Legal Situation for the Purchase and Ownership of Immovable Property by Jews in Prague/Bohemia before the Emancipation
Legal Situation for the Purchase and Ownership of Immovable Property by Jews in Prague/Bohemia before the Emancipation

Summary/Abstract: Afew years before legal equality was granted to the Jews in the U.S.A., France and Batavia – in the 1780s – the question of the ‘civic improvement and toleration’ of Jews and their ‘ability’ to obtain equal rights with the Christian – Catholic and Protestant – population caused a wide response among the educated and economic elites in Austria as well as in a few of the German states. The thought was not new, but at the end of the 18th century it was intertwined with many other aspects – changes in the social structure and in political powers and legal matters, as well as techno-industrial diversification and new economic-industrial challenges. Joseph II’s government seemed to dare to take a step towards the ‘Emancipation of the Jews’ within the concept of tolerating the ‘non-Catholic’ population. The imperial Handbillet (Communique) was published in May 1781. Its topics overlapped with themes from the booklet by the Prussian war-official Wilhelm Christian Dohm Über die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden [On the Civil Improvement of the Jews] of August 1781 and it was in detail reflected in Naphtali Herz Wessely’s Divre Shalom ve-Emet [Words of Peace and Truth]. Dohm and Wessely discussed the theoretical and practical possibilities of equal rights for Jews with more or less pragmatic suggestions. The Handbillet not only set up the debate in German Enlightenment circles and in the Austrian imperial government offices in Vienna, but obviously reflected this progressive discussion. From our historically self-reflecting point of view and the view of radical contemporaries, the Handbillet regulated the status of Jews and demanded their participation, but did not change their situation. Nevertheless, at the time of its publication it was a revolutionary step, trying to turn the theory discussed into practical suggestions with legal consequences, and had further impact. It suggested that the usage of the German language was a necessary prerequisite for the cultural adaptation of the Jews, connected with the need for a wide setting-up of Jewish schools and the admission of Jews to the universities, as well as the practical ‘use’ of the Jews in the economic sphere, that is, the ‘opening’ of wider employment sectors for them. The publication of the Handbillet induced further reactions. In the summer of 1781 the discussion about the status of the Jews in society in Vienna and Prague manifested itself in numerous articles and polemical writings e.g. Juden, so wie sie sind und wie sie seyn sollen [The Jews, as they are, and as they should be] and Über Juden und deren Duldung [On the Jews and their Toleration], Beleuchtung der Materie über die Duldung der Juden von einem Freunde der Wahrheit, Menschlichkeit und Aufklärung [Illumination of the Matter of Toleration of the Jews, by a Friend of Truth, Humanity and the Enlightenment].

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