in Nova Marchia, but since it is only a list of different issues for the schedule of a meeting with the bailiff of Nova Marchia, no connection can be established. ‘Bischof

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Christof von Lebus an den Deutschordens-Bruder Jorge von Seckendorf, gen. v. Remhofen. Tagsatzung mit dem Vogt der Neumark, “von des juden wegen”. Feindseligkeiten der Küstriner etc.’ 26 January 1431. OBA 5576. 75. 10 March 1447, Pelplin. Claus Dameraw to high master. The komtur in Nuremberg helped him to come to Vienna, sold precious things to the Jews in Nuremberg. OBA 9302. 76. 9 November 1450, Zwetzen. Bailiff of Thuringia to high master. OBA 10425. 77. M. Lämmerhirt, Juden in den wettinischen Herrschaftsgebieten: Recht, Verwaltung und Wirtschaft im Spätmittelalter (Köln: Böhlau, 2007), 464–67. 78. G. Sello, ‘Markgraf Ludwigs des Aelteren Neumärkisches Judenprivileg vom 9. September 1344’, Der Bär 5(3–7) (1879): 21–27, 33–35, 41–44, 55–57, 63–65; Heise, Juden, 87–88. Regest: BR01, no. 118, in A. Haverkamp and J. R. Müller (eds.), Corpus der Quellen zur Geschichte der Juden im spätmittelalterlichen Reich (Trier/Mainz, 2013), http://www.medieval-ashkenaz.org/, with further references. 79. List of money the high master had sent to Nova Marchia. ‘Item 100 gutte mark ouch den gefangenen in die marke gesant. Item 2700 reynische gulden hat ouch der herre homeister die gefangen damit czu losen in die neuwemarke gesant … item 370 m. gut gelt, die der herre homeister dem howptmann zcu costryn vor die schatczunge hans von buch und dem juden mit dem schaden doruff gegangen hat gegeben.’ (Sent also 100 good marks to the prisoners to the Mark. Additionally, the high master has sent 2700 Rheinish Gulden to Nova Marchia in order to bail out the prisoners … also 370 mark, which the high master has given to the captain of Köstrin for the goods of Hans von Buch and the financial loss which the Jew had on this.) [1443/44]. OBA 8392. Sarnowsky, Wirtschaftsführung, no. 42, 845–47. A Hans von Buch is documented as Pfleger of Neidenburg in the years 1435–37, another or the same as bailiff of Stuhm in 1446–47. D. Heckmann, ‘Amtsträger des Deutschen Ordens in Preußen und in den Kammerballeien des Reiches (oberste Gebietiger, Komture, Hauskomture, Kumpane, Vögte, Pfleger, Großschäffer)’. Hans von Buch appears again in letters from the bailiff of Neumark and the high master in 1452, again regarding financial claims. 21 May 1452, Soldin, OBA 11229; and 7 June 1452, OBA 11251. 80. OBA 9020 [about 1445?]; a note from the bailiff of Nova Marchia to the high master, issues to be resolved in Nova Marchia, naming a debt of 200 Gulden to ‘deme joden tzu prenislaw’ (the Jew in Prenzlau), and debts for the accommodation of prisoners. 81. ‘Gebietsversammlung zur Beratung über ein neues Regiment: Komtur zu Thorn.’ 9 November 1444. AST, vol. 2, 625–26. Also: OBA 8597. 82. ‘Extirpiert worden … solches ist geschehen einmal mitten im 14. Seculo… auf befehl Churfürst Ludewigs, alle juden vermutlich der erregten peste halber verbrannt hat. … Nechhin haben sich nach solcher fortschaffung der Juden, mit der zeit, wieder einige hier eingefunden. Wie denn a. 1435 fer. 6 ante martini diem, der magistrat, mit den zweyen juden hieselbst,

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mosen und gazam, sich so verglichen, daß sie mit ihren söhnen und töchtern, jährlich an die stadt unam sexagenam grossorum bohemicor. 1 schock böhmisch groschen zahlen möchten. Und a. 1452 fer. 6 inffra octavas petr & paul ist wieder zwischen Magistrat und Juden hieselbst beschlossen, was sie von ihren Buden und sonsten jährlich geben sollten.’ A. Kehrberg, Erleuterter historisch-chronologischer Abriß der Stadt Königsberg in der Neu-Marck, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Gedicke, 1724), I. Abteilung, 29. Kapitel, 241–42. [3rd edition online, but same information – no incident for 1444 reported.] 83. See Rymar, ‘Średniowiecznymi śladami Żydów’. On the time range and content of the sermons, see O. Gecser, ‘Itinerant Preaching in Late Medieval Central Europe: St. John Capistran in Wroclaw’, Medieval Sermon Studies 47 (2003): 5–20. 84. ‘Ouch … so leyt her hans van buchen nach alhie und ist sere kranck, und kan andirt nicht dirfarn da her vorhut nun das her hen ussen furn breslaw will czu dem hilgen mane.’ (Also, Hans von Buch is lying here and is very sick, and cannot go there otherwise, even though he wants to go to Breslau to the holy man.) 3 March 1453. OBA 11799. AST, vol. 3, no. 323. 85. A year earlier, Jost Cropp, priest brother of the Order in Sarntheim, and Georg von Egloffstein, had met with Johannes de Capestrano on their visitation travel through the bailiwicks of the Reich. A. Mentzel-Reuters, Arma spiritualia, 256. 86. ‘Ex letteris reverendissime domine vestre necnon et ab oratore vestro Stefano plebano oppidi vestri maioris Elburg. ... Sed prohibent me illustrissime domine corpusculi debilitas et bohemorum suscepta causa a sancta sede aplica mihi permissa.’ Johannes of Capestrano to high master, Breslau, 27 June 1453. OBA 12155. 87. ‘Item man wil ouch die Juden czu breslaw alle brinnen vmb merckliche sach willen dy sy mit gotes leichnam getriben haben.’ Franciscus of Braunsberg and Heinrich Reuß to high master, Graz, 21 June 1453. OBA 12133. 88. See Rymar, ‘Średniowiecznymi śladami Żydów’. One of the two independent accounts of this pogrom is edited in B. Wyrozumska, ‘Relacja o pogromie Zydów wrocławskich w 1453 roku’, Roczniki Historyczne 69 (2003): 189–94; here also are found the names and places of origin of the accused. The pogrom is not described in detail in Jewish sources but is mentioned in the responsa of Israel Bruna ben Hayyim (1400–1480). Graetz, Geschichte, 206. It also entered into a number of Christian historiographic sources. 89. ‘von wegen euwer juden und judynnen an uns gelanget had, wir abir mit vleysse brocht an unsirs gnedigen hern koniges laszlas rethe ambasiaten vunde sendebothin itzundir alhie by uns. In der juden sachin etc. und die habin uns czugesagt das sie sich an ewren juden ungerne vorwylen welden so als sie an sulchir that, alhie von andrin juden veder begangen unschuldig seyn meynen. Unde so balde der juden sachin alhie bie uns vullin so wir hoffin in kortcz zcu ende wessin werdyn, weldin sie euwern juden dye deme des lebes und gesundes sichir seyn sollin frey

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ledigkt und los aws lassin. Ap sie denne etczint noch eyne kortzce czeyd neben ander sitzen vnde sullin der sachin aws beharren mussen dar inne, mussen sze frunde en methalden unde gedult habin, wenn so vil wir der sachin mergken und vorstehen mogen hat das sache das allis nicht nodturff ist zuvorschreiben wes wir vorder iren behagelicheyt und wolgefallin da durch sye uffs irste frey werdin mogen. Hir inne zum besten fugen konnen dar zou seyn wir willig und unverdrossin. Gegebin am montage vor omnium sanctorum anno 53. Radmanne der Stad Breslaw.’ ‘Rat zu Breslau an Cristoffel Eglinger, Vogt der Neumark betr. gefangene Juden und Jüdinnen aus der Neumark.’ 29 October 1453. OBA 12470. 90. ‘Disse czwene des wirths der nuwemarke brieffe qwomen ken mer[ienburg] am dinstage post octava … im 54 iare. Disser lawtet van davide dem Juden und seyner husfrauwen czu breslaw gefangen, bey deme ist eyne abeschr. Eins brieffs der stad breslaw und her claws sparren brieff der sich erbewt czu dienste. – Ich euwer gnade bitte zu wissen wy dye von breslaw euwern gnaden Juden eyner genant David vom soldin mit andern juden und judynnen meher der neuwen margk gegriffen unde in behemenusse brocht haben unde mir vor enthalten des denne euwir gnoden erbaren der neuwer margke zu trefflichen schaden komen wenthe der offgnanthe david ire silber phende unde cleynod vaste by im hot unde seyne frauwe sich aws den sachen nicht weys zu entwichten. Hir umb haben wol euwir gnaden erbarmen an mich mit bethe gebrocht, ich euwern gnade dar umb mit bethe mochte alangen das euwir gnade vor den offgenanten Juden an die von bresslaw welde schreyben das her los mochte werden, off das dye euwern ire phende und silbern cleynod mochten widder irkrigen … euwer gnode vor den offgenanten Juden und ouch judynne wolle schreyben unde dye von breslaw vermanen euwern juden loss zugeben. Ouch ich euwern gnaden in dissem brive vorslossen sende eyne abeschrifft der von breslaw, so sie mir schreyben haben ire andacht war die Juden loss zugeben unde sye mir doch nicht volgen mogen des dye euwer hern mechtigen trefflichen und grossen schaden komen. Gegeben zu konigesberge am freytage vor epyphania anno 1454. Voyth der Neuwen Margke.’ 4 January 1454. OBA 12683. The mentioned copy of the letter from Breslau is now kept as the aforementioned OBA 12470. 91. ‘Rechnung der Königsboten über den Ertrag des eingezogenen Judengutes, o. D.’ L. Oelsner, ‘Schlesische Urkunden zur Geschichte der Juden im Mittelalter’, Archiv für Kunde österreichischer Geschichts-Quellen 31 (1864), 141–43, no. 38. 92. Jóźwiak, ‘Kontakty komturów’. 93. T. Nożyński, ‘Żydzi poznańscy w XV wieku, 1379–1502’, Kronika Miasta Poznania: kwartalnik poświęcony sprawom kulturalnym stoł. m. 10(1) (1932): 86–99. 94. 8 March 1446. OBA 9060; AST, vol. 2, 626. 95. 2 February 1449. Ibid.; OBA 9842. 96. G. Lengnich, Geschichte der preußischen Lande, Königlich-Polnischen Antheils (Gdańsk: Stolle, 1722), 1:55. This is probably the complaint Jolowicz mentions in Geschichte der Juden, 3.

