Shulamit and Margarete: Power, Gender, and Religion in a Rural Society in Eighteenth-Century Europe

Shulamit and Margarete takes a microhistorical look at a small village on the border of Germany and France in the eighteenth century. Drawing on the rich source material of the village, it casts a searching light on the boundaries created by language, states, religions, cultures, sex, and gender. By writing the history of the village from multiple perspectives, the author is able to uncover fascinating artefacts of a cultural contact between Christians and Jews, and to gain insights into the agency and experiences of women in rural society. The book is enhanced by a variety of sources and illustrations relating to Jewish history, such as the last will of Abraham Levy and the previously unknown portraits of Fromette Levy and Bernard Lipmann.

Claudia Ulbrich, Dr. phil. (1977) University of Saarbrücken, is Professor of Modern History at the Free University of Berlin. She has published extensively on the history of rural societies in the early modern period and on gender history. She is co-editor of L'Homme. Zeitschrift für Feministische Geschichtswissenschaft.