The Memoirs of Glückel of Hameln

Introductory Matters

It is not a grave that opens up to us in this book, but a human heart. the memoirs that are now seeing the light for the first time would have deserved to be published a long time ago on account of the personality of their author alone. In a literature like that of the Jews, in which everything personal recedes shyly into the background, in which the serendipities of the individual life are not given voice in the proximity of what is permanent and immortal for the entire people, these autobiographical notes of a woman are unparalleled. She must have been an extraordinary woman, intellectually far superior to her environment and possessed of an unusually strong inner life; she was able to escape from her state of inner tension and depression by giving in to the urge to express herself in writing to her children and grandchildren. In these quiet pages a widow, bowed by grief, sought shelter, as she herself tells us, from melancholy in nights beset by worries, and although they were meant originally only for the eyes of her family, they nevertheless belong to Jewish literary history which can point to many text witnesses and memorials documenting the intellectual life of Jewish women but not to an instance of such extraordinary independence and uniqueness that breaks the mold of socialization and descent.

In addition to these outstanding personal qualities, it is the historical content pertaining to culture and ethics that makes these memoirs such a treasure in Jewish literature, which is generally poor in sources that enable research into the social and inner life. Under the scrutinizing gaze of the researcher, these unpretentious outpourings of the heart by an excellent woman, free of vanity and narcissism, become documents that present to us the culture and ethical behavior of Jewish families in the second half of the seventeenth and the first quarter of the eighteenth century in a way that is naïve and undistorted and hence all the more valuable. Unbidden, we observe and get to know the events that unfold in the heart of a family and convey directly their feelings and intentions. Despite its unpretentious simplicity, the book thus becomes a source of cultural history like those dollhouses in museums that convey to us an impression of dwellings and their furnishings in the centuries in which they were originally made.

Not least, the actual content we encounter on the most literal level of these notes makes them valuable additions to our historical knowledge. We gain insight into the lives of communities in Germany, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Austria, and Poland. These memoirs will become indispensable for research into the histories of the Jewish communities in Altona, Amsterdam, Baiersdorf, Bamberg, Berlin, Cleve, Danzig, Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt an der Oder, Fürth, Hamburg, Hameln, Hannover, Hildesheim, Copenhagen, Lissa, Leipzig, Metz, Stettin, and Vienna to name only the most important ones. In the course of many years, I have experienced the immense value of these memoirs not only for Jewish family history but also for research into the history of communities and countries; it is so extraordinary that I no longer want to delay making this informative source generally accessible.

On account of her extensive family connections and the marriages of her children, the author of these memoirs was so much at the forefront of the Jewish social life of her time that her memoirs quite naturally comprise the fates of many people in various cities and countries. Although the circuit of her life seems to be determined by the three points of Hamburg, Hameln, and Metz, her changing fortune conducted her to many places and put her in touch with many family members. With her sharp powers of observation and her keen memory, she transformed the material that she was handed into a rich chronicle.