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97. ‘Weil über die Juden, vornehmlich von den kleinen Städten schon ver­ schiedene mahl geklaget worden, und man keine Wandelung gespüh­ ret, vielmehr erfahren daß die Zahl der Hebräer angewachsen, die ohne Scheu offentlich ihre Schacherey trieben, wurde das Anliegen wiederho­ let.’ Lengnich, Geschichte der preußischen Lande, 70. 98. ‘Item liber sit transitus & via omnibus mercatoribus et incolis terrarum, ac Dominorum Ordinum, scilicet, Domini Ducis Prussiae, cum suis mer­ cantiis et frumentis, cuiuscunque granis & rebus quibuscinque & cuius­ cunque conditionis ... in & ad Regnum Poloniae, terras Lithuaniae & Samogitiarum.’ ‘Renovatio pacis et concordia perpetua’, Privilegia der Stände, fol. 40b–43b, ibid. 41b. 99. Paudel is a term used only in Prussian German dialect, meaning a small box made of limetree bark used for storing or sending smaller items or herbs and spices. Lemma ‘paudel’, Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm, vol. 13, sp. 1510. 100. ‘wiewohl vor etlichen Jahren ein gemein Verboth ausgegangen ist und unter des Landes Siegel publiciret worden, daß man nirgend auf dem Lande noch in den Städten die umlauffende Schotten und andere PaudelKrämer dulden oder leiden sollte, welche … nicht allein böse Waaren und Güter dem armen Bauers-Mann und ander einfältigen Leuten einstecken und verkaufen, sondern auch nicht ohn Betrug allerley Rauchwerk und wilde Felle, so sonst der Obrigkeit gebühren, an sich bringen. ... Damit auch solcher gemeiner der Städte Verderb gemehret wird, unterstehen sich etliche Juden allhier im Lande niederzulassen und einzuwurzeln, wider dieses Landes alten Gebrauch … verbieten wir hiermit ernstlich [dass] kein Jude in Städten, Flecken und Dörfern soll gelitten werden … auch zur Stunde aller sein Handel und Wandel verbothen und geleget seyn. Desgleichen soll kein Schotte, Paudel-Krämer oder wie die Nahmen haben mögen, sich auf dem Lande, in Städten oder Dörfern ausserhalb gemeinen Jahrmarkt mit Kaufen und Verkaufen.’ ‘Preußisches LandesEdict wider die Juden und Schotten, ergangen im Jahre 1551’. M. C. Hanov (ed.), Preußische Sammlung allerley Urkunden, 3 vols. (Danzig: Schreiber, 1747), 1:xlv. 101. ‘Bestätigung des Privilegiums durch Sigismund 1552’. Ibid., no. XXXIII, 461–65. 102. Bogucka, ‘Jewish Merchants’, 48, quoting from Simson, Geschichte, 2:161–62. 103. XX. HA, Ostpreußische Folianten 1331, p. 211. Forstreuter, ‘Die Juden im Deutschordenslande Preußen’, 278. 104. ‘Den Juden solle die Auflage oder Speicherung ihrer Wahren gantz und  gar verbotten sein, sollen auch wie auff den Königlichen theil zu Dantzig gehalten, ihren Leib zu verzollen schuldig sein. Recess der dreyer Städte Königsberg, 25. Octobris anno 1566.’ Privilegia der Stände des Herzogthums Preußen (Braunsberg: Georg Schönfels, 1616), fol. 68a–70b, ibid. 70a. 105. Printed in Saalschütz, ‘Zur Geschichte’, 166–67. These two regulations were repeated literally in a law of 12 March 1663. Ibid., 448.

276 • Chapter 7

106. ‘Die Juden sollen hinfurder im Fürstenthumb nicht gelitten, sondern ihnen das Land von dato in 4 Wochen zu reumen, geboten werden, wo sie darüber betroffen, sollen sie preiss sein, und ihnen davor keine Brief noch Siegel helffen oder schützen.’ ‘Königlicher Mayst. und der löblichen Kron in Polen Herrn Commissarien Confirmation uber den, zwischen Markgraff Albrechten des Elterz Hertzogen in Preussen ... und einer ganzen erbaren Landtschafft in gemeiner gehaltenen Tagfahrt zu Königsberg, anno 1567 den 5. Julii auffgerichte Recess.’ Privilegia der Stände des Herzogthums Preußen, fol. 88b–90a, ibid. 89b. 107. C. Lanckorońska (ed.), Documenta ex Archivio Regiomontano ad Poloniam spectantia, 42 vols. (Romae: Inst. hist. Polonicum Romae, 1985), vol. 30, no. 1084, 1086, 1087, 1094, pp.172–75. Forstreuter, ‘Die Juden im Deutschordenslande Preußen’, 278–79. 108. ‘Auch soll niemandt mit Juden Zulnern insgleichen mitt den Ampttleutten aus der grenze einigen handel treiben ausserhalbe, was ir eigen zins karm und gerechtes ist, wene darwider chutt soll, nach erkentniss des Radts ges[t]rafft werden.’ Willköre der Stadtt Memmell anno 71 verbessert vormals von Fr. W. auch ... vonn der Obrigkeitt bestetigt worde. XX. HA, EM 98, a2, no. 11, fol. 27–42, art. 36, fol. 31v. 109. ‘Nachdem wir in glaubwirdige erfahrung kommen, als sollen in unserem ambtt Mümmell sowoll in dene Steedten, als auf dem Lande, die Juden sich understehen, mit dene Bürgern und anderen hantlung und handel zu slagenn, auch mitt eczlichen Wattschasen zumachen, welches den nicht allein wider dises unsers Herzogtumbs Preusen rechte freyheyten und verige außgegangenen Mandata … sondern auch unserem Christenthumb zuwieder ist. ... Wie auch deme berichtt erlangett, das selbiche den Juden hantierung, vormals bey Weylandt dem alten herzogen in Preußen unserem in Gott erhandenen herrn Vatter und Vatren, gleicher gestaltt nie geduldet oder verstattet worden. Als haben wir aus veterlicher Argfalttigkeitt, den wir gegen unsere lieben underthanen tragen und zu verhuttung ihres sulbst eigenen schadens sie mit unseren ... Mandat vermahnen laßen …und ist demnach hiermitt an Haubtman, Burgermeister und anderer ambtstragende versturen, unser ernster wille, ihr wollet das fleißig auffsehen pflegen, damit keinem Juden usterniste uber zwey nacht herberge, auch einige handelung oder bestendige unterschlupf und rechnung werden heimlich nach o stundlich, in unserer stadt und ambt mummell hinforderst, bey pene hundert ungarischer gülden, unerleßig zuverlegenem nicht gestadt und zugelaßen werden.’ Ibid., c2, no. 6. 110. ‘Von Gottes gnaden wir Georg Friderich Marggraf zu Brandenburg ... ob wir woll für der Zeitt, und anno 81 außtrücklich verboth, und mandat, zur Mümmel publiciren lassen, daß sich niemand bey einer ... poen, als nemblich hunder gülden wug: mit den Juden in handlung kauffmanschafften, oder mattschafften einlassen soltten, so kumbt uns doch auß underschiedtlichen berichten bey, daß solchem unserm mandat, entgegen gelebett, und handlung mitt den Juden, wo nicht allerdings offentlich doch heimlichen getrieben werden soll. Weill wir dan solche Handlung

Beyond the Bulwark • 277

mit den Juden nicht gestattet wissen wollen, so haben wir vorigs unser mandat hirmit erneuern sollen, und bitten allen unseren underthanen bey der in obberürten vorigen mandat, gesetzter straff der 100 f, daß sich inner unser Stadt und Ambt Mümmel keiner unser underthanen in einige Handlung, Kauffmannschafften … mit den Juden einlasst.’ Ibid., no. 9.

2 Conclusion The Wreckage of History

Bernhard of Chartres used to compare us to puny dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants. He pointed out that we see more and farther than our predecessors, not because we have keener vision or greater height, but because we are lifted up and borne aloft on their gigantic statue.1 There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. It shows an angel who seems about to move away from something he stares at. His eyes are wide, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how the angel of history must look. His face is turned toward the past. Where a chain of events appears before us, he sees one single catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it at his feet.2

Demystifying the giants is a thankless task; three generations after the Shoah it also seems to be an obsolete task. After 1945, the guilt and involvement of individual scholars and scholarly coteries has subsequently been exposed, the offenders identified and their motivations and activities greeted with shock and horror. In the light of their guilt, their antisemitism and the advantages they gained from the National Socialist system, their work was read anew and reappraised.3 Obviously, the political and ideological battles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries did not contaminate the entire German intellectual tradition. Still, there are areas where sanitizing the intellectual heritage of particular individuals or bodies of work is not sufficient, because they have played such a formative and authoritative role in the tradition itself – both the scholarly tradition and the archives. In these instances, when a history free of the traces of the perpetrators is impossible, you cannot help but sometimes feel that you are not standing on the shoulders of giants but on the wreckage of history, and it seems better to look off into the distance than to look at what’s under your feet. The constructedness of archives, well reflected upon in memory studies, eventually turns into a contamination of the entire archival tradition, as discussed in this study regarding the Jews of medieval Prussia.

The Wreckage of History • 279

A Not-So-Bad Landlord Until the Reformation, when Prussia became a secular territory, there is no sign whatsoever of an active Teutonic Order anti-Jewish policy. Particularly, the Landordnung, which until now has been seen as evidence for this, cannot be verified, and it is not even likely to have existed. Moreover, the historiographic and literary production that can be connected to the Order shows remarkably little sign of the otherwise completely tangible anti-Jewish attitudes and stereotypes generally found in medieval Christian texts. Instead, the Order’s texts positively portray Old Testament warriors and heroes as a model, along with occasional tales of conversion. These, in their turn, have to be seen in the light of the political, practical and eschatological framework of the Teutonic Order’s presence in the Baltic: the conversion of the pagans (real or imaginary). The chronicles are entirely dominated by pagans as objects to fire the imagination and as targets of missionary activity, with the eventual goal being their destruction, while the literary output is dominated by Old Testament Bible translations and the models developed and derived from them: the Maccabees, Hester and Judith. The New Testament, with its well-exercised potential for depicting Jews as Christ killers and traitors who are blind to the new covenant, is barely represented at all in the Teutonic Order’s text production, just as Jews (and Muslims) are not portrayed as real, contemporary enemies. This is an interesting contradiction to, for example, the treatment of Russians in the Crusading propaganda in contrast to real Russians: while the ‘Russian threat’ was employed recurrently, Russians were allowed to settle and to build and maintain churches in the Livonian towns during the entire reign of the Order.4 Even at the Council of Constance, where the Order was accused of expelling and abusing Jews and pagans in its role as their landlord, the corporation did not fight back by either arguing that no anti-Jewish regulation existed or by positing anti-Judaism as a sound Christian policy – and this during a period when a number of landlords had already found various rationalizations for expelling Jewish communities from their territories. It has been repeatedly asserted that establishing an all-Christian state in the Baltic was the Teutonic Order’s distinct aim. This argument – as has been shown here – has its roots in a perception of Prussia as an anti-Slavic and anti-Jewish bulwark of Germanity. This claim has even been repeated by scholars who cannot be accused of sharing Forstreuter’s ideological background or of embracing National Socialist

