Auction 97 Part 2 Rare and Important Items
!["Libellus de Judaica confessione sive sabbato afflictionis" ["Booklet of the Jewish Confession…"], by Joh](https://files.kedem-auctions.com/files/Sale97/122_1.jpg "\"Libellus de Judaica confessione\" – Johannes Pfefferkorn – Nuremberg,")
!["Libellus de Judaica confessione sive sabbato afflictionis" ["Booklet of the Jewish Confession…"], by Joh](https://files.kedem-auctions.com/files/Sale97/122_2.jpg "\"Libellus de Judaica confessione\" – Johannes Pfefferkorn – Nuremberg,")
!["Libellus de Judaica confessione sive sabbato afflictionis" ["Booklet of the Jewish Confession…"], by Joh](https://files.kedem-auctions.com/files/Sale97/122_3.jpg "\"Libellus de Judaica confessione\" – Johannes Pfefferkorn – Nuremberg,")
"Libellus de Judaica confessione sive sabbato afflictionis" ["Booklet of the Jewish Confession…"], by Johannes Pfefferkorn. Nuremberg: Joann Weyssenburger, [1508]. Latin.
Antisemitic work by Johannes Pfefferkorn, a convert from Judaism, calling on the Christian world to undermine Judaism and threaten the Jews with expulsion if they refuse to convert. The booklet contains descriptions of Jewish customs pertaining to Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, in particular the prayer "Avinu Malkeinu" ("Our Father, Our King", recited on the Ten Days of Penitence and fast days), which purportedly lays bare the Jewish hatred toward Christians: "Our Father, our King, wipe out every oppressor and adversary from against us / Our Father, our King, close the mouths of our adversaries and accusers...".
The book features four different woodcuts (one appearing twice, both on the title page and in the body of the text), considered to be the earliest illustrations of Jewish customs ever to be included in a printed book ("A Jewish Iconography" p. XIII; see below). For other, later woodcuts depicting Jewish customs, see lot no. 110 in the present auction (illustrated Sefer Minhagim).
The illustrations depict the synagogue on Rosh HaShanah with the blowing of the shofar; the "Tashlikh" service; Erev Yom Kippur with the custom of the penitential rooster ("tarnegol kaparot"), ritual bathing and eating; the synagogue on Yom Kippur with lashes meted out to penitents and the Priestly Blessing. In the synagogue illustrations, the women’s section appears at the bottom. In all the illustrations, the eyes of the Jewish figures are covered, in keeping with the motif of "Ecclesia et Synagoga" (lit. "Church and Synagogue") wherein Judaism is portrayed as a blindfolded woman, in juxtaposition with open-eyed Christianity – a prevalent motif in Christian art of the Middle Ages. These illustrations are seen as inspiration for the woodcuts appearing in Antonius Margaritha's well known antisemitic composition "Der gantz jüdisch Glaub" (Augsburg, 1530)
Pfefferkorn's work was originally written in German (bearing the name "Ich heyß ain büchlein der iudenpeicht") and was published in 1508 in three editions: one in German and two in Latin (of which, one was published in Cologne, and the other in Nuremberg). Woodcuts appeared in all editions, in both German and Latin. These woodcuts were identical in content, but differed slightly in form, and in several details; the present edition is the rarest of the three.
Johannes Pfefferkorn (ca. 1469-1521), a convert from Judaism to Christianity, a butcher or moneylender by profession. He was apparently arrested on charges of theft, and following his release, he and his family members were baptized in Cologne. Was active under the auspices of the monastic Dominican order, served as an adviser to the Flemish theologian Jacob van Hoogstraaten in his efforts to persecute Jews, and was a vocal advocate of the burning of all Jewish books other than the Bible. In the years 1507-1510, he published a number of stridently-worded booklets – the thrust of an unprecedented campaign against Jewish literature. These booklets sought to portray Jewish books – in particular, the Talmud – as the "source of all evil"; with this came Pfefferkorn’s unequivocal demand that they be immediately confiscated and banned.
Following the publication of his booklets, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I issued an order calling for the confiscation of Jewish books, and Pfefferkorn personally led a book-banning campaign in Frankfurt. The banning aroused opposition among a number of German scholars who argued in defense of the books in question, declaring them to contain a hidden treasury of sources underpinning Christian thought and dogma. Among these scholars was Johannes Reuchlin, who became Pfefferkorn’s personal adversary. Thanks to their protests, the book-banning was finally halted.
[10] leaves. 19.5 cm. Good-fair condition. Stains. Slight tears, incl. open tears. Worming holes mended with paper (causing minor damage to print). New binding.
Exhibitions:
· Europas Juden im Mittelalter, Speyer, Historischen Museum der Pfalz, 2004-2005.
· Only on Paper: Six Centuries of Judaica from the Gross Family Collection, Chicago, Columbia College, 2005.
· The Book of Books: Biblical Canon, Dissemination and its People, Jerusalem, Bible Lands Museum, 2013.
· Questions of Faith: Chatrooms at the Dawn of the Modern Era, Ulm, Museum of the Bible, 2016, p. 106 (illustrated).
