Anti-Semitism at The Opera: The Portrayal of Jews in The: Singspiels Ofreinhard Keiser

Music and Culture
Anti-Semitism at the Opera:

The Portrayal of Jews in the
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Singspiels ofReinhard Keiser
Jeanne Swack
Of the entire operatic repertory, the works of Richard Wagner have re-
ceived the greatest attention regarding anti-Semitic portrayals. Given
the composer's own notoriously anti-Semitic polemic, this is not surpris-
ing, although his operas contain no characters specifically designated as
Jewish.1 Recently attention has also focused on other operatic works of
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that present either overtly anti-
Semitic or ambiguous representations of Jews.2 In earlier periods, it has
been works in other genres, such as chant, the motet repertory, and Pas-
sion settings, that have come under scrutiny for their portrayal of the
Jews. Although Bach's Passion settings, as the most performed and best
known of the baroque Lutheran settings, have been the most discussed
in recent years,3 other composers set Passion texts that were just as
overtly anti-Jewish, if not more so, in their message. A prime example
may be found in the numerous settings of the Passion text by the Ham-
burg senator Barthold Heinrich Brockes, Derfiir die SiXnden der Welt
gemartete und sterbende ]esus (1712), a text best known from its settings
by Handel and Telemann, and from which Bach also drew. It was written
initially to be set by the Hamburg composer Reinhard Keiser (1674—
1739), better known as a composer of over a hundred singspiels. Yet
Keiser's adoption of anti-Semitic texts is not confined to his settings of
Passion texts such as the Brockes-Passion, for libretti containing anti-
Jewish character portrayals appear in several of his comic operas. As
artistic vehicles for the expression of anti-Jewish sentiments, these works
project onto the operatic stage stereotypical representations of the Jews
that had more traditionally been the province of spoken drama. Taken
together with texts to sacred works, these operas help establish Hamburg
as the most crucial German center for the production of anti-Jewish
texts intended to be set to music in the early eighteenth century.
The only previous scholarship about Jewish characters in the
Hamburg Opera in the eighteenth century not originally conceived in
389
390 The Musical Quarterly
the Germany of the Third Reich is an unpublished dissertation by

Helmut Jenzsch.4 He provides a brief treatment of all the works in the
Hamburg repertory with Jewish characters, including biblical operas,5
although his focus lies in the stage works of the late eighteenth-century
Enlightenment. His interest is purely dramaturgical, and he makes no
mention of composers. Jenzsch aptly characterized portrayals of Jewish
servants in the biblical operas as anti-Semitic.6 They also draw heavily
on other stereotypical lower-class character types common in opera at
the time: the brandishing of a pair of pork sausages by one character, the
"Abgefallener Jude" Javan, in Johann Wolfgang Franck's Die Maccha-
baeische Mutter mit lhren sieben Sohnen (which had its Hamburg premier
in 1679) is in the tradition of the comic glutton, with the "Jewish" twist
that his craving is for pork. While Jenzsch's brief discussion is often quite
perceptive, the large scope of his thesis as a comprehensive study of spo-
ken drama did not permit a close study of specific works.
In this study, 1 shall consider a group of works by Keiser that feature
Jewish characters. I shall consider the status of the Hamburg Jewish
community at the time that Keiser's operas with Jewish characters were
composed and performed, the specific character of the Hebrew and
Yiddish vocabulary that appears in Keiser's works, the probable role of
Keiser himself in propagating anti-Jewish characterizations, and the sys-
tematic increase in the methods used to heighten these characterizations
as Keiser's career progressed. In so doing, I will cbntextualize the depic-
tion of Jewish characters in the Hamburg opera, showing the ways in
which these works, in conjunction with anti-Semitic texts and sermons
heard in Hamburg's Lutheran churches, fomented for Hamburg's citizens
a picture of the Jew that incorporated insidious stereotypes, both eco-
nomic and religious.
Among Keiser's works for the stage, modern Jews appear in only
five: as full-fledged characters in three singspiels, all with comic plots
concerning yearly markets or trade fairs; as dancers in one serious opera;
and in a comic intermezzo (see Table 1). No music survives for any of
these works. While biblical operas were popular in the Hamburg reper-
tory, especially during the early years of its existence,71 am focusing my
discussion on works that treat contemporary subjects rather than on bib-
lical stories. The biblical operas' Jewish characters can be separated into
two classes: major seriousfiguresand comic servants. Jewish characters
in these works received vastly different treatment at the hands of the li-
brettists than the "modern" Jews that appear in the operas set in Keiser's
own time.
The major figures in the biblical operas are inevitably portrayed fa-
vorably, free of the stereotypes that mark Keiser's picture of the modern
Jew. As Jenzsch pointed out, typical Jewish stereotypes sometimes color
Anti-Semitism at the Opera 391
the picture of the lower-class Jewish characters in these operas. In no

case, however, are these stereotypes taken to the extreme that they are
in Keiser's "modern" operas under discussion here. Keiser himself showed
little interest in composing biblical operas, producing only two for the
Hamburg stage, while composing operatic works which contained, on
the other hand, the only depictions of modern Jews in the entire Ham-
burg repertory. The association of Jewish characters with plots dealing
with marketplaces, typical places of interaction between Jews and non-
Jews, is not unexpected, and in fact occurs again in the later eighteenth
century in a singspiel by Georg Benda entitled Der Jahrmarkt.8
Keiser first presented modern Jewish characters within the context
of opera in his Die Leipziger Messe of 1710, on a libretto by Weidemann.9
This is the only one of his operas to include two Jews with singing parts,
the dishonest Moses and Isaac, who have come to the Leipzig fair from
Prague to trade cloth and old clothes. Keiser's other two singspiels with
singing roles for Jews, Der Hamburger Jahr-Marckt and Die Hamburger
Schkicht-Zeit, were both premiered in 1725, and both had libretti by
Johann Philipp Praetorius. Further, the Jew Schmuel, from Der Ham-
burger Jahr-Marckt, appears a year later in disguise in Keiser's intermezzo
Der stumme Prinz Ads, again to a libretto by Praetorius. While we do
not have a surviving personnel list for Die Leipziger Messe, the role of
the Jew was sung in all the Praetorius examples by the same singer, the
bass Christian Wilhelm Riemschneider, Junior, who seems to have made
a minor specialty out of portraying Jews.
Table 1. Keiser's "Modern" Operatic Works with Jewish Characters or

Dancers
Die Leipziger Messe (Weidemann), 1710
Characters: Moses and Isaac, two Jews from Prague, and dancers
Der Hamburger Jahr-Marclct (Praetorius), 1725

Character: Schmuel, a Hamburg Jew, and dancers
Die Hamburger Schlacht-Zeit (Praetorius), 1725

Character: Abraham, a Hamburg Jew
Der stumme Prinz Atis (Praetorius), 1726

Character: Schmuel, disguised as Nerillo
Mistevojus (Miiller), 1726

Dancers
It is useful, in assessing the milieu in which this relative concentra-

tion of Jewish characterizations occurred, to consider the role of the Jew-
ish communities in and around Hamburg in the early eighteenth cen-
tury. For what is telling here is not the presence of Jewish characters in
the Hamburg works, but rather their apparent absence as operatic char-
acters in most other centers of operatic activity, despite the presence of
Jews in most other urban centers. Their appearance in these works is
probably to be attributed to a combination of rapid growth of the Jewish
community in Hamburg in the early eighteenth century and the pres-
ence of an active public opera catering to the tastes of Hamburg's large
middle class, in which some departure from the traditional subject mat-
ters of ancient history and mythology and the composition of comic
Zeitoper was encouraged.
The Jewish community in Hamburg divided into two distinct parts:
the older, wealthier, and more privileged Portuguese Sephardic Jews,
who did not speak Yiddish, and the relative newcomers, the Yiddish-
speaking Ashkenazic Jews. These two communities were indeed quite
distinct and until 1710 were subject to different laws and regulations
concerning their residence privileges in Hamburg itself and in the sur-
rounding communities of Altona and Wandsbek, where the majority of
Ashkenazic Jews lived under the protection of the Danish crown.10 In
fact, for much of the seventeenth century and the very early eighteenth
century, Ashkenazic Jews were forbidden, at least on paper, by the Ham-
burg Senate from actually living in the city of Hamburg itself (unlike the
Sephardic community), although their actual residence in the city for
much of this period is indisputable. Further, Jews who were officially part
of the Wandsbek or Altona Jewish communities continued to maintain
actual residences in Hamburg." While the number of Sephardic Jews
rapidly waned in the early eighteenth century,12 the population of
Ashkenazic Jews was rapidly increasing, with the largest growth begin-
ning after 1710, when the Ashkenazic Jews were granted equality with
the Sephardic community. The Ashkenazic Jewish population in the
early eighteenth century is impossible to determine with precision, but it
seems to have numbered several thousand.13 As was the case elsewhere
in Germany, the Ashkenazic Jews spoke Yiddish, despite living in close
contact with the gentile population. Whether Sephardic or Ashkenazic,
the Jews were both welcomed for the commerce they brought to the city
and feared for their competition; but it was the Ashkenazim who proved
to be the predominant group in the eighteenth century and thereafter.
Indeed, the tensions between the Jews and the Christian popula-
tion of Hamburg, fanned by the anti-Jewish preaching of the clergy (es-
pecially Erdmann Neumeister, pastor of the Jacobikirche, and Tobias
Heinrich Schubart, pastor of the Michaeliskirche) and exacerbated by

