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The Readmission of Jews into Brandenburg (1671)
As occurred widely in late medieval and Reformation Europe, the Brandenburg Jews had been expelled from the land in 1573 in a wave of intolerance that accompanied the transition there from Catholicism....
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"Edict of Potsdam," issued by Frederick William ("the Great Elector") (October 29, 1685)
French king Louis XIV’s 1684 revocation of the 1598 Edict of Nantes, which had guaranteed the French Calvinists’ (i.e. Huguenots’) religious practice and autonomy, drove some half-million of them....
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Moses Mendelssohn, Reply to Johann Caspar Lavater (1769)
Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) achieved fame and distinction as the father of the Jewish Haskalah....
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Exchange of Letters between Empress Maria Theresa and her Son Joseph II, Austrian Co-Regent, on the Subject of Religious Toleration (1777)
These letters, originally written in French, reveal the gulf between Maria Theresa, who was unwilling....
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Christian Wilhelm von Dohm, Concerning the Amelioration of the Civil Status of the Jews (1781)
Christian Wilhelm von Dohm (1751-1820), who distinguished himself in Prussian diplomatic and other administrative service, achieved European fame with this essay, which greatly influenced the emergent....
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Emperor Joseph II’s Toleration Patent for the Lands of the Austrian Empire (1781)
This important ruling, formulated as an official instruction to the various provincial chancelleries, applied only to Protestant Lutheran and Calvinist as well as Greek Orthodox Christians in those....
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Edict on Religion by Johann Christoph von Wöllner, Prussian Minister of Justice and Head of Religious Affairs, cosigned by King Frederick William II, and various Ministers (July 9, 1788)
This combative document registered the anti-rationalist reaction that was gathering force in the late eighteenth century. At the same time, however, it also extended the principle of religious equality....
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Joseph II’s Edict of Toleration for the Jews of Lower Austria (January 2, 1782)
Between 1781 and 1789, Joseph II’s government issued toleration edicts of varying nuances for the various Habsburg lands in which significant Jewish populations existed. This text, which applied....
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Itzig Behrend, Chronicle of a Jewish Family in Hesse-Kassel, c. 1800-1815 (Retrospective Account)
Itzig Behrend (1766-1845) spent his whole life in Grove (Hesse-Kassel), a small rural community with a few Jewish families. The following family chronicle provides a wealth of information on marriages,....
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Jérôme [Hieronymus] Napoleon, King of Westphalia, "Decree Abolishing Fees Imposed on the Jews" (January 27, 1808)
In 1808, Napoleon Bonaparte’s regime in France took a step backward from the French Revolution’s unconditional conferral, in 1791, of civil and religious equality upon the Jews. Nevertheless, his....
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