Reference:
· Alfred Rubens, "A Jewish Iconography", London: Nonpareil, 1981, p. XIII.
· Diane Wolfthal, "Imaging the Self: Representations of Jewish Ritual in Yiddish Books of Customs", in: Eva Frojmovic, ed., "Imagining the Self, Imagining the Other". Leiden, Boston, and Cologne: Brill, 2002, pp. 189-211.
· Jonathan Adams and Cordelia Heß, eds., "Revealing the Secrets of the Jews: Johannes Pfefferkorn and Christian Writings about Jewish Life and Literature in Early Modern Europe". Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2017 (a detailed bibliography appears at the end of the volume).
· Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation: A History.New York: Penguin, 2004.
This item is documented in the Center for Jewish Art (CJA), item no. 40671.
Provenance: The Gross Family Collection, Tel Aviv, item no. NHB.330.
"Acta pro veritate martyrii corporis & cultus publici B. Andreæ Rinnensis pueruli anno MCCCCLXII…", by Adrian Kempter [Kembter]. Innsbruck: Mich. Ant. Wagner, Aulae Reg. & Univers. typogr. & bibl., 1745. Latin and German.
A lengthy, detailed composition by the Christian theologian Adrian Kempter, relating the fabricated story of the brutal killing of the Christian child Andreas "Anderl" Oxner – an infamous blood libel concocted against the Jewish community, accusing them of ritual murder – and the cult that developed around it.
The frontispiece features a richly detailed engraving created by the brothers Johann and Joseph Klauber (signed in the plate). The young boy Anderl appears in the bottom center, propped up against a large stone, while a figure resembling the Grim Reaper stands on top of the rock, holding the murder weapons in its hands. The child is surrounded by a crowd of mourners and angels. In the four corners of the engraving are four miniature illustrations depicting a sequence of events that runs clockwise: the act of the murder; the funeral; the coins, sprouting flowers, representing the payment received by Andreas’s uncle from the Jews (see below); and finally Andreas’s grave, also with flowers sprouting and rising from it.
The "Rinn Blood Libel"
A fabricated story disseminated in the Austrian state of Tyrol in the 15th century to explain the discovery of the body of the child Andreas Oxner near the municipality of Rinn.
According to the blood libel – told in a number of different versions – Andreas Oxner was born to a peasant couple and sold by his uncle to a wandering band of Jewish merchants. The Jews then brutally and sadistically tortured him to death on top of a rock in the woods, and then collected his blood in their pitchers for use in a ritual feast. After the burial of the boy’s body, the bills and coins paid to his uncle sprouted flowers, as did the gravestone itself. These flowers can be seen in the bottom two illustrations in the frontispiece.
Over the years, an antisemitic cult developed in the vicinity of the municipality of Rinn (reminiscent of the cult that developed in relation to the murder in northern Italy of the child Simon of Trent). A large stone was laid at the site where Andreas’s body had originally been discovered. It was meant to represent the stone upon which the boy was murdered. A church named "Judenstein" – "The Jews' Stone" – was built on the site, around the stone.
The church and stone eventually became pilgrimage sites, and in 1752, Pope Benedict XIV granted the deceased child Andreas Oxner the title "Beato" ("Blessed" – the third of four stages in the process of beatification or sanctification).
In 1816, the Brothers Grimm published the first volume in their series titled "Deutsche Sagen" ("German Legends"). Included in this volume is the story of the Rinn Blood Libel; it appears as Legend no. 352 in the first edition and bears the title "Der Judenstein". A work of art showing Andreas being stabbed by the Jews adorned the walls of the Judenstein Church until after the Second World War, when "Nazi Hunter" Simon Wiesenthal managed to convince the authorities to have it removed. Only in the 1980s did the Bishop of Innsbruck take action to abolish the cult surrounding the Rinn Blood Libel.
[8] leaves, 312 pages, [2] leaves + [1] engraving. 20 cm. Good condition. Stains and minor blemishes. Half-leather cardboard binding. Minor blemishes to binding.
Reference: · R. Po-Chia Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988, pp.218-222; · Helmut Walser Smith, The Butcher's Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town. New York and London: W.W. Norton, 2003, Chapter 3, II.
Écrit par le quel on montre évidemment que dans peu de temps le Commerce sera entièrement detruit dans Avignon, & dans le Comtat, si on n'a recours à des remedes prompts & efficaces ["Writing wherein we clearly demonstrate how trade in Avignon and Comtat will be swiftly (and) utterly ruined, if we do not resort to hasty and effective measures"]. Unnamed printer and place of publication. 1736. French. Rare.
Antisemitic composition purporting to demonstrate the negative influence of the local Jews on the economy of the city of Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin (an enclave in the Provence region, subject at the time to the direct rule of the Pope). The work was published in 1736, many years after the expulsion of Jews from France in the 14th through 16th centuries. It was, in effect, an attempt to convince Pope Clement XII to expel the Jews under his protection from the territories of the Papal State in the region of Provence; this was the only Jewish community not to be expelled from France in the previous centuries.