growing economic competition, steadily escalated, which led finally to
the outbreak of a four-day anti-Jewish riot from 24 August to 27 August
1730. It was instigated at least in part by a sermon preached by Neumeis-
ter on Sunday, 20 August, calling for the expulsion of the Jews from
Hamburg. 14 Evidently, once the riot began, the city government asked
the clergy to preach new sermons retracting the previous sermons. But
some clergy continued to believe in the rectitude of their anti-Semitic
diatribes. As Neumeister wrote to Ernst Salomo Cyprian on 2 September:
Es ist in verwichener Woche ein Auflauf des Pobels wider die Juden ent-
standen. Da schickte uns der Magistrat eine Verordnung zu, dawider zu
predigen. Hierzu erkennet man unser Amt vor tiichtig. Aber wenn wir
sonst wider der Juden Bosheit und Frechheit, die wegen ungeziemender
Konnivenz aufs hochste gestiegen, und wider Irrsal in der Religion predi-
gen, so brennt die Elbe.15
[In the past week the populace rioted against the Jews. The magistrate
sent out a decree to preach against it. In this respect they recognize that
our job matters. But otherwise, when we preach against the depravity
and insolence of the Jews, which have risen to the extreme on account
of their unseemly connivance, as well as against the error of their reli-
gion, the Elbe burns.]
Thus, the period that saw the production of Keiser's operatic works
with anti-Jewish characterizations coincided with a period of increasing
ill-feeling on the part of the Christian populace against the Jews, despite
the efforts of the senate to maintain the peace. 16 Four of the five works
under discussion, including three of the works with "Jewish" singing
parts, were premiered during 1725-26.
Though the reaction of Hamburg Jews to the presentation of the
Jewish stereotypes in the operas under discussion is not documented, it is
clear that Jews themselves formed part of the audience for the Hamburg
Opera, which had opened in 1678 with the biblical opera Adam und Eva
by Johann Theile. One could imagine that the Jews were drawn to the
Old Testament stories frequently presented at the opera. In fact, the at-
tendance of the Jews at the Hamburg Opera is confirmed by the statutes
of the Jewish communities of Altona and Wandsbek (under whose juris-
diction most of the Hamburg Jews would fall).17 The leaders of the Jew-
ish communities seem to have been concerned with the attendance of
members of their congregations at the opera, as well as other forms of
"frivolous" entertainment, as the texts of the paragraphs of the Altona
statutes concerning the opera show:
Altona, 1685, reissued in 1726:

Every man and woman, boy and girl, is forbidden to drink in a non-
Jewish inn on Shabbat and holidays. It is also forbidden to go bowling,
to the Comedy, or to a fencing school on Shabbat, upon a penalty of 4
Reichsthaler. Women and girls should never go to the Opera, even on
weekdays, upon the same fine.
Altona, 20 June 1700:

With the agreement of the three congregations the following ordinance
is enacted:
First, no man or woman, boy or girl, may attend the Opera, the Comedy,
or the puppet show, neither on weekdays nor Shabbat and holidays, with
a fine of 10 Reichsthaler.
New ordinance on 21 October 1714:

No one may attend the Opera even during the weeks of Purim and
Chanukah. If a family father does so, he will be barred from the oversee-
ing committee of the Kehillah, even from being an elected official, aside
from the cursing and shame and monetary fine, that the leaders of the
congregation may lay upon him. If a woman, a boy, or girl violates the
prohibition, his or her name will be made public, and there will also be
a fine, cursing, and shame. If the governing board of the congregation
agrees, they can also lose their membership in the congregation.18
As one can see, attendance was initially tolerated under certain

conditions, but in Altona, the larger community, it was finally banned
completely. Georg Philipp Telemann provides further testimony, how-
ever, that these rules were sometimes honored in the breach. In his letter
to Carl Heinrich Graun dated 15 December 1751, thirteen years after
the demise of the Hamburg Opera, he defends French recitative, saying
that he knew "Germans, Englishmen, Russians, Poles, and even a pair
of Jews who could sing for him entire acts of Atys, Bellerophon, etc. by
heart." 19
In his Jewish Self-Hatred, Sander Gilman describes the view of the He-
brew language in mid-sixteenth-century Germany as "the hidden lan-
guage of the Jews"20 and "the language of the thief,"21 pointing out the
appropriation of this trope by Luther and his followers to refer as well to
the Jews' mixture of German and Hebrew, that is, Yiddish.22 He contin-
ues: "By the mid-eighteenth century, Yiddish had come to represent the
corruption of the Jews, a corruption that could be eliminated, if at all,
through the act of conversion." 23
Thus Yiddish, viewed not as an actual language but as a jargon—a
mongrel, ungrammatical mixture of Hebrew and bastardized German—
came to represent the otherness of the thieving, deceiving Jew.
When Keiser first attempted to portray the Jew on the Hamburg

stage in Die Leipziger Messe in 1710, he had at his disposal a librettist,
Weidemann, who showed little command of the language of the Jews,
although he was clearly familiar with the participation of Jewish ped-
dlers, often from Prague, at the Leipzig trade fairs, the only occasions on
which Jews were at least temporarily resident in the city.24 Die Leipziger
Messe is a lightweight comedy concerning the departure of a pair of uni-
versity students from Leipzig and the girlfriends they were leaving be-
hind. The trade-fair setting gives Weidemann ample opportunity to in-
troduce minor characters of various nationalities and ethnic groups, but
these characters (who often appear as dancers) are onstage only briefly
and provide a bit of exotic color. In contrast, Weidemann gives Moses
and Isaac a prominent place in the opera: they appear in eleven of the
twenty-seven scenes and interact constantly with the non-Jewish char-
acters. Despite his attempt at reinforcing common stereotypes of Jews,
Weidemann was able to come up with only a single word of Yiddish,
"eppes" ("something," derived from a common root with etwas). Other-
wise his Jews sing in High German. Moses and Isaac's opening duet aria,
in act 1, scene 2, will serve as a typical example:
Aria a 2
Wir Juden sind zwar sehr veracht
Wir hab'n auch manchen in Schad'n gebracht
Verdienen wir gleich nirgend Gunst
So handeln wir auch mit Lugn und Dunst.
Drum miiB'n wir uns so schmiegen

Da konnen wir besser betriegen
Und daB ist aller rechten Juden Kunst.
[We Jews are indeed despised, we have also done damage to many, we
never deserve favor, we trade with lies and vapor. We must appear so
yielding, then we can swindle all the better, and that is the true art of
the Jew.]
While the Jews are portrayed as dishonest cheats, they speak the
language of the honorable German, rather than the Yiddish of the Ash-
kenazic Jew. Some of this depiction is in the texts that the Jews sing—
that is, they themselves tell the audience over and over again that they
are dishonest and avaricious. Their character is reinforced by the de-
meaning ways in which they are addressed by the non-Jewish characters,
who rudely employ such epithets as "Juden-Schwein" (Jew-pig) and
"Mauschel," a derogatory term for Jew derived from the name "Moshe."25
The Jews are the objects of intense derision, even from the lower-class
characters. For example, in act 3, scene 2, the old junk woman Sabine
refers to the Jews as vermin {Geschmeisse) and blames her poverty on
them:
[Aria:]
Ein Weib
wie ich
hat grosse Noth
Sich ehrlich zu ernehren;
Denn find't sich gleich noch alte Wahre
so fiihrt der Henker Juden dar
Die mir den Handel stohren:
Ein biBgen kuppeln muB mirs Brod
Noch meistentheils gewehren.
[A woman like me has a great need to feed herself honestly, but when
there are old wares to be had, the hangman brings the Jews, who ruin my
business. I have to defend my bread mostly with pandering.]
But although the Jews' role in the opera is quite extensive and they
do constantly cheat or attempt to cheat other characters, usually by
stealing valuable objects and hiding them in the articles of cloth that
they actually pay for, they have little effect on the plot, serving largely
as comic relief.
The use of language changes markedly with the first of the two
market operas by Johann Philipp Praetorius, for with the arrival of the
twenty-nine-year-old lawyer in Hamburg in 1725, Keiser found a libret-
tist who could give the portrayal of Jewish characters the element he
may have felt was lacking in Die Leipziger Messe: the Yiddish language.26
Praetorius was intensely interested in language and dialect, using, for
example, Low Saxon dialect for servants' speech and French to show
the effete affectations of lower- or middle-class characters aping the up-
per classes. More unusually, Praetorius had an extensive knowledge of
Yiddish vocabulary, or at least of the Hebrew-derived words that were at
the heart of the Yiddish displayed in his works with Jewish characters. 27
In the first of the operas, Der Hamburger Jahr-MarcJct, which premiered
on 20 June 1725, the Jew Schmuel takes on a role more intrinsic to the
plot than the roles of Moses and Isaac in Die Leipziger Messe. While he is
a secondary character in the action, a contemporary romantic comedy,
he effects a crucial plot turn. Further, he is now marked by speaking the
language of the Jew: Yiddish. His vocabulary includes about fifteen dif-
ferent Yiddish words, most of them Hebrew derived (see Appendix I). 2 8
His speech is otherwise in High German, while the other lower-class
characters sing in Low German. In addition to Schmuel, the opera in-