280 • Conclusion

Judenforschung. The reason the argument persists, even though the bulwark theory and general anti-Slavic and anti-Jewish resentment are now widely seen as politically contaminated, is that most of the other major paradigms of Prussian history remain intact. Additionally, many scholars might have felt obliged to find a way to explain the apparent absence of Jewish communities from medieval Prussia – and the easiest explanation would have been a ban. Since anti-pagan and anti-Muslim resentment was a ubiquitous feature in the Teutonic Order’s reasoning and propaganda, it seems safe to assume an accompanying anti-Jewish resentment. However, there is no evidence that that was the case. Nonetheless, it remains true that we find no traces of stable Jewish communities in Prussia during the Middle Ages. The explanation for this can no longer be sought in restrictive policies on the landlord’s part. The Teutonic Order never served as a bulwark against Slavic immigration and settlement, nor did it actively prevent Jewish settlement. So why were there no Jewish communities in Gdańsk, Königsberg, Toruń and Elbląg at the time? The truth is, I don’t know and I don’t think there is a way of finding out. Maybe the communities in nearby Poland and Lithuania were not large enough to motivate people to move somewhere else. Maybe the coastal towns were not of great interest. Who knows – maybe there were small, flourishing communities that did not leave any traces in the sources. The likelihood of the latter possibility is admittedly small, but, nevertheless, the investigation of the urban administrative and legal sources has shown that there is a possibility of Jewish life that went undocumented. The character of the remaining sources and the alternate perspective on Jewish life opened up by this investigation suggest that that is the case.

What Is a Jew? Medievalists of both Christian and Jewish history are obsessed with communities; how they emerge, how they organize themselves, how they are mirrored in the sources. Consequently, all such scholars have failed to acknowledge the possibility of vagrant Jewish life or of temporary settlements in Prussia. There is substantial source material that proves that a considerable number of Jews travelled to the Prussian towns, and that some of them remained for extended periods. Jewish merchants from Lithuania and Poland maintained enduring trade contact with burghers from Gdańsk and Königsberg, and quite probably from the smaller towns as well. When Jews were the victims of crime or fraud, their landlords intervened with the landlord of the town in

The Wreckage of History • 281

question, making apparent their movements and their whereabouts in a way that other sources don’t. In the case of people like Jackzko from Grodno, whose goods were stolen in Königsberg – where did they reside while in Prussia? Did they obey the rules of halacha and kashrut while in an entirely Christian environment? If not – what defined them as Jews, then? What happened if one of them died in Prussia? There are different possible speculative answers. One relies on the lack of documentation proving the existence of Jewish settlements in the Prussian towns or the surrounding suburbs, such as Altschottland – we have no solid evidence one way or the other, but some factors point to a certain likelihood of a Jewish presence. For example, travelling Jewish merchants from other countries might have stayed in these settlements, but we are probably only talking about a few families who, as a result, were only able to maintain a minimal community life and observance, e.g., kosher home slaughter and burials in a designated area. Another possible interpretation is that travelling Jewish merchants stayed in the Prussian towns despite the fact that community life and observance was impossible because there were no other Jews around, and thus not even a basic infrastructure. Be that as it may, the town dwellers were able to recognize Jews – at least in the context of conflicts and legal proceedings, where the status of the respective parties was clarified. It might very well be that in most other situations Prussians failed to notice that a particular guest was Jewish. In most of the legal documents, Jews were simply categorized as foreigners and guests, and there was probably no need to differentiate them beyond that. Maybe the merchants from Grodno took the opportunity to free themselves from the social, legal and religious restrictions of their home community life – going drinking with the guys from England and Nuremberg and sitting around complaining about the recent attempts to restrict their common trading rights. Key to these questions could be the rich responsa literature – ­however, we lack texts which both are contemporaneous and address the specific region. Later authors, like Rabbi Solomon Luria (1510–73) from Poland, indicate that the communities employed relatively flexible and pragmatic rules for eating, drinking and contact with goyim while on travels.5 We are used to looking for communities, the more stable the better – communitas, coniuratio, ordo. Even though research indicates that particular groups of people had access to a considerable amount of social mobility, we are used to seeing medieval towns as strictly ordered social structures in which non-Christians found themselves ­particularly

282 • Conclusion

vulnerable. The Jewish merchants in Prussia might provide a suitable counter-example; even if their existence is badly documented, they existed, and we have no way of knowing how their Jewishness manifested itself – if at all. The same goes for any small Jewish family coteries or minor settlements in areas where non-burghers were badly documented – which is, basically, everywhere around the Prussian towns and even more so on the countryside.

Documentation It seems to be beyond question that Jews had no chance of becoming burghers in most Prussian towns, particularly after around 1400 when regulations for obtaining citizenship were made a lot more complicated for all non-Hanseatic immigrants. In any case, only a very small number of people gained citizenship in the towns, with the possibility being completely excluded for many groups of foreigners, non-Germans and non-residents – which has an impact on the available documentation. The remaining town books and legal sources that mention Jews in Prussia indicate a tendency not to document religious status, or at least a certain inconsistency in doing so. There are examples of Jewry law, including some of the legal articles, but these were only documented in the town books in a handful of cases. As noted earlier, in one such case the label ‘Jew’ was added as marginalia in a town book after the fact. Foreign merchants were only ever documented if they were involved in a lengthy legal conflict that could not be resolved by the local courts. There is absolutely no extant documentation for the inhabitants of the suburbs and friheiten during the Middle Ages. All of these factors create a certain probability that there were indeed Jews in and around some of the Prussian towns, both permanently and semi-permanently, but they themselves did not leave any written sources, and they barely appear in the Christian urban sources. With the expulsions and strict bans on settlement in the late sixteenth century, these small communities may have disappeared. When Jews resettled in Gdańsk, Königsberg and Toruń in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, any memory of the early roots of their communities had faded – and where some memory remained, such as in Klaipėda, it was wiped out by the twentieth-century wars and occupations.

The Wreckage of History • 283

Whose Heimat? Whose Sources? It is not possible to connect Kurt Forstreuter’s looting trips to any particular Jewish community that might already have existed during the Middle Ages but was totally lost to memory, along with its documentation and, not least of all, its population during the German occupation. He was active in the Polish midlands, in the areas Germany renamed Warthegau and Zichenau, which had not been particularly urbanized during the Middle Ages – his account of the disappearance of the Jewish communities from this area in 1939 and early 1940 is sad and cynical and bears witness to his commitment to the National Socialist state, but it does not prove the actual destruction of source material that would have provided valuable information regarding medieval Prussian Jews. Warsaw, where he collected a number of diplomas connected to the Teutonic Order, had always been Polish, as was the case for medieval Poznań, where he was the first person involved in the complete restructuring of the Polish national archives, and of Płock, where he met an actual Jew and seized the medieval collections from the priests’ seminary whose members, by that point, had been tortured and killed by the SS. There is a possibility that one or the other of the archives of the Jewish communities in Masovia (Ostrołęka, Maków Mazowieki, Pułtusk) or Suwałki contained medieval material or at least material which mentioned the earliest roots of these communities which no longer exist. The destruction of the archives here was comprehensive, and we will never know. Vilnius, where Forstreuter witnessed pogroms and was directly involved with the occupation forces, had never been part of the Teutonic Order’s state, but had rather formed a pool of Ostjudentum, who he feared would flood Prussia. The ‘Jerusalem of the North’ indeed had medieval roots, but these were independent of Forstreuter’s Prussia. While there is usually a direct connection between Forstreuter’s archival work and his research, the article about Prussian Jews remains strangely disconnected. Forstreuter himself lamented on his lack of possibility to employ the fruits of his professional trips in occupied Poland more intensively for his scholarly work.6 As noted, he wrote two versions of the article about Prussian Jews. The original was written in 1937 – the year that the Königsberg Jewish community was forced to turn a large part of its archives over to the state archive, from which Jewish archivists and researchers were already banned. The 1981 version was obviously copyedited by Forstreuter at some point in the late 1970s – forty years after his services in the occupied territories, and

284 • Conclusion

after a long life of research devoted to his lost Heimat. Neither version can be directly connected to a particular interest in Jewish matters on his part. In fact, his work on the medieval Prussian Jews fits smoothly into his overall work on medieval Prussia – he shows no real interest in Jewish matters, which fall into the background in favour of a focus on the contradiction between Christians and pagans (in the case of the  Teutonic Order) or between Germans and Slavs (for Forstreuter and the entire völkische research tradition). His lists of sources produced by the Teutonic Order is fairly complete, while he misses sources from other institutions, towns and areas and he ignores an entire research tradition for the context. The peculiar exception to this neglect is the work of Selma Stern – who becomes Forstreuter’s sole Jewish witness to his bulwark theory.

Aftermath In 2008, the Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation (Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu) announced through the prosecutor Dariusz Wituszko that the accounting of archival plundering in Warsaw had to be discontinued. The institution had led an investigation of war crimes committed by Erich Weise and Kurt Forstreuter in 1940–41. This investigation was opened because of the continuous refusal of the German government as well as of the Prussian Cultural Foundation in Berlin (Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz) to return seventy-four fifteenth-century vellum diplomas concerning the history of the Teutonic Order, which Forstreuter and Weise had taken from the archive in Warsaw and brought to Königsberg. Their presence in Warsaw and the removal of the diplomas was, according to the Polish prosecutor, in violation of international law. Despite comprehensive mutual agreements between Germany and Poland in 1959 and 2004 for the return of stolen cultural goods, the Berlin archive refused to return these specific documents. The investigation of the Szczecin branch of the Instytut pamięci narodowej (Institute of National Remembrance) had to be closed unsuccessfully due to the death of the main perpetrators and the lack of testimonies.7

Repute: A Historian of Prussia Both during and after the war, Forstreuter’s activity in the service of the state was indistinguishable from his scholarly career and his

