The second part of the program with my guest author Viola Roggenkamp was dedicated to the "Memoirs" of Glikl bas Judah Leib, who became known posthumously as Glückel von Hameln.
Glikl, a Jewish businesswoman, was born in Hamburg in 1645. Her father, Judah Löb, a jeweler also known as Pinkerle, had acquired the right to reside and engage in trade in Hamburg since the 1620s. Glikl's mother was Bele, born Ellrich, who had established an additional source of income for the family by making gold and silver lace. In 1649, shortly after the end of the Thirty Years' War, the Hamburg citizens' assembly revoked the right of residence for Jews in Hamburg - presumably out of fear of economic competition. The Pinkerle family had to hastily leave the Free Imperial City and seek refuge in the nearby Danish Jewish community of Altona, which consisted of about twenty-five families. When Swedish troops invaded Altona in 1657, just eight years later, Glikl's family fled again - this time back to Hamburg in the opposite direction. They were granted permission to settle there and resume trade, although without proper residential rights. Jews were still not allowed to establish a synagogue in Hamburg and therefore had to pray secretly either in their homes or make their way to the prayer house in Altona, as Glikl wrote.
At the age of twelve, she was engaged and married at the age of fourteen to Chaijm von Hameln from a respected Sephardic family in his hometown. After one year, the young couple moved back to Hamburg, where their first of a total of fourteen children was born. The happy couple spent a year with Glikl's parents before renting their own house in the Ashkenazi district of Neustadt near the Elbe and establishing their own jewelry, pearl, and gold trade. The couple entered into trade agreements from Moscow and Danzig to Copenhagen, Amsterdam, and London. Chaijm regularly traveled to trade fairs in Leipzig and Frankfurt, eventually employing Jewish trade servants and business partners for these journeys. As we learn from Glikl's "Memoirs," the business trips were dangerous, especially for Jews. There were frequent attacks, robberies, and even murders. However, Glikl's exemplary marriage came to a sudden end for completely unexpected reasons when Chaijm, in January 1689, fell during a business errand in Hamburg and suffered such a fatal accident that he passed away a few days later. Glikl took over the business as Chaijm had instructed on his deathbed and expanded the jewelry and gold trade with other goods. Through clever marriage strategies, she married off seven of her eight unmarried children into the most respected and wealthy Ashkenazi families over the following years.
In 1691, two years after Chaijm's death, she began her writings, which historian Natalie Zemon-Davis also refers to as her "moral testament" to her children. She wanted her children to know their origins and also what their Jewish legacy was precisely. To do so, Glikl drew from stories in the "Holy Scriptures," the "Talmud," the "Midrash," and religious literature specifically written for women, such as those by Jakob ben Isaac Aschkenazi. But she also drew from sources such as the German "Universal History" by a Dominican or simply from newspapers, crafting her illustrious stories skillfully with suspense, like cliffhangers.
Glikl's life story is divided into seven books, just as the seven decades of a person's life, and bears witness to her serious intention as an author to put it down on paper in three decades - until 1719 in Metz. There, she spent her final years in a second marriage to the banker Hirsch Levy, reflecting on the unfortunate events of his bankruptcy and ultimately his early death. After Glikl's own death in 1724, her son Moses made a copy that has been handed down to us and was translated by the author and women's rights activist Bertha Pappenheim, a distant relative of Glikl, in 1910.
Read the moving "Memoirs" of Glikl bas Judah Leib yourself through the provided links here, in the "Gallery," or the "Program Info" - or simply listen to us: "Viola Roggenkamp & Glikl bas Judah Leib"
* Image of Bertha Pappenheim in the attire of Glikl bas Judah Leib