cludes a ballet of Jews and Jewesses. The opera was clearly popular, being
revived in 1727, 1732, and 1735. 29
Schmuel's innate dishonesty is put to use by the non-Jewish char-
acters Bravo and Nickel in a central scene in act 3. The interlocutors are
Bravo, a guest at an inn pretending to be a nobleman, with whom the
aptly named Capriciosa, daughter of the innkeeper Gleichviel, is infatu-
ated (Bravo makes money by cheating at cards and often sings in French);
Gerne-GroB, another guest at the inn, described in the libretto as "a pre-
tended rich Cavalier"; Nickel, a Low Saxon-speaking servant working
for Gerne-GroB; and Schmuel, described only as "ein Jude." In this
scene, Bravo and Nickel conspire to fleece Gerne-GroB—whom they
mistakenly believe to be wealthy—by cheating him at cards. They invite
Schmuel to take part in the card game, because as a Jew, he is a natural-
born cheater, or, as Bravo describes the situation: "The gallows-bird is a
rabbi in cheating." But as it turns out, Schmuel is caught, and Bravo
throws all the cards in his face. When he grabs Schmuel's beard, a physi-
cal marker of the male Jew, Schmuel cries that Bravo could split his head
in two, if he would only spare the beard. It is at the end of the card scene
that the Jews dance, while Schmuel sings a recitative and aria:
[Recit.:]
Die Goyims sind schon fort! das Spielche gieng noch an;
Herr Bravo ist ein schoner Mann,
Ich will ihm Scholim sagen,
Ob er mich gleich ein wenig hart geschlagen.
Ihre Freunde kommt, last uns ein Tantzchen wagen!
(Entree der Juden und Jiidinnen.)
Aria:
Will das Schachem Vortheil bringen
Kan der Mauschel lustig springen
Pschite! Ja! es bleibet wahr.
Wenn die andre Kiinste liegen

So bezahlet das Betriegen
Unsre Miihe dennoch baar.
Da Capo
[The Goyim have gone! The game goes on. Mr. Bravo is a nice man, I'll
say "Scholem" to him, even if he hit me a little hard. Come, friends, let's
dance!
(Entree of male and female Jews)
Aria:
If haggling will bring an advantage, the Yid knows how to jump, obvi-
ously! Yes, it's always true. When other arts fail, swindling always re-
wards our efforts with cash. Da capo.]
If, however, Schmuel was to be given a limited Yiddish vocabulary

in Der Hamburger jahr-Marckt, in Die Hamburger Schlacht-Zeit the Jew
Abraham was made to speak extensively in Yiddish, intensifying the
characterization of the Jew (the opera was canceled after a single perfor-
mance on 22 October 1725, owing to its alleged immorality). 30 In fact,
the Yiddish vocabulary of this opera was so pervasive that Praetorius and
Keiser were compelled to provide translations of the Yiddish words in
the margins of the libretto. The Yiddish vocabulary is presented in Ap-
pendix 2. It would appear that in some sense the Yiddish in the earlier
piece was an experiment in which the librettist and composer sounded
out the audience to see how they would react to a Jew singing recitative
and da capo arias in German laced with Yiddish words. Now Abraham's
speech is completely permeated by its use of the language of thieves. Fur-
ther, it is no longer High German that is the basis of the Jewish charac-
ter's pronunciation, for the language is now thoroughly colored by what
was perceived by the gentile population as the inept accent of the Jews.
Consider, for example, Abraham's first recitative and aria, which form
the third scene of act 1 (the translations down the right-hand side of the
page are those given in the libretto):
[Recit.:]
Mein Iisch hoot mir gesogd, ich soil zu Marckte lauffen, Frau
Urn einen toffen Schorr zu kauffen, guten Ochsen
Wenn er nicht Kauscher ist, essbaar
So taugt er doch dazu, dafl ihn a Oerle friss't. Christ
Das MooB ist bey der Hand, Geld
Der Schochet hoot Verstand, Schlachter
Von den Behemen, Ochsen
Wir lernen, durch Romoas, uns wol in acht zu nehmen. Betrug
Aria.
Die Goygims zu fangen, koon ich mich wol Christen
schicken,
Doch, wenn sie den listigen Aubram beriicken, Abraham
Au weih! doos schmerzt mich gor zu sehr!
Man hoot mir, im Schachern vor diesen
So offte Maramne gewiesen, betrogen
Drum trau ich den diebischen Oerlen Christen
nicht mehr.
Da Capo.
[My wife told me I should go to market to buy a good ox. If it isn't

kosher, a Christian will eat it instead. The money is at hand; the scho-
chet (ritual slaughterer) understands the beasts. We learn, through swin-
dling, to take care of ourselves.
Aria: I canfigureout how to catch the goyim, though when they cheat
the crafty Abraham, oh woe! that hurts me a lot! They've often swin-
dled me in haggling, so 1 don't trust these thieving Christians any more.
Da Capo.]
The difference in language between this and the earlier opera is

readily apparent. For example, instead of "Mein Iisch [sic] hat mir gesagt,"
the language now maintains the Yiddish pronunciation "hoot mir
gesogd," although the basic grammar and syntax remain that of High
German. Note also that Praetorius has taken pains to provide systemati-
cally every line of the recitative and nearly every line of the aria with at
least one Hebrew-derived Yiddish word. The growing use of the language
of the ultimate other in Hamburg society, the Ashkenazic Jew, under-
scores an increasing intensification in Praetorius's caricature of the
stereotypical hallmarks of the Jew.
But the intensification of language is not the only change that we
see in Abraham compared with Schmuel. Abraham's role in the opera
is far more prominent than Schmuel's, with Abraham singing in more
than twice as many scenes (Abraham appears in twelve scenes, while
Schmuel appears in only five).31 Abraham, like Schmuel, is a dishonest
cheat and a thief; the audience would have expected him to be so. But
he is also hypocritical about the practices of his religion, and sexually
loose as well. For example, in act 1, scene 3, Abraham is concerned with
kashrut, the Jewish laws that deal with the ritual purity of food, which
include the killing of the animal, an ox in this case, by a schochet. And,
in fact, in act 2, scene 7, Abraham explains that he has taken the ox to
the schochet and that it is now kosher. Later, in the third scene of act 3,
Abraham sings that he now must go to an inn to drink with the Marquis
de Carrabas. But since he does not like beer, which would be kosher, he
will have to drink the wine, which is unkosher.32
The popular image of the Jewish male in eighteenth-century Ger-
many included low sexual morals. Indeed, the Hamburg professor of his-
tory and Greek, author, and poet (and friend of Telemann) Michael
Richey described the Jews as the "lecherous and lascivious race which
multiplies like vermin."33 In this opera, this image of sexual license is ex-
tended to Abraham, who not only lusts after the Christian servant girl,
Gretje, but also offers her money and goods in return for sex.34 Further,
Abraham is portrayed as a drunk (act 3, scene 6).
Jenzsch points to a scene in Andreas Gryphius's comedy Horribili'