The Wreckage of History • 285

­ ublications. Today, it seems obvious that in fascist Germany research p institutions pursued political goals and distorted scientific principles to some degree to achieve results that supported the state’s objectives. One of the ways of doing this was to focus on the topics of interest for contemporary political issues and interpret sources in the light of these needs – just as any researcher does. In keeping with the positivist view of science and the humanities, it appears that after the war Forstreuter maintained a distinction between politically contaminated research and neutral research – except, of course, when it came to his own work. Forstreuter’s area of expertise was the medieval and Early Modern history of East and West Prussia, former Teutonic Order territory. His place of birth, Sowetsk and the surrounding area Memelland, as it was called at the time, played a key role in his studies – borders and ethnicity were always the central issues. Kurt Forstreuter’s significance does not lie in this or that brilliant achievement. His personality, his rich knowledge, his common courtesy and his constant willingness to offer support had an impact on everyone. … As an archivist, Kurt Forstreuter was, to no small degree, also a national historian, particularly of the Prussian lands. He was also a historian of the Teutonic Order, and in this his interests were not restricted to Prussia. His scholarly interests were, in fact, much more comprehensive than that. … This guaranteed him an afterlife in broad circles.8

That is how Bernhard Jähnig, a friend and colleague of the younger generation working at the Archivlager Göttingen and later Geheimes Staatsarchiv Berlin-Dahlem, chose to honour Kurt Forstreuter’s life and work in an obituary. Indeed, Forstreuter published a vast number of articles, brochures, source editions and monographs during his long professional life. Their common denominator was Prussia, with a particular focus on the medieval period, as well as some other Early Modern and contemporary topics. It is not obvious from his scholarly production that Forstreuter had strong political views and hopes and that he was involved in the Heimatvertriebene movement and particularly the revisionist circles of Ostforschung. In his writing, he usually maintained a moderate tone and refrained from anti-Slavic statements or other expressions of resentment, as well as from making any open claim to territory. His Berichte der Generalprokuratoren des Deutschen Ordens an der Kurie and the encyclopedia Altpreußische Biographie, which he edited with Fritz Gause, are the best known and most cited of his works. The Altpreußische Biographie had first been published before the war, but after the war a new edition seemed necessary, not least of all because the first edition had left the Jewish people out of Prussian history.9 Many of his works seem to have been written in a way meant

286 • Conclusion

to avoid argument or scandal rather than to provoke a controversy or even to enter an on-going debate. As a result, most of the reviews of his publications are respectful, but rarely enthusiastic. Forstreuter’s reputation as a neutral, honest and sincere scholar with no particular political agenda is partly the result of the discursive environment he lived and worked in. His deeds before and during the war were judged in comparison to the activity of his institutional colleagues. The subsequent generation of scholars working on Prussian history often came from families with roots in the East and had, therefore, inherited a political agenda oriented around a desire to secure a collective memory of a German East. Many of those who read and reviewed Forstreuter’s books were from the same circle of ultraconservative or völkische researchers, and they knew him well and read his relatively sober historical presentation in the light of his more openly political arguments and contributions. Even in the latter case, Forstreuter retained a relatively moderate tone that, nonetheless, fit perfectly into a discursive framework of anti-Slavic, anti-communist and revisionist terminology and the concomitant mindset. An example is an article about East Prussia in which Forstreuter soberly described the results of elections and referenda and defines National Socialism as a very recent, very thin phenomenon ‘derived from outer and inner afflictions’.10 What is interesting here is that this is from a contribution to the anthology Die deutschen Ostgebiete zur Zeit der Weimarer Republik, edited in 1966 by Erwin Hölzle, who had joined the NSDAP in 1933 and participated in an Arbeitsgemeinschaft zur Erforschung der bolschewistischen Weltgefahr (Committee for the Investigation of the Bolshevist World Danger) located in the Amt Rosenberg. In the introduction to the collection, he claims that the German occupation of Poland and the war against Russia were the justifiable results of the territorial losses of World War I. In a later publication, Forstreuter points to his study about Prussia and Russia as a positive example of sine ira et studio work on a politically controversial topic. At the same time, he mentions with regret the loss of his much earlier manuscript about the Lithuanian question – a study he had been working on between 1932 and 1943 for the PuSte, which was apparently lost when he left Königsberg.11 A lecture Forstreuter gave in Göttingen in December 1960 to a now-forgotten Arbeitsausschuß für das politische Gespräch (Working Committee for the Political Conversation) connected to the Arbeitskreis provides another example, and it is particularly interesting as one of the few instances of Forstreuter talking about Jews. He gave an input lecture for a discussion about Die Oder-Neiße-Linie, with Hans Mortensen,

The Wreckage of History • 287

Graf von Krockow, Dr. von Thadden and a guest from Paris, Professor Marlé, also participating. Forstreuter elaborated upon the fading glory of historical models as guiding principles for contemporary political decisions, pointing to the example of Poland and its historical reasoning for the OderNeiße line. Almost pitying, he analyzed the shifting historical modes underlying Polish reasoning – of a Jagiellonian nature before 1945 and Piastic in character after 1945. In a curious synthesis, Forstreuter compares himself and the other Germans who were expelled from Poland to the Jews, claiming that the contemporary national state did not, in fact, follow the example of King Bolesław Chrobry from around the year 1000 but instead modelled its politics on those of the preChristian King, Nebuchadnezzar, ‘who deported the Jews’.12 In this interpretation, the expelled Germans are the equivalent of the biblical Jews, a speaking comparison fifteen years after the liberation of the last concentration camps. Besides the pejorative tone adopted towards the Polish national state and its ‘incorrectly chosen historical models’, the nonchalant way in which victims and perpetrators are redefined is striking – although not terribly original. The absolute inability to see anyone but the expelled Germans as victims was striking in most of the publications and even private writings of exiles13 – even though the metaphorical definition of the Germans as biblical Jews adds a certain sarcastic twist to this figure. As Eduard Mühle and others have stated, most of the historians of Prussian Landesgeschichte abandoned the research paradigm of Deutschtumszentriertheit and thus the history of the region as the struggle between German and Slavic ethnicities. Instead, they conceptualized the region as a forefront of the Christian-occidental cultural sphere (in contrast to a bolshewist-oriental one), in which the Teutonic Order was seen primarily as a religious corporation and not as a secular landlord.14 This is visible in broader arguments such as the Schlesinger studies of the colonization of the East, but in most of Forstreuter’s works, the struggle of ethnicities remains a central concern. The selfacknowledged and apparent continuity in Forstreuter’s world before, during and after World War II centres on some key topics primarily related to the relationship among the different ethnic groups in the region where he had been born and raised, the Memelland. All his studies about the relationship of Prussia to neighbouring Lithuania and Russia sought to clearly distinguish between the German and the Slavic populations and also between their respective cultural achievements and influences. That he himself rarely drew direct conclusions about modern territorial claims on the basis of these results might have

288 • Conclusion

shaped his perception of himself as a neutral researcher. While these results suited revisionist needs and claims perfectly, they were based on an extremely problematic supposition: an imagined identity, language, culture and race, coupled with the concept of a constant struggle among ethnic groups for cultural hegemony. In essence, this amounted to a generalized projection of modern ethnic identities onto the Middle Ages. Despite a fetish for positivist source criticism, Forstreuter and many of his colleagues maintained a blind spot regarding the representation of ethnicity in the medieval sources, and particularly of the overrepresentation of Germanity in German sources. They also tended to interpret processes of assimilation and cultural exchange as the victory of the superior German culture and race. After the war, some of the Ostforscher would eventually acknowledge that a process of assimilation, acculturation and mutual linguistic influence that took place over centuries made it impossible to define clear ethnic boundaries in the Baltic countries and the former German territories in Poland, Russia and Lithuania. Forstreuter was not one of them, even though he was able to differentiate between his scholarly opinions and professional priorities: he developed good relations with his colleagues in Poland, particularly Warsaw, for the sake of archival work such as the exchange of microfilms.15 After all, he seems to have been a friendly person, amicable and helpful.

Of Giants and Rubbish The most tangible connection between Forstreuter, the Prussian Jews, lost memory and the Shoah are the sources themselves. Forstreuter is not of interest because he was a particularly evil man, a particularly bad historian or archivist, or even because he destroyed more Jewish archives than anyone else. His antisemitism, if it is possible to call his attitude towards Jews antisemitism, manifested mainly in nonchalance, forming a kind of blind spot. The significance of his work for the persistent view of medieval Prussia as a bulwark against Jews lies in the corrupt principles he applied to his archival work and his historical research, particularly given his reputation as a sober, neutral and reliable scholar and archivist. His commitment to the National Socialist state – despite his lack of open support for the Nazis and the NSDAP – and the extent to which he applied Nazi ideology and political principles in his work should be reason enough to doubt his scholarly integrity. Research into the agendas of the National Socialist research institutions has proven that source editions in particular were planned,

The Wreckage of History • 289

funded, supported and printed with a distinct political goal: providing proof of the German character of Prussia and, by extension, the Polish and Lithuanian areas occupied by Germany; the same agenda which most of the revisionist historical societies already had been following since the 1920s. Not everything produced during National Socialism was essentially bad, corrupted and evil. But all people who were equally successful in an equally qualified profession in governmental service as Forstreuter was were committed to the system to an extent that did not leave their work untouched – if there can ever be such a thing as pure scholarly work. Forstreuter was but a small wheel in the system, and his work about the Prussian Jews but a small contribution to an overall ignorant, ideologically informed way of writing, which had no sympathy for the victims and instead focused on the promotion of a particular historical narrative. It even went as far as destroying the memory of all other narratives than the one of German superiority and legitimacy. The truly sad fact in this whole story is that despite the obvious flaws in his argument, despite the obvious participation in the destruction of the memory of the Jewish communities of Prussia, Poland and Lithuania, despite the obvious politically informed research agenda he – and many of his fellow researchers about East and West Prussia – ­followed in the first decades of the Federal Republic, and despite the fact that at least parts of this criticism have been uttered many times before, until now nobody questioned one of his basic research results, the idea of the Teutonic Order as an anti-Jewish bulwark. There are various reasons for this, which are not part of this study but have been hinted at whenever possible to prove. The ever-decreasing public and scholarly interest in questions of the ‘German East’ and its history is one reason. The discrepancy between the results of and the mutual non-engagement of scholars of medieval and modern history is another one, as is the focus of scholars of both general medieval and Jewish history on well-documented communities. But the deepest, and least provable, reason seems to be the resistance of historians of the second and third generation after the Shoah against engaging with the ultimate sadness resulting from the lesson to be learned from this example: that the image of history and historiography as a pile of wreckage and catastrophes actually in many cases holds more truth for us than the one of the friendly and helpful giant.

