Medieval Ashkenaz

In the German-speaking countries it has so far been neglected to link the history of the Jews with general history, which is particularly evident in the lack of source editions, regesta works and inventories. The project “Corpus of sources on the medieval history of Jews in the Reich” aims to close this research deficit by recording for the first time all relevant temporally and spatially fixable sources on the history of Jews in the area of ​​the Roman-German Empire for the period from 1273-1519.

In order to record and process the electronic data, the virtual work and research environment FuD developed by the competence center in cooperation with the Collaborative Research Center 600 “Strangeness and Poverty” was modified and expanded with new functionalities..

The long-term project is based on problem-oriented research on the history of the Jews. The explotation of the sources and their presentation in the edition are directly linked to the research. At the same time, this creates a qualitatively new basis for researching the history of the Jews in the central landscapes of Central Europe. At the same time, comparative European history receives a solid foundation for a quarter of a millennium with promising cross-religious perspectives.

The long-term project offers a realistic chance to counteract the still far too little consideration of the role of the Jews in previous historical studies. It is reasonable to assume that it offers essential new insights into the long-term, fundamental and up to the present day significance of the relationships between the two monotheistic religions in local, regional and cultural-spatial references for history. The prospect that it will have a lasting positive effect on academic teaching, school teaching and the general public is just as justified.