cribrifax Teutsch (Breslau, 1663) as Praetorius's probable source for the
pivotal scene in Die Hamburger Schlacht'Zeit in which Abraham is asked
by Jucunda to pawn a chain given to her by the Cavalier Carrabas (act 4,
scene 3).35 Here Praetorius draws upon a common device in eighteenth-
century plays, in which the expertise of the Jew in recognizing fakery is
used to prove the fraudulence of a supposedly valuable object. Abraham
immediately sees that the chain is made of brass. As in the card scene in
Der Hamburger ]ahr-Marckt, the Jew effects an important shift in the
plot, saving the spoiled and avaricious Jucunda from marrying the fraud-
ulent braggart Carrabas. In Gryphius's play, the rabbi Issachar, the only
Jewish character, is asked by Frau Antonia, the mother of the husband-
seeking Selene, to pawn a chain given her by the Cavalier Daradirida-
tumtarides. Issachar also replies that the chain is made of brass, and the
stone hanging from it from glass.
In HorribiUcribrifax, however, the Jew Issachar appears in only a sin-
gle scene, and his sole purpose is to reveal that the chain is not real gold.
Further, the Jew is not treated as an object of scorn, but neutrally. Abra-
ham, on the other hand, appears in numerous scenes, is an integral
member of the cast, and is constantly denigrated.
It is also worth considering that Gryphius may have provided Prae-
torius with some of the Hebrew and Yiddish vocabulary for Die Ham-
burger Schlacht'Zeit as a whole. In Gryphius's brief scene he uses words
that also appear in Die Hamburger Schlacht'Zeit (the spelling follows
Gryphius): Madda (oath), Chavol (pledge), Tof (good), Maschgeh
(swindler), Zahaff (gold), Thapsen (grasp), Esur (jail), and Keseph (silver).36
Further, all of the Hebrew and Yiddish words that both authors
have in common appear in Praetorius's "chain" scene, although each
author uses additional Hebrew and Yiddish words not used by the other.
Praetorius had used none of these words in Der Hamburger Jahr'Marckt,
but he does use some of them elsewhere in Die Hamburger Schlacht-Zeit.
The intensified use of Yiddish is carried over into the intermezzo
Der stumme Print Atis, performed between the acts of a revival of Keiser's
Croesus in 1726. The librettist is again Praetorius. In the intermezzo, the
character Schmuel from Der Hamburger Jahr'Marckt is disguised as the
Roman page Nerillo from Croesus. The stage directions make clear that
Schmuel's beard is not to be covered up—that he is dressed "above as a
Jew, with a long beard, [and] below as a page in Roman habit";37 that is,
his face is the face of Schmuel, but his costume is that of Nerillo. Thus,
the audience is to be cognizant of Nerillo's true identity: the Jew. But the
beard is not the only clue to Nerillo's identity, for the character, though
disguised as a Roman servant, sings in stage Yiddish through the entire
intermezzo. Appendix 3 gives the Yiddish vocabulary for this work. In

fact, the accent and vocabulary presented are perhaps even more perva-
sive than in Die Hamburger Schlacht'Zeit, and of course, completely color
the work, since Schmuel, as one of the only two singing characters,
dominates every scene. Further, although the Yiddish vocabulary in both
works is extensive, there is a significant amount of vocabulary in Der
stumme Prinz Atis that had not appeared in Die Hamburger Schlacht'Zeit.
Various printings of the libretto supplied translations for the Yiddish
words either in the margins or as footnotes at the bottom of the page.
The other characters in the intermezzo are the supposed Elmire
from Croesus, a Medean princess who is actually the servant girl
Geesche from Der Hamburger ]ahr-Marckt, and the mute Prince Atis
from Croesus, actually Harlequin (his Harlequin suit is to be visible un-
der his Atis costume). Much of the irony and humor in this text stems
from the fact that Nerillo/Schmuel, with his linguistic confusion and
prolific Jewish jargon, serves as the "translator" to Geesche for Atis's
pantomime. In this regard, the language itself serves as the joke, and
Praetorius is not concerned with presenting the typical "thief" trope
used in the full-length operas under discussion here, which at any rate
would not suit the plot of the intermezzo, since it parodies aspects of
the larger opera, Croesus, with which it was performed.
At one point Elmire/Geesche complains that she cannot under-
stand what Nerillo/Schmuel is trying to say (the footnoted translations
in the libretto are given in square brackets):
Nerillo/Schmuel: Weil Otis illem [stumm] ist, und gor nicht dibbern
[reden] kann, / So schauet ihn / mich ober hdret an.
Elmire/Geesche: Das kauderwelsche Zeug ist iibel zu verstehn.
[Nerillo/Schmuel: Because Atis is mute, and can't speak, look at him but
listen to me.
Elmire/Geesche: I can't understand this gibberish.]
Despite her claims to the contrary, while Nerillo/Schmuel contin-

ues to sing in his German-Yiddish mixture, Elmire/Geesche understands
him perfectly well.
At the end of the intermezzo the characters' true identities are
revealed. While it is only here that Geesche, as she is now revealed to
be, slips into her customary Low German and Atis/Harlequin speaks,
throughout the intermezzo Schmuel is incapable of hiding his speech,
even as he disguises himself as a non-Jew. Schmuel's identity would have
been clear to the audience because of his language, even were he com-
pletely disguised by his costume.
The association of the Jew with money, made clear in the three
singspiels under consideration, Die Leipziger Messe, Der Hamburger Jahr-
March, and Die Hamburger Schlacht-Zeit, reappears in a more judgmen-
tally neutral context in the final work under discussion here, Keiser's
Mistevojus of 1726, to a libretto by J. S. Miiller.38 The opera presents a
story of Hamburg in the Middle Ages, and there are no Jewish charac-
ters. But at the end of the third act of the five-act opera (act 3, scene 7),
the scene turns to present modern Hamburg. The stage directions read:
"A street in Hamburg, in which the city hall and the stock exchange, in
their present state, are to be seen." The characters of Asteria, Pallas, and
Mercurius descend and sing an aria praising Hamburg for its "Weisheit"
(wisdom) and "Kaufmannschaft" (commerce). This is followed by a
recitative praising first the city hall as a palace, and then the commerce
of the city. The aria is then repeated. It is at precisely this point that a
group of Jews, male and female, enter and dance a ballet; the stage direc-
tions read, "Ein Tantz von Juden und Juden-Weiber." The connection
between Jews and Kaufmannschaft could not be clearer. Further, the in-
extricable link between modern Hamburg and the Jews is again made
manifest.
How did the non-Jewish Praetorius, a Lutheran during most of his
tenure in Hamburg and later a Catholic professor of law at Trier, come
to possess such an extensive knowledge of Yiddish? Although he could
have simply acquired all his Yiddish vocabulary from a Jewish informant,
such appears not to be the case; rather, his Yiddish vocabulary seems
to derive from diverse sources. Our knowledge of Praetorius's life is too
scant to reveal any clues about precisely how he came by his Yiddish
vocabulary. He was a lawyer, educated at the university in Kiel, and a
prolific librettist, composing libretti for Telemann as well as Keiser.39
One likely source for Praetorius was the missionary Yiddish-German
language dictionary, of which several were available to German speakers
during Praetorius's lifetime. In the early eighteenth century there was an
extensive effort, especially among the adherents of the Pietist branch of
Lutheranism, to missionize among the Jews. An integral part of this ef-
fort was the establishment of special institutions for their conversion.
The most prominent was the Institutum Judaicum in Halle, founded by
Johann Heinrich Callenberg, a professor at the Pietist-oriented univer-
sity established in Halle,40 but there was a more modest institution in
Hamburg as well, the Edzardische Proselyten-Anstalt, initially under the
direction of Esdras Edzardi, who died in 1703.41 Although interest and
support for this institution declined after Edzardi's death, it continued
in operation until 1942.42 An important part of the work of the mission-
aries was to learn and teach Yiddish so that they could proselytize among
the Jews. Tactics for this proselytizing (which, incidentally, was seldom
successful) were published in a number of books, a crucial component of
which was the teaching of the Yiddish language, so that the missionaries
would be able to speak to the Jews in their own language.43 It is, of
course, unknown just which, if any, of these books Praetorius might
have read. He may have had access to such works as Johann Christoph
Wagenseil's Belehrung der judisch-Teutschen Red- und Schreibart of 1699,
or Caspar Calvor's Gloria Christ/, oder Beweis der Wahrheit der christlkhen
Religion, published in Leipzig in 1710; Calvor, it must be noted, had
been Telemann's gymnasium Latin teacher, and Telemann could have
pointed out the existence of the book to Praetorius. The most extensive
of the Yiddish-German dictionaries, Callenberg's ]udischteutsches Winter-
biichlein, appeared in 1736, after the composition of the operas in ques-
tion. It is possible that Praetorius may have been involved with the mis-
sionary circles in Hamburg. At any rate, the preoccupation in certain
Christian circles with the acquisition of some measure of Yiddish vocab-
ulary is clear.
It is also likely that some of Praetorius's knowledge of Yiddish came
from direct contact with Jewish informants. He generally presents a
realistic pronunciation for eighteenth-century German Yiddish as docu-
mented in the missionary dictionaries, although a number of words seem
to be corrupted or untraceable and apparently represent an oral trans-
mission in which he wrote down words as he heard them. This would
explain the corruption of such expressions as mamser ben-hanidah ("bas-
tard son of an impure woman") to "mamser beneniter." He was confused
about the plural endings of some words, resulting, for example, in "Goy-
ims" or "Goygims" as the plural of goy, instead of goyim.*4 Some words,
as I have noted above, were probably taken from Gryphius's Horribilicrib'
rifax. There are traces of rabbinic Hebrew in such expressions as "Likach
Ischo" (take a wife), instead of the later conjugation I'kachat hcho or
I'kachas hcho. He presents the word "Bajet" (house) consistently in
Sephardic Hebrew (instead of the Ashkenazic Bajes), while the rest of
the vocabulary ending in the letter tav/sav is always pronounced in the
Ashkenazic fashion (such as "MooB" for "money"). This would further
suggest multiple sources for his vocabulary. He also exhibits a knowledge
of Jewish dietary laws, knowing, for example, that beer is kosher but
most wine is not.
Further, since Praetorius's vocabulary is extremely Hebraic, beyond
what one would expect of someone conversant in early-eighteenth-
century German Yiddish (which had a large component of Hebrew
words no longer used in modern Yiddish), it seems likely that some of
his vocabulary may have been acquired during the kind of Hebrew
studies undertaken by university students interested in theology.45 The