"The Pope’s Jews" (French: "Juifs du Pape") was the term used in reference to small Jewish communities in Provence which remained under the tutelage and direct rule of the Pope over a period of hundreds of years. Members of these communities were spared from expulsion and other legal persecutions by virtue of their residence in the Papal State, in an enclave belonging to the Holy See in the district of the Comtat Venaissin (in what is today Vaucluse, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region of France) and were thus immune to the various decrees issued by the kings and rulers of France.
Following the expulsions of Jews from Northern France (1394), Spain (1492), Portugal (1497), and Provence (1501), the enclave remained, for centuries, the only district in all of France and most of Western Europe to be home to a Jewish presence of any kind. The "Pope’s Jews" lived in relative isolation from the rest of the Jewish world; as such, they maintained customs, a "nusach" (version) of prayer, and a spoken language that were peculiar and distinctive only to them. Throughout the period in question, the Jews of the enclave were concentrated in four ghettoes, in the city of Avignon, the communes of Cavaillon and Carpentras, and the town of L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue. Together, they were known as "the Four Communities" or the "CLA Communities". In the wake of the French Revolution and the reforms of the Napoleonic Code – and with the granting of equal rights and freedom of movement to Jews in France – the Jewish population in the Four Communities gradually and steadily declined, until it disappeared entirely in the course of the Holocaust.
128 pages. 18 cm. Good-fair condition. Stains, incl. minor dampstains. Tears and pinholes to edges of leaves, causing minor damage to page numbers. New leather binding.
For a bibliography of the literature relating to the Jews of the Four Communities, see Hebrew description.
"Het Achterhuis, Dagboekbrieven van 12 Juni 1942 – 1 Augustus 1944" ["The Annex: Diary Notes from 12 June 1942 – 1 August 1944"], by Anne Frank. Amsterdam: Contact, 1947. First edition, first printing. Dutch.
Copy of the first edition of "The Diary of Anne Frank", the first printing to be published, June 1947. The earliest editing of Anne Frank’s diary was done by her father, Otto Frank, who, following the war, brought the manuscript of his daughter’s diary, which she had left behind the day she was deported to the death camps along with her family members. This edition includes a photographic portrait of Anne Frank, a floor plan of the house where the family hid, a picture of the house's interiors, and photocopies of some of the handwritten pages of Anne’s diary. The edition begins with an introduction by the Dutch historian Annie Romein-Verschoor (1885-1975), who assisted in bringing the book to publication.
IX, 253, [1] pages + [3] plates (two of which are printed on both sides) with pictures. Approx. 18.5 cm. Good condition. Stains. Minor blemishes (a minor open tear to pages 53-54, causing very slight damage to text). Stains and minor blemishes to binding. Slight tears to edges of spine.
Publication of "The Diary of a Young Girl"
Anne Frank's diary is considered to be the most famous personal account of an individual’s experiences at the time of the Holocaust. Anne began writing her diary on her 13th birthday, in an initially blank diary she received as a birthday gift – an autograph book with a checkered red-and-white binding with a small lock. By the time Anne’s entries had reached the end of the autograph book, the family had gone into hiding, and the remainder of the diary was recorded in two regular school notebooks. The original autograph book and the two additional notebooks – sometimes referred to as "A-version" – contain diary notes from the years 1942-1944, but not 1943; apparently, a piece of the original text was lost when the family was arrested by the Germans.
In 1944, Anne started to write a second version – essentially a novel based on the diary already written – which she intended to publish under the title "The ‘Secret Annex"; this version is often termed "B-version". Anne was apparently inspired to write this novel after she had heard a speech on the radio given by the Dutch minister of education, Gerrit Bolkestein (a member of the Dutch government-in-exile at the time in London), in which he announced his intention, once the war was over, to collect manuscripts, diaries, and letters written during the war, to enable the story of the suffering of citizens under Nazi occupation to be told to the world, for the benefit of future generations. This second version, "B-version", contains the chapter covering the period missing from the first version, "A-version.
Following the arrest of the Frank family, Anne’s handwritten notes were discovered by Miep Gies, one of the women who had assisted the family during their time in hiding, recognized by the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center as a "Righteous Among the Nations". Gies had kept the notes hidden in her house until the end of the war. When Anne’s death at the hands of the Nazis was confirmed beyond doubt, Gies handed the diaries to Anne’s father Otto. The latter decided – after struggling with the issue and after considerable hesitation – that Anne herself would have wished to see the diaries published. He then edited and compiled Anne’s writings to produce a third version which combines "A-version" and "B-version", and this was the version of the diary submitted for publication.
"The Diary of Anne Frank" was published in June 1947 by Contact Publishing, in a very small-scale edition numbering only some 3,000 copies. This edition was completely sold out within a few months, and a second printing was already issued that same year. Over the years, the book quickly became the most famous personal account of anyone’s experiences from the days of the Holocaust, as well as the Number One bestselling personal diary of all times, not to mention one of the most widely read books anywhere in the world. In 2009, the original notebooks of the diary – kept in the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam – were submitted by the Netherlands to be included in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)'s Memory of the World Register.