‘Taking Pride in a Jew-Free Town’: Intermediality,Anti-Jewish Imagination,Hybridization and Economic Competition in Upper Silesia (1450–1750)

Abstract

This study analyses a long-overlooked Upper Silesian case of ritual murder accusations which appears inspired by, yet of a markedly different profile from, the better-researched Tyrolean cases of Simon of Trent and Andreas of Rinn. While iconographic and narrative inspiration for the Upper Silesian case from these earlier Tyrolean cases is evident, neither the name of the alleged victim nor the development of the cult can be documented with certainty. Despite this, the narrative of the Upper Silesian case persisted from the sixteenth century into the modern era and found one of its main memory vehicles in what we describe as a hybrid oil painting of a ritual murder. At the same time, members of the elite social strata showed economic and other interests in achieving and maintaining a permanent expulsion of Jews from their community. They cooperated to achieve this goal and used the blood libel narrative to legitimize it. Intermediality is seen as essential to reinforcing the credibility of prejudicial narratives. The ritual murder accusations are examined as an example of (dis)connected history, which allows late medieval and early modern Central Europe to be seen as closely connected in cultural transmission and simultaneously divided or disconnected by the collective projection of hatred, practices of othering and exclusion. The perspective from the Silesian duchies encourages a decentring look at Central Europe from outside and beyond Bohemian, Polish, German or Austrian historical master narratives. This article discusses the spectrum of possible interpretations of this opaque narrative and emphasizes the cognitive dissonance caused by the hybrid character of the blood libel oil painting.