missionary dictionaries make clear that the Sephardic Hebrew pronunci-
ation was taught to Christians at German universities, which would ex-
plain the presence in the libretti of some words with Sephardic pronun-
ciation rather than the Ashkenazic pronunciation that goes hand in
hand with Yiddish.46 In emphasizing the Hebrew component of Yiddish,
Praetorius may also have been trying to stress the language's non-German
aspect, the language of the other, in order to demarcate more strongly
the difference between the Jews and the Christians.
What was Keiser's role as a composer in presenting anti-Jewish car-
icatures to the Hamburg public? Since two separate librettists, Weide-
mann and Praetorius, wrote such texts for him, one must come to the
conclusion that it was Keiser himself who provided the impetus for pre-
senting such works. Jews appear in no other operas from the Hamburg
repertory, except in biblical contexts. Praetorius also wrote libretti for
Telemann, but these included no Jewish characters; however, Jewish
characters appear in every opera by Keiser set in modern times and, in
the case of Mistevojus, make a sudden appearance as soon as the scene
changes from medieval to modern Hamburg. Clearly, for Keiser as well
as Praetorius, the stereotypical caricature of the modern Jew loomed
large in the vision of modern Hamburg.
Keiser's operas with Jewish characters, taken together with the
milder stereotypes of Jews presented by the servant characters in the
biblical operas, form one side of the image of the Jew internalized by
the citizens of Hamburg: that of the lower-class swindler. Another
prominent image of the Jew, perhaps more insidious, was often presented
musically as well, in Hamburg most prominently by Keiser and Tele-
mann: that of the scornful rejecters and killers of Christ. Lutheran citi-
zens of Hamburg, who listened to the anti-Jewish preaching of Schubart
and Neumeister, as well as the anti-Semitic texts that they and Brockes
composed for setting as Passion music and cantatas, must have internal-
ized this picture as well.
The opening recitative to Schubart's text for a Judica Sunday can-
tata47 set by Telemann in 1732,48 the text of which was published in
Schubart's collection of libretti and poetry Ruhe nach geschehener Arbeit
(Hamburg, 1733), provides a particularly harrowing example of the type
of text that could be heard during the pre-Easter season in the Hamburg
churches:
[Die Gottseligkeit:] "Der Kern verdammter Sunder,
Des Satans wohlberahtne Kinder,
Der bosen Juden gantz verstockte Bruht,

Begegnet Gottes Sohne,
Mit Neid und Hafi und Hohne,
Erst bose gnug, und doch hernach immer boser.
Es achtet erstlich ihrer BoBheit Wuht
Den Abraham noch mehr, als Abrahams Erloser;
Denn so spricht ihr recht Blut-Dursts-voller Muht.
[The core of damned sinners, Satan's cunning children, the perfidious

mob of evil Jews, greets the son of God, with envy, hate, and scorn; evil
from the start, yet afterward more evil still. Their evil fury esteems Abra-
ham more than Abraham's redeemer; for thus speaks their truly blood-
thirsty spirit].
This text is set as an accompanied recitative in a particularly agi-

tated style and is followed by a "Chor der Juden" setting of John 8:53,
part of the Gospel reading for Judica Sunday (beginning "Bist du mehr
denn unser Vater Abraham?" [Art thou greater than our father Abra-
ham?]), composed as a nearly homophonic chorus written over an agi-
tated bass line, and a recitative and aria for "Gottseligkeit" that refers to
the Jews as "Hollen-Kinder" (Hell's children). The text of the A section
of the aria reads, "Was treiben freche Hollen-Kinder / Dem Himmel
doch fur Raserey!" [How the insolent Hell's children drive heaven into
a frenzy!].49 Gottseligkeit's aria is composed in the manner of an operatic
rage aria, with its typical rapid sixteenth-note passagework. While this is
not the place to debate whether the Gospel of John is inherently anti-
Semitic,50 Schubart amplified its negative portrayal of Judaism into a
negative portrayal of the Jews themselves. Since cantatas were to be
"like a piece out of an opera,"51 according to Neumeister's formulation,
the dramatic depiction of Jews in cantatas (and oratorios) formed a pow-
erful sacred counterpart to the depiction of Jews on the operatic stage.
While the operatic depiction of the Jew comprises a relatively
small portion of the characters portrayed on the Hamburg stage, taken in
conjunction with the picture of the Jews repeatedly inculcated in the
congregants by the leading Lutheran clergy of Hamburg, both in ser-
mons and in dramatic musical settings, they constituted a powerful force
for propagandizing and reinforcing anti-Jewish sentiments among the
populace. When portions of the Christian populace launched their at-
tack on the Jews in August 1730, they acted on a conception of the Jews
fostered through musical works as well as through the written and spo-
ken word.
Appendix 1: Yiddish and Hebrew Vocabulary in Der Hamburger Jahr~

Marckt
Act/scene of Word Standard modern Yiddish/Hebrew Translation
first appearance Yiddish,
(number of eighteenth-century
additional German Yiddish,
occurrences) Hebrew
2/8(1) Ganff Gonnif 21} thief
2/8 (4) Goy Goy gentile
2/8 Scheigitz Shaygitz gentile
2/8 Fingerele Fingerl ring
3/8 Leiser unclear, man's money-taker?
name? or to take
in money?
3/8 humeck from pftn=to evade? ?poin evader?
3/8 Mamser Mamser "1TDDbastard
3/8 Beneniter Ben ha-niddah rnn p son of an im-
pure woman
3/8 Krie Krie: the ritual UVlp mourning?
cutting of a Context
garment upon (aside): "(Krie
hearing of a death uber a Goy
geschnitten;)"
3/9 Spielche Shpil game
3/9 Scholim Sholem nfoo hello
3/9 Pschite pschite, or obviously
apschite
No translations given in libretto.

djournals.org/ at Music Library, School of Music, National Institute of the Arts, Australian on March 13, 2015
Appendix 2: Yiddish and Hebrew Vocabulary in Die Hamburger Schlacht'Zeit
Act/scene of first Word Standard modern Yiddish/Hebrew Translation Translation in margin
appearance Yiddish, eighteenth-
(number of century German
additional Yiddish, Hebrew
occurrences)
1/3 Iisch I shah no* wife Frau
1/3 (3) toffen toyv mo good guten
1/3(1) Schorr shor -no ox Ochs(en)
1/3 (2) Kauscher kosher kosher essbaar
1/3(1) Oerle orl gentile Christ
1/3 (2) MooB maos muQ money Geld
1/3(1) Schochet shoychet omiz? slaughterer Schlachter
1/3 Behemen Beheme(n) nom beast Ochs(en)
1/3(1) Romoas ramoes deception Betrug
1/3 (3) Goygims Goyim •"la gentiles Christen
1/3(1) Aubram Avram Abraham Abraham
1/3 Maramne mirameh (zeyn) naia swindler betrogen
1/8 Schoote shoyte fool Narre
1/8 Malbisch malbush(im) cloth(es) Kleid 3
Godel godel conceited? (lit. "big") Cn

