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ABSTRACT
Although the vast majority of modern country houses built or refurbished in the long nineteenth century were owned by non-Jews, Jews owned some of the most magnificent. Thus, these dwellings pose the same question that historians have raised about other aspects of diasporic Jewish practices: Was there anything particularly “Jewish,” about country houses owned by Jews? In this essay I propose a hypothesis – that Jewish country houses were the ideal-type of the modern country house. On the one hand, super-elite Jews took their capital, both cultural and real, their family networks, and their long experience interpreting and navigating the often-hostile worlds in which they found themselves and created country houses that were the model of the genre. On the other hand, I argue that Judaism itself mattered as much as the social and economic positioning of Jews produced by discrimination. Uniquely Jewish conceptualizations, and practices, of home, of time, and of space rendered Jews particularly comfortable with the complex interweaving of public and private intrinsic to the country house.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Leora Auslander is the Arthur and Joann Rasmussen Professor in Western Civilization and Professor of Modern European Social History at the University of Chicago where she was the founding Director of the Center for Gender Studies and is a member of the Greenberg Center for Jewish Studies. She recently co-edited an issue of the French journal, Clio: Femmes, Genre, Histoire, on gender and Judaism and a collective volume, Objects of War: The Material Culture of Violence and Displacement. She has three books in progress: Diasporic Home-making: Jewish Parisians and Berliners in the Twentieth Century; Race and Racism in the 20th Century Atlantic World (with Tom Holt), and Commemorating Death, Obscuring Life? The Conundrums of Memorialization.
Notes
1 I would like to thank Deborah Cohen, Abigail Green, Thomas Holt, Thomas Stammers, and Tara Zahra for their very helpful comments and critiques on this essay.
2 I follow Cyril Grange’s definitional strategy for this group, although not his choice of nomenclature. Une élite Parisienne, Introduction.
3 Barczewski, Country Houses and the British Empire.
4 Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital. A concise summary of the state of aristocratic landholding across Europe and Britain in this period may be found in Macknight, Aristocratic Families, 68.
5 Slezkine, The Jewish Century; Mandel, “Assimilation and Cultural Exchange,” 72–92, was very helpful in thinking through this point.
6 In the books of Jeremiah and Nehemiah: Fonrobert, “Neighborhood as Ritual,” 247.
7 There is a large scholarly literature on the eruv. I am here following the interpretations of Fonrobert and Mann. See: Fonrobert, “Neighborhood as Ritual Space:” Fonrobert, “From Separatism to Urbanism,” 43–71; Fonrobert, “The political symbolism of the Eruv,” 9–35; Fonrobert, “Diaspora Cartography,” 14–25; and Mann Space and Place.
8 Perry, “Imaginary Space,” 26–36.
9 Olin, “That Materiality of the Imperceptible,” 185.
10 This argument is developed in in the introduction to my ms. Diasporic Homes: Jews in Paris and Berlin, 1870-1970. It is different from, but compatible with, Astrid von Busekist’s mobilization of the eruv in her Portes et murs.
11 See for example, the typewritten memoire of Alsberg, “Das Leben im Grunewald, 1889-1945,” JMB 2006/69 in which he describes the dinner parties and balls his mother organized in their villa in the Grunewald.
12 Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes; Tosh, A Man’s Place; Morris, Men, Women and Property; Cohen, Household Gods; Johnson, Becoming Bourgeois; Habermas, Frauen und Männer; Siebel, Der großbürgerliche Salon.
13 Baird, Mistress of the House; r Lummis and Marsh, The Woman’s Domain; de Rothschild, The Rothschilds at Waddesdon Manor.
14 Auslander, Cultural Revolutions, chap. 2.
15 Stobart and Rothery, Consumption and the Country House.
16 Girouard, Life in the English Country House, 3–5.
17 Girouard, Life in the English Country House, 2 and Harris, The Design of the English Country House, 9.
18 Higgs, Nobles in Nineteenth-Century France, 43–5, 47.
19 Girouard, Life in the French Country House, ch. 8; Higgs, Nobles, 45–6.
20 MacKnight, Aristocratic Families, 70, 95. For Britain see: Avery-Quash and Retford, eds. The Georgian London Town House.
21 Wagner-Rieger and Krause, eds. Historismus und Schlossbau; Koppelkamm, The Imaginary Orient; Stamp, The English House.
22 See for example, Kerr, The Gentleman’s House.
23 Boulanger, Le duc de Morny,; Plum, A l’apogée de la villa; Boyer, La maison de campagne; Walton, The English Seaside Resort; Bresgott, “Suburbia und Meeresfrische,” 351–72.
24 There were Jewish forms of these as well. See for example, Halff, “Lieux d’assimilation,” 41–57; Zadoff, Next Year in Marienbad.