290 • Conclusion

Notes  1. John of Salisbury, The Metalogicon: A Twelfth-Century Defense of the Verbal and Logical Arts of the Trivium, ed. by D.D. MacGarry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1955), book 3, 167.  2. ‘Es gibt ein Bild von Klee, das Angelus Novus heißt. Ein Engel ist darauf dargestellt, der aussieht, als wäre er im Begriff, sich von etwas zu entfernen, worauf er starrt. Seine Augen sind aufgerissen, sein Mund steht offen und seine Flügel sind ausgespannt. Der Engel der Geschichte muß so aussehen. Er hat das Antlitz der Vergangenheit zugewendet. Wo eine Kette von Begebenheiten vor uns erscheint, da sieht er eine einzige Katastrophe, die unablässig Trümmer auf Trümmer häuft und sie ihm vor die Füße schleudert.’ W. Benjamin, Über den Begriff der Geschichte (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2010), ‘Das Hannah-Arendt-Manuskript’, 9.  3. For an early, very inspiring attempt to provide an overview of the history of the ideas found in German medieval studies within their political context, mentioning Brunner, Ernst Röhrig, Albert Brackmann and others, see A. Nitschke, ‘German Politics and Medieval History’, Journal of Contemporary History 3(2) (1968): 75–92.  4. A. Selart, ‘Orthodox Churches in Medieval Livonia’, in The Clash of Cultures on the Medieval Baltic Frontier, ed. A.V. Murray (Farnham/Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), 273.  5. Responsum no. 72 of Solomon Luria (Maharshal) speaks of a traveler who eats at inns run by non-Jews and ‘believes the innkeeper when she tells him that the pots were unused’, indicating that this behavior is not seen as suspect by the German Jewish communities as long as the traveler is rich and wealthy. It may, however, indicate that the Eastern communities saw this as more problematic. Retrieved from Bar Ilan Online Responsa Project, http://www.responsa.co.il/.  6. Forstreuter, ‘Vom Blickpunkt’, 407–8.  7. Polska Agencja Prasowa, Niemcy nie chcą oddać zrabowanych pergaminów, Radio Szczeczin, 18 May 2008.  8. ‘Kurt Forstreuters Bedeutung liegt nicht in dieser oder jener hervorragenden Einzelleistung. Er wirkte durch seine Persönlichkeit, durch sein reiches Wissen, durch seine ausgleichende Liebenswürdigkeit und durch unermeßliche Hilfsbereitschaft gegenüber jedermann. ... Kurt Forstreuter war als Archivar in besonderem Maße auch Landeshistoriker, nämlich des Preußenlandes. Daneben war er Deutschordenshistoriker, er betrachtete den Orden nicht nur in Preußen. Aber seine wissenschaftlichen Interessen waren viel breiter. ... Dies wird ihm ein Nachleben in weiten Kreisen sichern.’ B. Jähnig, ‘Kurt Forstreuter zum Gedächtnis’, Blätter für deutsche Landesgeschichte 115 (1979): 169–74.  9. This becomes obvious in the extensive communication between Gause and Forstreuter, as well as between Forstreuter and various contributors to the Altpreußische Biographie. Several of the contributors complained because they felt that changes made to their texts were politically motivated, particularly with regard to National Socialism. For example, Herman Kownatzki,

The Wreckage of History • 291

10. 11.

12.

13. 14. 15.

town archivist in Elbląg and, after the war, in Cologne, complained about cuts made to his article about a Prussian judge and lawyer, an act he saw as an attempt ‘to cover up the injustices of the Nazi period’. Kownatzki forcefully demanded that Forstreuter determine who had made these changes and threatened a lawsuit. GStA, XX. HA, Nl Forstreuter, Briefwechsel no. 26, 1961–67. Forstreuter, ’Ostpreußen’, 13–41. ‘Noch kurz vor dem Kriege kam ein Buch heraus, das mich ein Jahrzehnt beschäftigt ... hat und das ich hier anführen darf als Beispiel dafür, daß ich auch in politisch erregter Zeit über ein Thema, das von tagespolitischer Mißdeutung nicht frei war, “sine ira et studio,” ohne Haß und Parteilichkeit, geschrieben habe. Es ist das Buch “Preußen und Rußland im Mittelalter”.’ Forstreuter, ‘Vom Blickpunkt’, 406. ‘Das Leitbild des Polen der Piasten um 1000 ist zu weit hergeholt und gewaltsam verwirklicht worden. Noch schlimmer steht es um die Verwirklichung des Nationalstaates in Polen: hier folgt Polen nicht dem Leitbild des grossen Polenkönigs Boleslaw Chrobry vom Jahre 1000, sondern dem König Nebukadnezar, der die Juden deportierte: geht also in vorchristliche Jahrhunderte zurück.’ Manuskript zur Diskussion ‘Die Oder-Neiße-Linie’, Arbeitsausschuß für das politische Gespräch, Göttingen, 11 January 1961. GStA, XX. HA, Nl Forstreuter, Briefwechsel no. 20. Demshuk, Lost German East, 23. Mühle, Für Volk und deutschen Osten; Hackmann, Ostpreußen und Westpreußen, 345. Lehr, Osteinsatz, 336–37.

2 Bibliography Unprinted Sources BArch: Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde  R 93  R 153  R 1509 GStA: Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin-Dahlem  I. HA, Rep 178  VI. HA, Nl Brackmann  XX. HA, OBA  XX. HA, OF  XX. HA, Ostpreußische Folianten  XX. HA, EM  XX. HA, Findbuch 66  XX. HA, Nl Forstreuter Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz  Ms. boruss. 175, 246, 253, 255, 257, 761 Uppsala Universitetsbibliotek  Nordin 416  H 153 U.S. National Archives Roberts Commission: Records of the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas, 1943–46 (RG 239) Kungliga Biblioteket Stockholm  D 1337 Biblioteka Gdańska Polskiej Akademii Nauk  Mg. 1279 Det Kongelige Bibliotek Copenhagen  NKS 325 folio

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1

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2 Index Aaron, son of Solomon, 208 Aaron, Toruń, 239, 268 Abigdor ben Isaac Kara, 228 Åbo, 249 Abraham, 177 Abraham Kreski, 264 Acten der Ständetage Preussens, 163, 232, 241, 243–45 Adam, 190 Akko, 192 Albigensians, 179 Albrecht von Brandenburg, 7, 38, 197, 241, 262–65, 276 Alemania, 206 Algiers, 75 Alsace–Burgundy, 154 Ältere Hochmeisterchronik, 185 Altpreußische Forschungen, 12, 55–57, 70, 71, 77, 96, 109, 112, 116 Altschottland, 251, 281 Annales Olivensis, 212 Annales Wratislavensis, 218 Antwerp, 75 Archivlager Goslar, 102, 108, 130 Archivlager Göttingen, 6, 24, 98, 122, 133, 134, 285 Ardicinus de Novara, 169, 170 Armenians, 264 Armleder Pogrom, 154, 214 Army High Command, 84 Arnold of Culm, 195 Arnold von Lübeck, 179 Arnold, Udo, 32, 41, 56, 139, 155, 159, 171, 212

Aryan certificates, 74, 86, 89, 91, 99, 108, 122, 149 Aschkewitz, Max, 16 Ashkenaz, 7, 151, 178, 213, 251 Athens, 75 Aubin, Hermann, 24, 28, 31, 86 Augustów, 112 Austria, 41, 75, 139 Austyn/Augustyn Losebecker, 234, 235 B´nai B´rith, 89 Balkans, 102 Baltic countries, 3, 48, 54, 55, 57, 105, 119, 164, 168, 170, 176, 177, 288 Baltic Crusades, see Crusades Baltic languages, 64, 81 Baltic sea region, 4, 6, 8, 17, 18, 55, 88, 150, 152, 179, 188, 190, 197, 198, 207, 208, 246, 249, 279 Baltic tribes, 30, 31, 55, 58, 62, 102, 152, 185, 191, 199, 242 Barbara/Cossena de Ankel, 195 Beelitz, 227 Beghards, 184, 188–89 Beguines, 167, 184 Belarus, 23 Belgrade, 75, 126 Belleé, Hans, 133 Berlin, 24, 47, 49, 52, 66, 67, 78, 85, 89, 92, 111, 123, 127, 130, 131, 134, 158, 217, 218, 284 Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut, 123

Index • 313

Hauptarchiv, 127, 130 Humboldt-University, 50–52, 58 see also PuSte Bernhard of Chartres, 278 Bernhard of Clairvaux, De laude novae militiae, 177 Bezzenberger, Adalbert, 62 Białystok (district), 85, 104, 111, 116, 121–23, 142 Białystok (town), 77, 91, 114, 121–23, 125, 130, 144, 145 Biblioteka Gdańska Akademii Nauk, 173 Bibliotheca Germanica, 139 Bitschin, Conrad, 217 Bittander, Kaspar, 156, 157, 159 Black Death, 16, 34, 190, 204–11, 217, 225, 239, 240, 256, 257 see also expulsions, pogroms Blank, Heinrich, 114 blood libel, 6, 178, 203, 204, 211–13, 217 Bock, Abraham, 36, 45 Bohemia, 154, 217, 254, 257, 258 Böhm, Franz, 88, 116 Bolesław Chrobry, 287, 291 Bolesław II, 271 Bolshevism, 31, 118, 250, 286 Boockmann, Hartmut, 22, 32, 168 Bornbach, Stenzel, 157 Bozen, 154 Brackmann, Albert, 26, 28, 43, 50, 51, 58, 60, 67, 69–73, 81, 84–86, 88, 89, 94, 97, 126, 131, 267, 290 Brandenburg-Preußisches Hausarchiv, 128 Brandenburg, see Mark Brandenburg Braniewo, 127, 204, 209, 241, 258 Braniewo, liber civitatis, 204, 209, 233, 241 Braun, Otto, 19 Braunsberg, see Braniewo Breslau, see Wrocław Brix, Fritz, 121 Bromberg, see Bydgoszcz Bromberger, Salomon, 108 Brunner, Otto, 86, 290

bulwark theory, 4, 14, 18–22, 31, 33, 41, 64, 150–52, 171, 176, 180, 204, 212, 221, 279, 280, 284, 288, 289 Bundesminister für gesamtdeutsche Fragen, 132 Bundesminister für Vertriebene, 36 Buttkus, Heinz, 116, 129, 143, 146 Bydgoszcz, 116, 249 Carmelites, 217, 220 Casimir III, 271 Casimir IV Jagiełło, 246, 247, 252, 253, 271 Caspar, convert from Kraków, 195 Christlich-Demokratische Union, 125 Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, 73 Chełmno, see Culm Christ killer stereotype, 183, 187, 198, 222, 223, 279 Christian, bishop, 178 Christianization, 35, 55, 57, 67, 93, 138, 152, 187 Christoffel Eglinger, 259, 274 Chronicon Olivense, 204–6, 209, 225 Chruściel/Tiedmannsdorf, 127 church books, 79, 89, 99, 108, 114, 115, 122, 123 Ciechanów (town), 109 Ciechanów (district), see Zichenau Cistercians, 205, 206, 220 Claus Sparren, 260, 274 Coburg, 130 Cologne, 54, 178, 291 colonialism, 2, 12, 32, 45, 54, 55, 82, 116, 132, 153, 160 colonization, 19, 31, 35, 36, 55, 64, 75, 94, 137, 152, 164, 185–87, 287 Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation, 284 Council of Constance, 22, 167–70, 279 conversion, 57, 169, 184–92, 198, 262, 279 of Jews, 15, 177, 183, 190–92, 194–97, 235, 237, 240