1/8 ^na grober
1/8 Chummer chamer -nnn ass Esel Si
1/8(1) Krie krie rur-ip sign of mourning 3
2/7 geschecht't geshechtet oaoncoua slaughtered geschlachtet
2/7(1) Gaafe yafah pretty Madgen
i-
ft
2/7(1) Pschite pschite, or

apschite
obviously Io
ordjournals.org/ at Music Library, School of Music, National Institute of the Arts, Australian on March 13, 2015
408
Appendix 2 continued
Act/scene of first Word Standard modern Yiddish/Hebrew Translation Translation in margin =1
appearance Yiddish, eighteenth-
(number of century German 5
additional Yiddish, Hebrew
occurrences)
a.
2/7 (2) Schicks shickse gentile girl §.
2/7 Bajet bayes n*2 house Hause
2/7(1) Soaf zahav gold Gold
2/7 (4) Keesef kesef silver Silber
3/3 schassget schassyet Birr© drinks trincket
3/3 Jaesen yash: abbreviation liquor Wein
for =")-© ]'\ brandy
3/3 Schecher shechar "DP beer Bier
3/3 GainsorfT yayin saraf brandy Brantewein
3/3 Cheder cheder -nn room Stube
3/3(1) Maschegh masheg? ?:©a deceiving person? Betrieger
3/3 Chumer chamer -non ass
4/3(1) Chafol chaval bin pledge Pfand
4/3 Madda madda mo habit, manner Eide
4/3 sief ziyuf fake falsch
4/3 thapsen tapsen? ]osn grasp greiffen
4/3 Esur asor jail GefangniB
4/3 ache In achlen eat essen
Appendix 3: Yiddish and Hebrew Vocabulary in Der stumme Prinz Atis
Intermezzo of Word Standard modern Yiddish/Hebrew Translation Translation in
first appearance Yiddish, eighteenth- footnotes or margin
(number of additional century German
occurrences) Yiddish, Hebrew
1(6) toff toyv 310 good gut
1 goaf yafah pretty hiibsch
1(2) Ben Maleach Ben-Meylech •pn-p prince Printz
KD oaf ohev nrna loves lieb
1 Bacher bucher -nm boy Knabe
KD pschite pschite, obviously
or apschite KETCBBK
1 Seires se'aros hair Haare
KD Leef lev ± heart Herz
1 Agin(s) ay in eye Auges
1 Eesch eysh fire Feuer
KD Soaf zahav gold Gold
1 illem illem mute stumm
1 dibbern dabern l~m talk reden >
1 Lo (repeats) lo vb no nein
Co
1 Messascheck metzachek prrao laughs lacht dich an 3
1 5;
Chossen chossen ]nn bridegroom Brautigam it
1 Mitte mitta rroa bed Bette o
1 Neschicka neshika pip*©] kiss kiissen i-

1(1)
KD
Prooges
Bass Maleach
Schicks
broges
bass-melech
shickse
Tarn
~p&-m
angry
princess
gentile girl
bose
Prinzessin
Madchen
f
KD
Appendix 3 continued o
The
Intermezzo of Word Standard modern Yiddish/Hebrew Translation Translation in
first appearance Yiddish, eighteenth- footnotes or margin
ft
(number of additional century German
occurrences) Yiddish, Hebrew o|T
KD mekagen mehaken? from i"Dn hit schlagen 1
Oerle orl
§.
KD 7~U) gentile
KD Krie krie W-\p sign of
mourning;
context (aside)
"Krie iiber sie
geschnitten"
2 Usch-Piso- ushpizn-bayes ITU-ITS©")** inn (lit.
Bajet "guest-house") Wirthshaus
2 geschatzget geshassyet CDITntOW drunk getrunken

2 Lickach Ischo l'kach ishah i"TON Jlpb take a wife heirathen
2(3) Gagen yayin ]" wine Wein
2(1) Some tasma NQ^ thirst Durst
2 Kalle(n) kalle rfo bride Braut
2 Ben Meleach ben-meylech "I^O-p prince Prinz(en)
2 Schassgen shassyen |i?TltO drinking Trinken
2 Gewalt gevalt "PNTO cry of anguish
Notes
I am grateful to the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation for a grant which supported
my research in Hamburg in the summer of 1995. I am also grateful to David Sorkin,
Dovid Katz, Marion Aptroot, Joshua Rifkin, Laurence Dreyfus, David Rosen, Marian
Smith, Dorothea Schroder, Wolfgang Hirschmann, and Willi Maertens as well as to the
staffs of the Institut fur die Geschichte der deutschen Juden, Hamburg, and the music di-
vision of the Staats- und Universitatsbibliothek Carl von Ossietzky, Hamburg, for their
assistance in the preparation of this essay.
1. See Barry Millington, "Nuremberg Trial: Is There Anti-Semitism in Die Meistersinger!"
Cambridge Opera)oumal 3 (1991): 247-60.
2. See, e.g., Jane Fulcher, "Vincent d'Indy's 'Drame Anti-Juif,' and Its Meaning in Paris,
1920,"Cambridge Opera Journal 3 (1990): 295-319.
3. Lawrence Rosenwald, "On Prejudice and Early Music," Historical Performance 5
(1992): 69-71; responses by Ensemble Alcatraz, Richard Taruskin, Tom Hall, Norman
Janis, and Barbara Thornton, 73-83; Michael Marissen, Lutheranism, Anti-Judaism, and
Bach's "St. John Passion" (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
4. Helmut Jenzsch, "Jiidische Figuren in deutschen Buhnentexten des 18. Jahrhunderts:
Eine systematische Darstellung auf dem Hintergrund der Bestrebung zur biirgerlichen
Gleichstellung der Juden, nebst einer Bibliographie nachgewiesener Biihnentexte mit
Judenfiguren der Aufklarung" (Ph.D. diss., University of Hamburg, 1971). Two of the
three previous studies that briefly treated these works originated during the Third Reich,
although one is available only in a published postwar version. Elisabeth Frenzel's 1940
doctoral dissertation, Judengestalten auf der deutschen Bilhne (Munich: Deutscher Volks-
verlag, 1940), touches briefly on Johann Philipp Praetorius, Keiser's librettist for three of
these works, as an author whose negative portrayal of Jews presages more extensive treat-
ment of the Jews in the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She does not mention
any composers in conjunction with Praetorius. Hellmuth Christian Wolff, in the revision
of his 1942 University of Kiel Habilitations-Schrift, written under the direction of
Friedrich Blume (revised as Die Barockoper in Hamburg (1678-1738), 2 vols. [Wolfen-
biittel: Moseler, 1957], 1:82-83 and ff.) provides a brief overview of Keiser's works with
Jewish characters as part of his general history of opera in Hamburg, including an exten-
sive commentary on possible models for the operas under discussion in general. The
original version of the dissertation was not available for comparison, and I am drawing
no conclusions as to its content. Wolff also treats Die Leipziger Messe briefly in "Die
Leipziger Messe als Singspiel," in Beitrdge zur Verkehrswissenschaft: Festschrift fur Hellmuth
Wolff zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Helmut Schulz (Halle/Saale: Akademischer Verlag, 1941),
86-96. Wolff gives here only an overview of the opera; he singles out specific passages
in the opera that are either sung by or addressed to Jewish characters. The focus of the
article, however, is not specifically on the treatment of Jews in the opera. A mention
of the presence of dancers representing Jews in these operas is found in Walter Salmen,
" . . . den die Fiedel macht das Fest": }iidische Musikanten und Tanzer vom 13. bis 20.
]ahrhundert (Innsbruck: Edition Helbling, 1991), 88.
5. Jenzsch, "Judische Figuren in deutschen Buhnentexten," 75-86.
6. See Jenzsch, "Judische Figuren in deutschen Buhnentexten," 77. A play on the same
subject with essentially the same cast of characters, entitled Die standhafte Mutter der
MACHAB/EER, we dieselbe mit ihren sieben Sdhnen hingerichtet wird, had been presented
in Frankfurt am Main in October of either 1651 or 1656 (the playbill, said to be the old-
est in Frankfurt, is on display in the Stadt- und Universitatsbibliothek in Frankfurt am
Main). This shows that comic Jewish servants had been portrayed in biblical plays in
Germany before the advent of the Hamburg Opera and points to the roots of these op-
eras in spoken dramas. Not noted by Jenzsch is that ]avan means "Greece" in Hebrew;
hence, the character is a Hellenized Jew who has fallen away from Jewish practice. Javan
is clearly part of the tradition of the stereotypical lower-class glutton. In act 1, scene 7,
he sings of wanting to taste pork, while in act 3, scene 1, he sings the praises of "Necker-
Wein." In act 4, scene 8, Javan brandishes two stolen pork sausages, claims no longer to
be a Jew, offers one of the sausages to a Temple priest, and laments that he does not have
enough pork. Javan here uses a Yiddish word, gegannaft, for "stolen" ("Ich hab ein paar
von guten feisten Wiirsten gegannaft" [I have stolen a pair of good plump sausages].
According to Jenzsch (p. 77), the libretto also contains a scene in which Javan praises
"Swins-Braaden" and "Rhynischen Wein" in Low German. Jenzsch here is apparently
citing another version of the libretto, as this scene does not appear in that of 1679. The
eating of pork is a major issue in this opera, since the loyal Jews, represented by the pious
Eleasar, refuse to sacrifice pigs as commanded by the Greeks, and the climax of the opera
concerns the sacrifice of the Maccabee sons because of their refusal to assimilate. In Tele-
mann's Bekazer of 1723 (libretto by Beccau), in the act 1, scene 6 recitative, the Jewish
servant Nabal uses the Yiddish words acheln (to eat) and Goi (gentile), as well as the
anti-Semitic epithet Mauschel.
7. The earliest composers for the Hamburg Opera, Johann Theile and Nikolaus Adam
Strungk, were primarily church composers; Strungk was the director of music at the
Hamburg Dom. Initially, the number of productions per season was quite small (from two
to six productions per season in the first twelve years, with opera performances suspended
during 1685 and part of 1686-87). Due to the small number of operas in production and
the predilection of the early composers at the Hamburg Opera for biblical subjects, the
percentage of biblical operas in the first few years of the existence of the Hamburg Opera
was larger than in later years. See Reinhart Meyer, Die Hamburger Oper, 1678-1730, vol.
4, Einfiihrung und Kommentar zur dreib&ndigen Textsammlung (Millwood, N.Y.: Kraus
Reprint, 1984), 27-32; and the year-by-year list of Hamburg Opera productions in Hans
Joachim Marx and Dorothea Schroder, Die Hamburger Gdnsemarkt-Oper: Katalog der
Textbikher (1678-1748) (Laaber: Laaber, 1995), 469 ff.
8. Georg Benda, Der Jahrmarkt, ed. Th. W. Werner, rev. Hans Joachim Moser, 1. Folge,
vol. 64 of Denkmaler deutscher Tonkunst (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Hartel, 1959). The
singspiel was premiered in Gotha in 1775. The Jewish thief Nathan in this work is a
minor character who does not appear in all versions of the work. A footnote in a Leipzig
libretto printed in 1778 (reflecting a reworking of the piece) suggests that Nathan's text
"kann nach Belieben in jiidischer Mundart gesprochen werden" [can be spoken if wished
in the Jewish dialect]; see Benda, Der Jahrmarkt, 152. Benda's original version of the
work appears not to have included the character of Nathan.
9. Weidemann's first name has not been ascertained, but he may be identical with
Christian Heinrich Weidemann (d. 1715). Klaus Zelm, Die Opem Reinhard Keisers:
Studien zur Chronologie, Oberlieferung und Stilenturicklung (Munich: Musikverlag Emil
Katzbichler, 1975), 59. Die Leipziger Messe is the only libretto he is known to have
written for Hamburg. Zelm, Die Opem Reinhard Keisers, 35. In the ensuing discussion of
Keiser's works, by "Jews" I mean non-biblical Jews.
10. For a detailed history of both the Sephardic and the Ashkenazic communities in
Hamburg, see Joachim Whaley, Religious Toleration and Social Change in Hamburg, 1529-
1819 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 70-110. On 7 Sept. 1710 the
"Neue Regelement der Judenschaft in Hamburg so Portugiesisch als Hochdeutscher
Nation" was issued, giving the Ashkenazic jews the possibility of legally residing in
Hamburg proper. See Heinz Mosche Graupe, Die Statuten der drei Gemeinden Altona,
Hamburgund Wandsbek, 2 vols. (Hamburg: Hans Christians Verlag, 1973), 1:25-28,
and Giinter Marwedel, "Die aschkenasischen Juden im Hamburger Raum bis 1780," in
Die]uden in Hamburg, 1590 bis 1990, ed. Arno Herzig (Hamburg: Dolling and Galitz,
1991), 48.
11. See Whaley, Religious Toleration and Social Change, 80-81; Graupe, Die Statuten,
1:11-28.
12. The Sephardic population of Hamburg reached its maximum size of around 600 in
the early 1660s. The community had lost about half its members by 1692, and because of
heavy taxes, insecurity, and degradation, the wealthiest members left in 1698. By 1730
only 49 families remained. Whaley, Religious Toleration and Social Change, 77-80, 90.
13. In 1733 a church warden employed by the senate gave the Jewish population of
Hamburg proper as around 10,000 Jews, nearly all of which would have been Ashke-
nazic, although that figure is probably too high. In 1764 the Jewish population of Ham-
burg was estimated to be around 4,500. Whaley, Religious Toleration and Social Change,
90 and 108.
14- Whaley, Religious Toleration and Social Change, 94-95; Willi Maertens, "Margin-
alien zu Georg Philipp Telemanns 'Kapitainsmusiken,'" in Auf der gezeigten Spur: Beitrdge
turn Telemannforschung. Festgabe Martin Ruhnke zum 10. Gebwrtstag am 14- ]uni 1991,
Magdeburger Telemannstudien 13, ed. Wolfgang Hirschmann, Wolf Hobohm, and
Carsten Lange (Magdeburg, 1994), 14, 22; and Maertens, Georg Philipp Telemann: Musik
turn Konvivium der Hamburger Burgerkapitane 1730,, vol. 27 of Georg Philipp Telemann,
Musikalische Werke (Kassel: Barenreiter, 1995), ix. While I have been unable to locate
the 20 Aug. sermon, an examination of some of the published collections of Neumeis-
ter's sermons shows frequent diatribes against Jews and Catholics. Neumeister is better
known to musicians as the creator of the "operatic" type of Lutheran cantata, and
Schubart as a librettist for cantatas and oratorios of Telemann and Mattheson.
15. Theodor Wotschke, "Erdmann Neumeisters Briefe an Ernst Salomo Cyprian,"

