The absent Jews : Kurt Forstreuter and the historiography of medieval Prussia / Cordelia Hess.

Includes bibliographies and index.

Absent Jews: the rise of a truism and the loss of some forefathers -- On the frontier -- Archives at war -- A ban on Jewish settlement? -- Absent from Akko to the Baltic -- Absent victims, absent violence: persecutions and blood libel -- Beyond the bulwark: traces of Jewish life in medieval Prussia -- The wreckage of history.

For nearly a century, it has been a commonplace of Central European history that there were no Jews in medieval Prussia'the result, supposedly, of the ruling Teutonic Order's attempts to create a purely Christian crusader's state. In this groundbreaking historical investigation, however, medievalist Cordelia Hess demonstrates the very weak foundations upon which that assumption rests. In exacting detail, she traces this narrative to the work of a single, minor Nazi-era historian, revealing it to be ideologically compromised work that badly mishandles its evidence. By combining new medieval scholarship with a biographical and historiographical exploration grounded in the 20th century, The Absent Jews spans remote eras while offering a fascinating account of the construction of historical knowledge.

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