The Discourse of Usury

Relations Between Christians and Jews in the German Countryside, 1880–1914

Bibliographic Data

ID9644124
AuthorsHelmut Walser Smith (Vanderbilt University, corresponding author)
Year1999
Volume32
Issue3
Pages255-276
Publication date1999-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCentral European History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0008-9389 • E-ISSN: 1569-1616
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0008938900021130
OpenAlexW2044143356
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited20

Most historians are aware that the charge of usury belongs to the standard arsenal of both traditional anti-Judaism and modern forms of anti-Semitism (if indeed one accepts the validity of this distinction). More recently, historians and scholars of literature have considered the way in which usury was a powerful simile—the usurer as Jew—and as such central to the cultural history of learned and popular forms of anti-Semitic prejudice. In the essay that follows, I do not intend to further document the history of this prejudice in the realm of print culture. Rather, I will explore the way in which its central assumption (namely that Jews and Christians possessed radically different and religiously specific conceptions of work and trade) configured, entered into, and also obfuscated rural relations between Christians and Jews

Aesthetics · Art · German · Islam · Judaism · Linguistics · Literature · Political science · Prejudice (legal term · Realm · Sociology · Theology · Usury · European history and politics · German legal, social, and political studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Religion, Theology, History, Judaism, Christianity · Religious studies

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