Zeitschtift des Vereins fur Hamburgische Geschichte 30 (1929): 145.
16. The mayor of Hamburg, Garlieb Sillem, and the senate sent the city militia to
protect the Jews from the populace; Sillem and members of the senate personally rode
through the streets trying to quell the violence. Whaley, Religious Toleration and Social
Change, 95.
17. The statutes are given in Graupe, Die Statuten. Volume 2 gives the original Yiddish;
volume 1 gives Graupe's German translation.
18. The wording of the Wandsbek statutes, dating from 1687 and 1714, is similar. See
Graupe, Die Statuten, 1:86-87, 186, 283; 2:16-17,133-34, 238.
19. Hans Grosse and Hans Rudolf Jung, eds., Georg Philipp Telemann: Briefutechsel
(Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag for Musik, 1972), 283.
20. Sander Gilman, Jewish Self-Hatred: Anti-Semitism and the Hidden Language of the
jews (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 64.
21. Gilman, Jewish Self-Hatred, 68.
22. Gilman, Jewish Self-Hatred, 69. Gilman points out that when the Lutherans appro-
priated Hebrew for their own use, the Jews' "hidden language" became Yiddish.
23. Gilman, Jewish Self-Hatred, 81.
24. See Max Freudenthal, Leipziger Messgiiste: Die jiidischen Besucher der Leipziger
Messen in denjahren 1675 bis 1764, vol. 29 of Schriften der Gesellschaft zur Forderung
der Wissenschaft des Judentums (Frankfurt: J. Kauffmann, 1928).
25. The word Mauschel derives from the premise that all male Jews appeared, to the
gentile populace, to be named Moshe; it is not a specific reference to the character
Moses in this opera. The verb mauscheln means to speak with a Yiddish inflection.
26. Zelm, Die Opem Reinhard Keisers, 38.
27. Praetorius's use of Yiddish is far more extensive than the few Yiddish words that ap-
pear in the servants' roles from the biblical operas. Yet, such works clearly provided a
precedent for the use of Yiddish in his libretti.
28. Appendixes 1-3 contain only vocabulary that differs in Yiddish and German. They
do not include German-Yiddish cognates. In the cases of words that do not survive in
modern Yiddish, the spelling is conjectural.
29. Marx and Schroder, Die Hamburger Gansemarkt-Oper, 216, list a total of fourteen
performances of the work for the years 1725, 1727, 1732, and 1735.
30. Zelm, Die Opem Reinhard Keisers, 77. The senate record recording the order to can-
cel all further performances of the opera reads: "Lunae d. 22 Octobr: Concl: & commiss:
D"0 Praetori, bey 100 Rthr zu inhibiren, daB die opera, die Hamburgische Schlachtzeit
genandt, als gegen alien Wohlstand und Ehrbarkeit laufend, auf hiesiges Theatrum iiber-
all nicht aufgefuhret werde." Hamburg, Staatsarchiv, Hamburgische Opera respectu
auswartiger Herrschaften, 1716-1736, Signatur Cl. VII Lit F1 N°. 2, vol. 3. Johann
Mattheson also mentions the cancellation of Die Hamburger Schlacht-Zeit in his Musi-
calischelr] Patriot: "Die Hamburger Schlacht-Zeit, Music vom Hn. Keiser, und zwar die
hundert und siebende Opera seiner Composition. Poesie vom Hn. Praetorius. Als aber
dies Stuck zum andern mahl gespielet werden sollte, lief ein Verbot von der Obrigkeit
ein, und ein Gerichts-Unter-Diener riB die angeschlagene Zettel wieder ab." Johann
Mattheson, Der musicalische Patriot (1728; reprint Leipzig: Zentralantiquariat der DDR,
1975), 193.
31. Der Hamburger Jahr-Marckt comprises five acts, of which the first constitutes a pro-
logue. The remaining four acts comprise thirty-three scenes; thus, Schmuel participates
in slightly more than 15 percent of the non-prologue scenes. Die Hamburger Schlacht-Zeit
is written in five acts plus a separate prologue. The five acts include a total of thirty-
seven scenes. Abraham participates in slightly more than 32 percent of the non-prologue
scenes.
32. Abraham [Recit.]: "Es hot mich der Marquis hieher beschieden; / Er schassget Jae-
sen [translated in the margin as "trinket Wein"; I give here the marginal translations in
square brackets] hier, / Gab er mir ein Quartier / Ich war' es wol zufrieden. / Wenn er
nicht kauscher ist, woB ist doron gelegen? Der Schecher [BierJ ist mir gantz entgegen /
Und Gainsorff [Brantewein] schmeckt mir auch night wol; / Der Oerle [Christ] soil / In
diesem Cheder [Stube] seyn. / lch gehe zu ihm rein; / Vielleicht ist heut bei ihnen / Ein
Tholer zu verdienen. [Aria:] Ein Mauschel wird ta'glich betrogen / Das Keseff [Silber]
lauffet sparsam ein. / Doch wenn er die Goygems bezogen, So muB er gleich ein
Maschegh [Betrieger] seyn. Da Capo. [Grejte, the servant girl, enters. Recit.:] O mein!
der Schicks kommt her! / Doch Obram sey gescheid! / Der Godel Chumer der / Ist ober-
mohl nicht weit." [Recitative: The marquis summoned me here. He drinks wine here. If
he gave me lodging, I'd be satisfied. If it's not kosher, who cares? I don't like beer, or
brandy either. The gentile should be here in this room. I'll go in to him. Maybe today I
can earn a little money from them. Aria: A Jew is swindled daily; money is scarce. But
when it comes to the gentiles, he has to also be a cheater. Recitative: Oh, the schickse is
coming! But Abraham be clever! The big ass isn't far away!] Schicks (female Christian)
and Godel Chumer (big ass) are not translated here but were translated earlier in the li-
bretto.
33. Whaley, Religious Toleration and Social Change, 92. Note Richey's use of the "ver-
min" trope, already seen in Die Leipziger Messe and familiar from its use during the Third
Reich. On Richey, see also Grosse and Jung, Georg Philipp Tekmann: Briefuiechsel, 137.
Some semblance of Richey's feelings toward the Jews, as well as the general atmosphere
concerning the Jews in Hamburg during the 1720s, may be gleaned simply from the en-
tries under "Juden" in the indices for Richey's journal Der Patriot (1724-26; reissued in a
"Neue und verbesserte Ausgabe, mit vollsta'ndigem Register" in 1728): index for 1724:
"Juden, Blut-Igel der Christen" 31:296; "ein Verderb junger Leute" 40:387, 389; index
for 1726: "Juden, vom Patrioten nicht gnug angelocket" 136:291.
34- In act 1, scene 6 of Die Leipziger Messe, Isaac tries to elicit a kiss from a maid in ex-
change for a ring.
35. Jenzsch, "Jiidische Figuren in deutschen Buhnentexten," 73, 85.
36. A useful guide to the Hebrew/Yiddish in Horribilicribrifax is Andreas Gryphius,