314 • Index

of pagans, 57, 164, 177–79, 186, 190, 194, 279 Conze, Werner, 24 Copenhagen KB, 158 Copernicus-Verein, 56 Copernicus, Nicolaus, 126 Corridor, 48, 55, 82, 84 Crusades, 2, 54, 153, 177, 178, 179, 187 Baltic Crusades, 13, 41, 57, 137, 138, 164, 176–79, 186, 187, 191–93, 198 Culm, 9, 160, 194, 195, 217, 219, 222, 234, 241, 266 Culm law, 161, 215, 236, 242, 250 Culmerland, 161, 252 Curland, 208 Curonian Spit, 58 Curonians, 58, 61, 94 Cypress, 153, 164 Czech, 238 Czerwińsk, 106 Dachau concentration camp, 139 Danzig-Westpreußen (district), 82, 85 Daugava/Düna, 152 David, Jew from Soldin, 259–61, 274 David, king, 177, 193 David, Lucas, 213, 219, 220 Dehio, Ludwig, 128–29, 131 Denkschrift über die Leistungen des Archivschutzes für die Wissenschaft, 81, 86, 102, 143 Denmark, 207, 249 de non tolerandis Iudaeis, 18, 265 Detmar von Lübeck, Chronik, 190, 206–09, 217, 225 Deutsch Krone/Wałcz, 88, 137 Deutsche Hefte für Volks- und Kulturbodenforschung, 56, 67 Deutsche Liste, 38 Deutscher Archivtag, 72, 75 Deutschordensliteratur, 180–81 Diesch, Carl, 130 Diesch, Rudolf, 106–07 Dilba, Benno, 114 DNVP, 50 Dobrzyń/Dobrin, 191

Domäne Brandenburg, 125, 141 Dominican Order, 151, 156, 212, 214, 215, 217, 221–24, 253 Dübler, Dr, 36 Duisburg, 128 Dülfer, Kurt, 87 Dutch, 185, 245, 253 East Prussia, 2, 5, 11, 12, 18, 20, 24, 47, 54–56, 58–60, 70, 72, 74, 76, 86, 90, 94, 108, 112, 121, 125, 128, 134, 286 Eberhard von Bruningsheim, 215 Eckert, Astrid, 103, 131 Einsatzgruppen, 117–18, 120 Ekhardi von Bunzlau, 238 Elbing, See Elbląg Elbinger Mönchschronik, 212 Elbinger Rechtsbuch, 237–38 Elbląg, 9, 102, 164, 207, 212, 216, 226, 228, 229, 233, 236, 237, 241, 258, 266, 267, 280, 291 Elyas, Brześć Kujawski, 239–40, 268 Emancipation, 14, 19 England, English, 8, 9, 54, 198, 200, 207, 241, 243–45, 250, 251, 271, 281 Erasmus Stella, 212 ERR, 79, 97, 107 ERR, Sonderstab Archive, 79, 131 Estonia, 23 Etatsministerium, 72 Eternal Peace of Brześć Kujawski, 242–45, 252, 269 Europe, 6, 14, 19, 25, 72, 149, 153, 177–79, 204, 215, 254, 258 Eastern Europe, 2, 12, 20, 45, 47, 72 Southeastern Europe, 69, 210 Western Europe, 187 expulsion, 27, 165, 178, 204 of Germans, 48 of Jews from Bohemia, 217 from Brandenburg, 217, 257 from England, 198 from Klaipėda, 3, 9, 38, 265 from Mecklenburg, 257 from Mergentheim, 154 from Nova Marchia, 216, 218, 257

Index • 315

from Poznań, 217 from Prussia, 15, 38, 171, 181, 183, 184, 211, 213, 214, 220, 222, 239, 282 from Saxonia, 256, 262 from Wrocław, 253, 260 of Poles, 27, 102 Falsterbo, 249 Federal Republic of Germany, 71, 103, 133, 134, 289 see also West Germany Ferber, Ebert, chronicle, 155–59, 212, 213 Fink, Zym and Abraham, 113 Finland, 75, 249 Finno-Ugrian, 64 Fischhausen/Primorsk, 218, 229 Flanders, 207 Flemish, 241, 253, 271 Forschungskreis der AlbertusUniversität, 124 France, 30, 48, 178, 207–09 Franciscan Order, 190, 194, 219 Franciscus von Braunsberg, 258 Franconia, 154, 214 Frederichs, Hans, 87, 129, 146 Free Masons, 79 Friedrich II, 153 Friedrich II von Brandenburg, 257 Friedrich von Sachsen, 151, 256 friheit, 252, 282 Frombork/Frauenburg, 16, 54, 99, 102, 137, 194, 208 Gause, Fritz, 16, 17, 50, 77, 139, 147, 285, 290 Gdańsk, 2, 15, 16, 18, 33, 56, 71, 75, 78, 82, 115, 155, 156, 158, 167, 197, 205, 212, 213, 218–20, 222, 233, 234, 237–9, 241–53, 264, 265, 270, 271, 280, 282 Altstadt, 249, 250 Jungstadt, 250 Rechtstadt, 250 Gediminas, 57, 58, 93

General Governorate, 50, 78, 82, 85, 97, 104, 105, 110, 115, 129, 132, 133 Genoa, 75 Georg Friedrich von Brandenburg, 265, 276 Georg von Egloffstein, 256, 260, 273 German Democratic Republic, 132, 133 German Historical Institute, Rome, 51 German landmaster, 162 German lands, 153, 154, 178, 180, 182, 186, 206, 208, 210, 217, 219 German Reich, 21, 50, 72, 73, 78, 82, 109, 112, 142 Germania pontificia, 26, 51 Gesamtarchiv der deutschen Juden, 89 Gesamtverein der deutschen Geschichts- und Altertumsvereine, 67 Gesellschaft der Freunde Kants, 135–36 Gestapo, 5, 23, 27, 29, 73, 81, 104, 111, 113 Głogow/Glogau, 259 Głowno, 105 Golden Bull of Rimini, 192 Gollub, Hermann, 48, 66, 88 Goslar, 2, 131 see also Archivlager Gospels, 183, 187 Göttingen, 2, 107, 128, 130, 134–39 see also Archivlager and Max-Planck-Institute Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 135–39 Gradsko, Macedonia, 49 Grasleben, 108, 125 Greek, 109 Greiser, Arthur, 105 Grenzmarkarchiv Posen-Westpreußen, 78 Grieser, Rudolf, 130 Grodno, 104, 120–25, 246, 247, 281 Groß Tromp/Trąby, 128

316 • Index

Große Wildnis, 61–64, 68, 69, 74, 94 Grotefend, Otto, 73 Grunau, Simon, Preussische Chronik, 15, 151, 155–60, 164, 184, 211–24, 229 Gumbinnen (district), 48, 54, 72, 74, 75, 112 Günther von Hohenstein, 215 Güstrow, 216 Haar, Ingo, 29, 44, 67, 68, 83, 84, 91, 143 Hamann, Joachim, 118 Handfeste, 62, 160 Hannover, 42, 73, 208 Hannus Kruger, 234–35, 266 Hans Küchmeister, 254 Hans von Buch, 272–73 Hanseatic League, 152, 162, 205, 210, 225, 233, 239, 249, 282 Hanseatic towns, 75, 207, 208, 241, 242, 246, 248, 250, 251, 253 Hartknoch, Christoph, 156, 157, 159 Hebrew, 8, 190, 197 Heiligengrabe, 227 Heilsberg/Lidzbark Warmiński, 196–97 Heilsberg castle, 125 Heimatvertriebene, 102, 134–37, 285, 287 Hein, Max, 53, 54, 69, 73, 83–86, 91, 93, 98, 99, 101, 103–07, 111–13, 121, 122–25, 129, 131, 132, 144 Heincke, Hanswerner, 132–33 Heinrich III Sorbom of Warmia, 194 Heinrich Kruger, 239, 268 Heinrich Reuß von Plauen, 248, 258 Heinrich von Hesler, Apokalypse, 181–83 Heinrich von Hesler, Evangelium Nicodemi, 17, 180–84 Heinrich von Kunzen, 184, 188, 189 Heinrich von Rheden, 157–59 Hellmann, Manfred, 21, 41, 42 Helwig Schwan, 228 Henoch and Elias, 182

Herder-Forschungsrat, 21, 42 Herder-Institut, 21, 42 heretics, 165–67, 179, 184, 189, 205, 222 Hermann von Salza, 21, 199 Herrmann Hug, 195 Herzogliches Briefarchiv, 241 Herzogliches Preußen, 262 Hester, 279 Heydrich, Reinhard, 90 Hiärn, Thomas, Ehst-, Lyf- und Lettländische Geschichte, 157 HIKO, 32, 56, 70–71, 85, 93, 130, 137, 139 Himmler, Heinrich, 105, 107 Hinrichs, Carl, 123–5 Historischer Verein für Ermland, 56 Hitler, Adolf, 72 Hitler-Stalin Treaty, 117, 142 Hoffmann, Friedrich, 134 Hohe Schule, 97 Holy Land, 152, 176–79, 186, 199, 207 Holy Roman Empire, 98, 150, 153, 154, 177, 178, 222, 236, 256, 273 Hölzle, Erwin, 286 host-desecration accusations, 6, 15, 178, 203, 211–21, 224, 227, 253, 257–59 Hubatsch, Walter, 21, 147 Huckewitz, Andreas, 157, 159 Hungary, 207 Hussites, 167, 210, 226 Imbracht and Gregor of Elbląg, 247 India, 205 Indogermanic, 58, 64 Institut für Osteuropäische Wirtschaft, 37, 84 Institute of Auxiliary Sciences, 51, 80 Instytut pamięci narodowej, 284 inter-war period, 47, 48, 50, 51, 56, 65, 103, 104 Israel Bruna ben Hayyim, 273 Istanbul, 75 Italia pontificia, 510 Italy, 17, 54, 207