25 Fonrobert, “The Woman as House,” 40–67 and Bahloul, La maison de mémoire, 48–9.
26 Mann, Space and Place in Jewish Studies, 85–6.
27 There is other slippage – in English, we refer to those who have no house not as “houseless” but “homeless”.
28 Joseph, “Religious Life in the Home,” 64–79; Heschel, The Sabbath.
29 Although there is excellent recent work on Jews and capitalism and Jewish engagement in the economy as a longer tradition of monographs on individual families, work on the everyday life of Jewish elites and super-elites in the 19th and 20th centuries, after some important work in the 1960s, has only recently revived. Exemplary of the new work is: Grange, Une élite Parisienne.
30 Further evidence and detailed references may be found in my ms. Diasporic Jewish Homes.
31 Debré, l’honneur de vivre, 24–25.
32 Joseph, “Religious Life in the Home,” 64–79.
33 Gumprich, Vollständiges praktisches Kochbuch; Wolf, Kochbuch für israelitische Frauen; Kauders, Vollständiges israelitisches Kochbuch; Jüdischen Frauenbund, Kochbuch für die jüdische Küche (Düsseldorf, 1926); de Pomaine, Casher.
34 “A Marriage in the Rothschild Family,” Godey’s Lady’s Book (June, 1857), 515.
35 Buchwalter, Memories of a Berlin Childhood, 145.
36 Prinz, Der Freitagabend.
37 Weissmann, Mose; Weissmann, Schabbos; Baer, Biblische Puppenspiele; Abeles, Das lustige Buch; Wagner-Tauber, Jüdische Märchen; Prinz, Ill. Lesser Ury, Helden und Abenteurer der Bibel.
38 See for example the materials showcased in Auslander, Images of Prayer.
39 This point is documented in Auslander, Diasporic Home-making.
40 Wolf, “Take Care of Josette.”
41 Maitre Nissim Samama, Avocat honoraire à la cour, 2 rue Borghèse, Neuilly. Restitution file established by his son, Maurice Samama, a real estate agent. File dated, 3 November, 1945. Archives Nationales, Paris, 38 AJ 5923.
42 With thanks to Abigail Green. The full collection at Upton House may be found at http://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/results?Collections=f0706504fffffe072248024100c26c7e Accessed 08/11/2019.
43 Landesarchiv Berlin. Baupolizei, Bezirk Tiergarten/Baupolizei und Straßenpolizei. 105 A Pr. Br. Rep. 030 Bln C Nr. 820 a.
44 See the brilliant exhibition at the Jewish Museum Berlin, “Chrismukkah. Stories of Christmas and Hanukkah,” October 2005 to January 2006. Elements may still be found on-line at: https://www.jmberlin.de/weihnukka/index_e.html
45 Erlund, “The Early Days,” LBI Memoir Collection ME 923.
46 For the full development of this argument see Auslander, “Reading German Jewry,” 300–334.
47 Although differing in some interpretations – in part, no doubt, because of the different focus – I rely heavily for the history of the family on the excellent book by Barkai, Oscar Wassermann und die Deutsche Bank.
48 See for example, Loeser, “Hans History, Part A,” and “Seinen Geburstag feierten wir nach der juedischen zeitrechnung acht Tage vor dem Pessachfest (Ostern)” in Hamburger-Liepmann and Liepmann, “Geschichte der Familien Liepmann und Hamburger,” 1.
49 See, e.g. Gottlieb, My Opa, 12; idem, My Childhood in Siegburg, 12, 21, 29, 31.
50 Kaplan, The Making of Jewish Middle Class and Hyman, Gender and Assimilation.
51 Hertz, Jewish High Society; Jewish Women and their Salons.
52 de Rothschild, The Rothschilds at Waddesdon Manor, 41–6 and Waddeson Manor, 10.
53 Hahn, “Encounters,” 189–207, particularly 195, 197.
54 Hall, Waddesdon Manor, 16–37.
55 Prevost-Marcilhacy, “Rothschild Architecture,” 245–64.
56 Lasic, “A Display of Opulence,” 135–50.
57 Prevost-Marcilhacy, “Rothschild Architecture,” 253.
58 Fischer-Defoy and Activen Museum Faschismus und Widerstand in Berlin e.V., Insel Schwanenwerder, 2013; Reif, Schumacher, Uebel, Schwanenwerder; Barkai, Oscar Wassermann; Schertz, “Schwanenwerder,” 209–22; See also: https://www.gedenktafeln-in-berlin.de/nc/gedenktafeln/gedenktafel-anzeige/tid/-4bcc2e6677/.
59 Schertz, “Schwanenwerder,” 210.
60 On the Sobernheim family, see Stange, Familie Sobernheim.
61 Brönner, Die Villa Cahn, 86–7 and 225–66.
62 Cyril Grange’s work provides a model here. See: Une élite Parisienne, 336–49.