Lustspiele, vol. 1, ed. Hugh Powell (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer, 1969), 237. The differ-
ence in spelling between the Yiddish in the Gryphius play and that in Der Hamburger
Schlacht'Zeit is probably not significant, as Praetorius's spelling of these words is quite
inconsistent.
37. "NERILLO oben als ein Jude, mit einem langen Barte, unten als ein Page in
Romischen Habit." See also Jenzsch, "Jiidische Figuren in deutschen Buhnentexten," 76.
38. The avertissement to the libretto makes clear that Praetorius had some hand in the
preparation of the libretto.
39. Brief biographical sketches of Praetorius are found in Johann Georg Meusel,
Lexikon der vomjahr 1750 bis 1800 verstorbenen Teutschen Schriftsteller (Leipzig, 1810),
10:110; Fortsetzung und Erganzung zu Christian Gottlieb Jochers allgemeinen Gelehrten-
Lexikon, vol. 6 (1819; reprint, Hildesheim: Georg 01ms, 1961), 6. Erg.-Band, s.v. "Prae-
torius, Johann Philipp," among others.
40. See Mordechai Breuer and Michael Graetz, Tradition and Enlightenment,
1600-1780, trans. William Templer, vol. 1 of German-Jewish History inModem Times,
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 160-61.
41. Whaley, Religious Tolerarion and Social Change, 86-87.

416 The M usical Quarterly
42. Whaley, Religious Toleration and Social Change, 108; Christopher M. Clark, The Poli-
tics of Conversion: Missionary Protestantism and the Jews in Prussia, 1728-1941 (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1995), 20-22.
43. See Clark, The Politics of Conversion, 47-57; Israela Klayman-Cohen, Die hebrdische
Komponente im Westjiddischen am Beispiel der Memoiren der Gliickel von Hameln, vol. 4 of
Jidische Schtudies: Beitrage zur Geschichte der Sprache und Literatur der aschkenasi-
schen Juden (Hamburg: Buske, 1994), 18-23.
44. While some Yiddish words form the plural with -s, goy is a Hebrew word that takes
the Hebrew plural im. Thus, Praetorius attached two plural endings in a row. The pres-
ence of extraneous Gs in many of the words is difficult to explain.
45. The percentage of Hebrew words in German Yiddish of this period, as well as the
authenticity of some of the vocabulary in the missionary dictionaries, has been the sub-
ject of much debate among scholars of Yiddish. An excellent summary of these issues is
in Klayman-Cohen, Die hebraische Komponente, 18-30.
46. See, e.g., Johann Heinrich Callenberg, Kurze Anleitung zurJudischteutschen Sprache
(1733; reprinted as Johann Heinrich Callenberg, Wilhelm Christian Just Chrysander,
Schriften zur jiddischen Sprache: Faksimiledruck nach den Ausgaben von 1733, 1736, und
1750, ed. Hans Peter Althaus (Marburg/Lahn: N. G. Elwert, 1966), 6.
47. Judica Sunday is the fifth Sunday in Lent.
48. The cantata was also performed in Frankfurt am Main in 1742, and the only
manuscript of the work survives in Frankfurt, Stadt- und Universkatsbibliothek,
Ff. Mus. 895/164- Telemann also published a solo version of the cantata consisting
of two arias separated by a recitative in his Fortsetzung des harmonischen Gottesdienstes
(Hamburg, 1731-32).
49. Tobias Heinrich Schubart, Ruhe nachgeschehener Arbeit (Hamburg, 1733), 43-44.
50. For an overview of this issue, see Marissen, Lutheranism, 20-23.
51. Erdmann Neumeister, Die allemeueste Art, Zur Reinen und galanten Poesie zu gelan-
gen (Hamburg, 1712), 285.

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Music and Culture

Anti-Semitism at the Opera:

the Germany of the Third Reich is an unpublished dissertation by

the picture of the lower-class Jewish characters in these operas. In no

Table 1. Keiser's "Modern" Operatic Works with Jewish Characters or

Der Hamburger Jahr-Marclct (Praetorius), 1725

Die Hamburger Schlacht-Zeit (Praetorius), 1725

Der stumme Prinz Atis (Praetorius), 1726

Mistevojus (Miiller), 1726

It is useful, in assessing the milieu in which this relative concentra-

Heinrich Schubart, pastor of the Michaeliskirche) and exacerbated by

Altona, 1685, reissued in 1726:

Altona, 20 June 1700:

New ordinance on 21 October 1714:

As one can see, attendance was initially tolerated under certain

When Keiser first attempted to portray the Jew on the Hamburg

Drum miiB'n wir uns so schmiegen

characters sing in Low German. In addition to Schmuel, the opera in-

Wenn die andre Kiinste liegen

If, however, Schmuel was to be given a limited Yiddish vocabulary

[My wife told me I should go to market to buy a good ox. If it isn't

The difference in language between this and the earlier opera is

Jenzsch points to a scene in Andreas Gryphius's comedy Horribili'

intermezzo. Appendix 3 gives the Yiddish vocabulary for this work. In

Despite her claims to the contrary, while Nerillo/Schmuel contin-

studies undertaken by university students interested in theology.45 The

Der bosen Juden gantz verstockte Bruht,

[The core of damned sinners, Satan's cunning children, the perfidious

This text is set as an accompanied recitative in a particularly agi-

Appendix 1: Yiddish and Hebrew Vocabulary in Der Hamburger Jahr~

No translations given in libretto.

Godel godel conceited? (lit. "big") Cn

2/7(1) Pschite pschite, or

1 Mitte mitta rroa bed Bette o

1 Neschicka neshika pip*©] kiss kiissen i-

2 geschatzget geshassyet CDITntOW drunk getrunken

15. Theodor Wotschke, "Erdmann Neumeisters Briefe an Ernst Salomo Cyprian,"

35. Jenzsch, "Jiidische Figuren in deutschen Buhnentexten," 73, 85.

36. A useful guide to the Hebrew/Yiddish in Horribilicribrifax is Andreas Gryphius,

41. Whaley, Religious Tolerarion and Social Change, 86-87.

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