Index • 317

Jacob Scholomicz, 248 Jacob, orator, 258 Jacob, physician, 249 Jaczko, tollkeper, 247–48 Jägerndorf/Krnov, 255 Jähnig, Bernhard, 67, 285 Jena, 15, 59 Jerusalem, 73, 177, 178 Jewry law, 34, 234, 236–40, 282 Johann Salomo, convert, 197 Johann von Posilge/von Rheden, Chronik, 207, 216 Johannes de Capestrano, 218, 228–29, 253, 257–59, 273 Johannes Długosz, 217 Johannes Falkenberg, 169 Johannes, convert, 194 Jomsburg, 66, 118 Joseph, 183 Jost Cropp, 273 Judaization, 184, 188–91 Judas, 183 Judas Maccabaeus, 193 Judekynne, 195 Judenältester, 108, 141 Judeneid, 18, 233, 235–39 Judenkirchen, 219, 229 Judenregal, 153–54 Judith, 279 Jüngere Hochmeisterchronik, 185, 193, 198 Kaczmarczyk, Kazimierz, 104, 140 Kalicki, Włodzimierz, 107 Kaliningrad Oblast, 48, 63 Kant, Immanuel, 135 Karl von Trier, 162 Karłowice/Ketzendorf, 259 Karlsruhe, 75 Kaspar Hennenberger, 157, 216, 219–21 Kaunas, 54, 101, 117–19, 121, 123, 126, 249 Fort VII, 117, 118, 144 Kehr, Paul Fridolin, 51 Keiserische, 234, 266 Keit, Ernst, 85, 123

Kessler, Gerhard, 15, 59 Keyenort, 208 Keyser, Erich, 16, 24, 249, 250 Kiel, 131 Kisch, Guido, 34, 45, 236–37 Klaipėda (town), 3, 36, 37, 58, 62, 76, 77, 118, 208, 265, 282 Klaipėdos kraštas, 12, 41, 51, 54, 55, 59–69, 74–76, 95, 112, 114, 285, 287 Klemperer, Victor, Lingua Tertii Imperii, 74 Knobloch, 218 Koblenz, 154 Koch, Erich, 121 Koeppen, Hans, 147 Kohte, Wolfgang, 86, 88 Köln, see Cologne Kommissar für den Archivschutz, 81, 85 Komtur, 195, 215, 222, 234, 245, 257–59, 261 Komtureien, 138, 261 Königsberg in der Neumark, 225, 256, 257, 260 Königsberg, 2, 9, 15, 16, 24, 37, 47–49, 53, 55, 56, 58, 59, 72, 73, 78, 81, 82, 85, 101, 103–06, 125, 127, 130, 134, 135, 161, 167, 197, 207, 226, 233, 241, 247–49, 252, 265, 270, 280–82, 286 Altstadt, 16, 252, 264, 266 castle, 58 Jewish community, 11, 59, 73, 74, 149, 283 Kneiphof, 16, 265 libraries, 56, 106–8, 114, 130 Löbenicht, 16, 265 state archive, 2, 6, 7, 11, 12, 23–28, 30, 53, 54, 59, 66, 67, 69, 71, 73–77, 79, 81–86, 90, 91, 102, 103, 107, 109, 111, 113–26, 132, 133, 142, 143, 150, 284 University Albertina, 8, 49, 50, 51, 53, 121, 124, 125, 130, 134 Konrad of Masovia, 191–92 Konrad von Erlichshausen, 245 Konradswalde/Konradów, 216

318 • Index

Korfes, Otto, 133 Koszalin/Köslin, 290–91 Kowno, see Kaunas Kraków, 195, 219, 233, 243, 253 University, 169 Krakow am See, Mecklenburg, 216 Kraus, Herbert, 135 Kreisgemeinschaft Tilsit–Ragnit, 92 Krockow, Graf von, 287 Kühner-Wolfskehl, Hans, 138–39 Kujawy/Kujawien, 195, 249, 251, 261 Kuntcze Brantenstein, 247 Kwidzyn, 15, 249 Ladislaus Postumus, 259–60, 273 Landesgeschichte, 13, 16, 21, 56, 87, 287 Landesstelle Ostpreußen der Zentralstelle für Nachkriegsgeschichte, 77, 79, 84, 85, 98, 121, 123, 125 Landordnung, 8, 14–17, 151–66, 170–73, 176, 189, 191, 192, 211, 212, 220, 224, 279 Landsmannschaften, 92, 134 Latvia, 58, 92, 94 law books, 232–40 Leander, 167, 222 Leczkaw, Konrad, 97 Legnica/Legenitz, 255, 259 Lehr, Stefan, 43, 78, 82, 98 Leibzoll, 246, 275 Leipzig, 15, 59, 126, 130 Lengwethen/Lunino/Hohensalzburg, 75 Lichtenau, 213 Lietuvininkai, 63 Lisbon, 75 Lithuania, 2, 3, 7, 8, 12, 14, 18, 20, 24, 31, 35–38, 41, 47, 54–59, 71–77, 81, 84, 87, 88, 91–94, 101–03, 106, 110–21, 123, 126, 135, 144, 168, 179, 187, 193, 205, 241, 243, 244, 247, 248, 252, 254, 263, 265, 275, 280, 287–89 Lithuania Minor, 60–69, 77, 112, 116 see also Polish-Lithuanian Union

Litvaks, 37 Livonia, 33, 41, 58, 64, 75, 76, 139, 150, 152, 153, 166, 176, 179, 180, 185, 249, 279 Livonian master, 154, 162 Lobegeld, 244 Lochstädt castle, 125 Lollards, 167 Lombards, 253, 271 Łomża, 110 Low Countries, 185, 250 Lower Saxony, 125, 130, 137 Lübeck, 190, 206–09, 217, 219 Lübeck law, 15, 233, 237, 250 Ludolf König, 213 Ludwig of Silva, 30 Ludwig the Bavarian, 154 Ludwig II of Brzeg, 255 Ludwig V the Older, 256–57, 272 Ludwig von Erlichshausen, 246, 249, 256, 258 Lviv, 255 Maccabees, 176, 177, 187, 193, 198, 279 Magdeburg, 129 Magdeburg law, 118–19, 235–39, 250, 267 Magdeburger Schöffensprüche, 236–238, 267 Magunia, Waldemar, 121 Mainz-Speyer region, 154 Maków Mazowieki, 109, 110, 283 Malbork, 163, 195, 226, 234, 244, 266 Malta, 153 Manichean, 167 Marburg, 21, 42, 154 Margaretha, Heilsberg, 196–97, 202 Marienburg castle, 19, 125, 154, 155, 158, 162, 172, 180, 186, 191, 192, 247, 249, 252, 260, 263 Marienburg (town), see Malbork Marienwerder, see Kwidzyn Mark Brandenburg, 191, 196, 216, 217, 256–59 Martin Truchsess, 196, 248 Marxism, 21, 36, 42

Index • 319

Maschke, Ernst, 66, 71, 96 Masovia, 22, 42, 85, 103, 106, 109, 112, 191, 244, 247, 283 Mathis Teschner, 239 Max Planck Institute, Göttingen, 128 Mayer/Meyen, physician, 249, 261 Mecklenburg, 216, 217, 257 Mediterranean, 17, 54, 152, 153 Melchizedech, 177 Memel (river), see Nemunas Memel (town), see Klaipėda Memelland, see Klaipėdos kraštas Mentzel-Reuters, Arno, 17, 181–82 Mergentheim, 33, 154 Mertin Smalcz, 195 Mewe/Gniew, 222 MGH, 51, 53 Middle Low German, 75 Mikołaj Szarlejski, 249 military orders, 152–54, 164 Ministry of Propaganda, 84 Ministry of the Interior, 60, 67–69, 73, 84, 90, 91, 132, 133 Minsk, 120 moneylending, 153, 237, 254–61 Morré, Fritz, 88 Mortensen, Gertrud, 62, 64, 67, 68 Mortensen, Hans, 67–69, 286 Moses and Gazam, 257 Moyses, 208 Moyses Jacobson the Younger, 38 Muslims, 153, 164, 176, 177, 178, 183, 186, 187, 189, 191, 198, 199, 279, 280 see also Saracens Nadrauer, 61 Nebuchadnezzar, 287 Neumark, see Nova Marchia Neu-Nessau, see Nowa Nieszawa Nemunas, 30, 37, 59, 76 Netherlands, 54, 244, 249, 251, 271 Neun Bücher Magdeburger Rechts/ Poelmannsche Distinctionen, 238–39, 268 Nice, 75

Nicolaus von Jeroschin, Kronike van Pruzinlant, 185, 188, 191 Nikolaus von Schöneck, 194, 201 NOFG, 23, 60, 69, 70, 74, 83–88, 94, 109, 125, 126 Nonn, Christoph, 25, 28, 29, 91, 93, 143 Norway, 207 Nova Marchia, 33, 57, 150, 216, 218, 225, 232, 254–57, 259–61, 271, 272 Nowa Nieszawa, 18, 232, 249, 254, 255, 261 NSDAP, 1, 25, 27, 44, 53, 54, 80, 81, 123, 124, 129–33, 146, 286, 288 Nuremberg, 241, 244, 253, 271, 281 Nuremberg Memorbuch, 190 OBA, 54, 59, 126, 254 Obitz, Kurt, 23 Occident, 19, 20, 31, 287 Oder–Neiße border, 1, 286 Oleśnica/Oels, 259 Oliva, 205, 220 Olomoc/Olmütz, 255 Olsztyn/Allenstein, 102 Opole/Oppeln, 259 Order of St John, 153 Order of the Sword Brethren, 152 Orthodox Christians, 72, 93, 168 Ostforschung, 2, 5, 9, 16, 19–24, 27–31, 37, 42, 47, 60, 64, 66, 69, 72, 81–87, 94, 101, 134, 135, 285 Ostjudentum, 18, 19, 37, 41, 283 Ostlandregierung, 54, 117, 123, 144 Ostpreußische Folianten, 241 Ostprogramm, see Prussian archival administration Ostrołeka, 109–11, 142, 283 pagans, 30, 32, 55, 57, 137, 151, 152, 156, 164–71, 176–79, 182, 185–87, 190–94, 197–99, 219, 223, 279, 280, 284 Palestine, 54, 178, 179 Paneriai/Ponar, 120 Papritz, Johannes, 60, 66, 68, 85,–86, 88, 126–27, 130–31

320 • Index

Paris, 75, 214, 227, 287 Passion, 117, 183 Paul Frome, 218 Paul von Rusdorf, 245 Paulus Wladimiri, 168–70 pawnbroking, 235, 238, 254–55, 260 Pażaislis, 117, 118 Peace of Melnosee, 33, 76, 77, 112, 142, 143, 240, 242, 248, 261 Peace of Toruń, 112, 252 Pelplin, 220, 251 Peter the Venerable, 177 Peter von Dusburg, Chronicon terrae Prussie, 161, 184–94, 196, 198, 205, 217 Petersen, Julius, 50 Pfundzoll, 163, 244, 245, 269 physicians, 18, 153, 196, 248–49, 254 Płock, 22, 42, 99, 102, 106–09, 114, 141 Plzeň, 154 pogroms, 6, 23, 27, 34, 110, 113, 150, 178, 203, 204, 213, 217, 219, 225, 228–29, 239, 257, 262, 283 Black Death pogroms, 204–09, 225, 256 in Lithuania, 117–18 in Mergentheim, 154 in Silesia and Bohemia, Wrocław, 218, 253, 259, 262 November Pogroms, 89–90 Polish-Lithuanian Union, 76, 87, 98, 169, 178, 194, 240, 242, 248 Pomerania, 9, 11, 39, 178, 215, 252 Pomerelia, 71, 87, 167, 186, 205, 206, 211, 219, 229 Pomesania, 166, 219 Portugal, 30, 44, 251 Posner, Ernst, 52, 93, 97, 127, 128 Poznań, 2, 31, 72, 77, 78, 81, 103–06, 115, 217, 220, 251, 257, 261, 283 Prague, 154, 196, 197, 202, 203, 210–11, 217, 226, 228 Prenzlau, 257, 272 Preußisches Urkundenbuch, 54, 59, 72 Preußischer Bund, 76, 222 see also Prussian estates

Pritzwalk, 216 Protestantism, Protestants, 7, 48, 113, 122, 156, 219–21, 224, 262 provincial synod statutes, 166, 171, 194 Prussia, bishops’ territories, 160–62, 165, 166, 195 Prussian archival administration, 2, 24, 27–29, 47–50, 55, 57, 60, 69, 70, 73, 77–91, 107, 111, 117, 122, 123, 125, 129, 236 Ostprogramm, 31, 47, 55, 58, 66, 86–88, 98, 125, 236 Prussian estates, 30 33, 71, 76, 160–64, 193, 201, 222, 240, 241–45, 262 Prussian landmaster, 160, 161 Prussian uprisings, 161, 178, 185 Prussians (Prußen, Old Prussians), 31, 62–65, 138, 152, 160–64, 179, 186–87, 197, 223, 242, 281 Przasnysz, 109, 110 Psalter, 187 Publikationsstelle Berlin–Dahlem (PuSte), 23, 47, 59–63, 66–69, 71, 74, 75, 83–86, 88, 94, 104, 286 Pułtusk, 109–11, 142, 283 Quednau, Hans, 122, 143 Radziwiłł family archive, 115, 120 Ragnit/Neman, 63 Raimund de Penaforte, 169 Randt, Erich, 50, 85, 129, 131, 146 Ranke, Leopold, 19, 21, 42 Ranulf Higden, Polychronicon, 190 Raumer, Kurt von, 121, 125, 130, 144 Red Army, 48, 106, 110, 115, 117, 120, 121 Red Jews, 206 Reformation, 7, 18, 56, 139, 150, 152, 155, 197, 220, 248–49, 253, 262, 279 Reichsarchiv Posen, 23 Reichsarchiv Potsdam, 80 Reichsausschuß deutschnationaler Hochschullehrer, 50

Index • 321

Reichsinstitut für die Geschichte des neuen Deutschlands, 90 Reichskolonialbund, 132 Reichskommissariat Ostland, 119, 123 Reichssippenamt, 73, 89, 90, 108, 114, 130, 141 responsa, 8, 273, 281, 290 Rhine River, 90 Rhineland, 54 Rhodes, 153, 164 Riga, 54, 57, 119, 166 ritual murder accusations, 238–39, 253 Roethe, Gustav, 50 Rohr, Wilhelm, 127, 131 Röhrig, Ernst, 290 Rosenberg, Alfred, 19, 79, 286 Rostock, 208, 225, 226 Rothfels, Hans, 5, 49, 121 RSHA, 79, 113, 114 Rülf, Isaak, 3, 265 Rumboldus, 209–10, 226 Russia, Russian, 3, 12, 31, 37, 47–49, 63, 72, 81, 91, 102, 103, 110, 119, 123, 125, 132, 137, 167, 168, 264, 279, 286–88 Russian Zone, 129, 133 Ruthenian, 64 SA, 132 Sachsenspiegel, 237–38 Saint Dorothy of Montau, 216 Saint Gall, 192 Saint Sygmunt, 107 Salzburg, 48 Sambia/Samland, 128, 194, 209, 226 Samogitia, 58, 112, 205, 263, 275 Sandow, Erich, 88, 104, 106, 140 Saracens, 167, 186, 187, 191, 198 Sarajevo, 126, 127 Saxonia, 256, 262 Scandinavia, 75, 198 Schaak, Erna, Willy and Dietrich, 48, 123 Schabdey, Grodno, 246 Schalauer, 61 Schaude, 247

Schieder, Theodor, 5, 24, 25, 28–29, 31, 44, 77, 85, 92, 96, 106, 121, 123, 125, 143, 144 Sielmann, Burchard, 85 Schlesinger, Walter, 21, 42, 287 Schmeer, Martha, 128 Schuldabwehr, 36, 149 Schütz, Caspar, 173, 213, 221 Schwabenspiegel, 237–38 Scotland, Scottish, 241, 251, 253, 263–64 Scriptores rerum Prussicarum, 155, 186, 218 SD, 5, 27, 29, 73, 78, 81, 83, 104, 105, 113, 114, 120, 122 Sealand, 207 Seeberg-Elverfeldt, Roland, 88, 132, 146 Seimelis, 77 Sejny, 114 Selle, Götz von, 134–36 Sephardi, 251 Seraphim, Peter-Heinz, 5, 45 Shoah, 4, 5, 8, 25, 27, 29, 36, 48, 78, 88, 90, 105, 110, 117, 118, 265, 278, 288, 289 Siegfried von Feuchtwangen, 11, 38, 39, 151, 152, 156, 158, 161–63, 188, 192 Sigismund I the Old, 262–64 Sigismund von Luxemburg, 88, 98, 256 Silesia, 8, 51, 82, 102, 134, 218, 253–55, 257–59 Skåne, 249 Skanör, 249 Slavic tribes, 31, 55, 64, 185 Slavs, 4, 19, 25, 35–38, 47, 49, 55–58, 62, 64, 71, 72, 91, 103, 118, 135, 150, 165, 242, 250, 279, 280, 284–87 Slomo, Grodno, 246–47 Soldin, 218, 259, 260, 274 Solomon Luria (Maharshal), 254, 281, 290 Southampton, 75 Soviet Union, 116–17, 133

322 • Index

Soviet troops, see Red Army Spruchkammerverfahren, 130–32 SS, 5, 27, 78, 81, 84, 105–8, 111, 114–16, 122, 283 Stakauskas, Juozas, 119–20 Stedingers, 179 Stegemann, Bernt, 218 Stenzel, bailiff, 247 Stern, Selma, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 34, 39, 284 Sternberg, 217, 229 Stettin/Szczecin, 115, 116, 284 Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, 284 Stockholm KB, 158 Strukturbericht über das Ostland, 119 Sudauen, see Suwałki Sudauer, 61 Suwałki, 22, 42, 81, 91, 99, 101, 103, 106, 111–14, 121, 125, 142–43, 283 Sweden, 17, 75, 207, 209 Świecie/Schwetz, 211–15, 220, 227, 234 Świdnica/Schweidnitz, 259 Switzerland, 75 Szukała, Maciej, 27 Tacitus, 9 Tagfahrt, 30, 160–64, 241–45, 262–64 Tangier, 75 Tatars, 169, 175, 264 Teterow, 217 Tham von Hochberg, 196 Theodericus, 222 Thirteen Years’ War, 201, 252 Thomas Aquinas, 169 Thuringia, 154, 182, 188, 256 Tiberius, 183 Tilsit/Sowetsk, 49, 121, 285 Toledo, 190, 198 Tolkemit/Tolmicko, 13, 74, 121, 266 tollkeepers, 59, 247, 265, 276 Torah, 235, 237

Toruń, 18, 30, 71, 160, 163, 195, 208, 220, 233–45, 249, 252, 255, 257, 258, 261, 268, 280, 282 Altstadt, 140 Toruń anonymous, Annales, 207 Treaty of Versailles, 2, 12, 26, 28, 55, 61, 82 Treblinka, 110 Treitschke, Heinrich von, 19 Triller, Anneliese, 16, 99, 137 Tuchel/Tuchola, 234 Tylman vom Wege, 30, 44 Tyminiecki, Kazimierz, 104 Ukraina, 56 Ulrich von Jungingen, 160, 162, 222 Union of Lublin, 233 United Kingdom, 15 United States, 15, 52, 80, 81, 93, 97–99, 127 Upper German region, 76 Uppsala UB, 158, 171 usury, 183, 223, 254 Utikal, Gerhard, 97 Utrecht, 185, 190 Vasmer, Max, 58 Venice, 162, 192 Verein für die Geschichte Ost- und Westpreußens, 55 Veronica, 183 Vespasianus, 183 Viborg, 249 Vienna, 269 Vilijampolė, 117–8 Vilnius, 54, 57, 117, 119–23, 126, 247, 262, 283 Virgin Mary, 156, 176, 179, 183, 188, 190, 191 Visby, 208–09, 226 Vistula (river), 30, 163, 213–15, 220, 243, 244 Volksdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaften, 28, 29, 69, 83, 126 see also NOFG waideler, 156, 158, 164, 172–73

Index • 323

Warmia/Ermland, 166, 194–95, 212, 226 Warsaw, 9, 81, 82, 91, 99, 104, 108, 115–16, 124–25, 129, 132, 143, 233, 283, 284 Warthegau, 9, 25, 54, 80, 82, 104–06, 110, 115, 140, 236, 283 Wartzmann, Bartholomäus, 155–59, 171, 213, 220 Wassantkehmen/Wildnisrode, 74 Weedern/Talniki, 48, 75, 123, 127 Wehrmacht, 69, 75, 78, 81, 84, 104, 105, 115, 116, 120, 126, 138 Weimar Republic, 19, 28, 31, 50, 52, 54, 55 Weise, Erich, 21–23, 33, 42, 50, 66, 71–73, 90, 92, 96, 106, 116, 129, 146, 168, 186, 284 Wełk, 247 well poisoning, 204, 206–09 Wenskus, Reinhard, 138 Werner von Orseln, 162 West Germany, 6, 12, 42, 102, 106, 132, 136

West Prussia, 3, 12, 16, 31, 56, 78, 82, 87, 102, 156, 236, 285, 289 Wieser, Klemens, 137–39 Wilhelm III, 256 William of Modena, 178 Willkür, 160, 163, 166, 232–34, 237, 252, 265, 266 Wilna, see Vilnius Wilsnack, 216 Winter, Georg, 50, 131 Wisła/Weichsel (river), see Vistula Wisła/Weichsel (town), 191 Wismar, 225 Wissenschaft des Judentums, 6, 14, 251 Witche von Wilsdorf, 254–55, 271 Witold the Great, 219, 248 Wituszko, Dariusz, 284 World War I, 1, 6, 19, 42, 57, 48, 50, 51, 54, 61, 76–78, 82, 86, 286 World War II, 15, 20, 23, 28, 31, 43, 48, 56, 78, 237, 270, 287 Worms, 178