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The Grand Peur Of 1348-49: The Shock Wave Of The Black Death In The German Southwest, Steven Rowan

Quidditas

The massacre of most fo the Jewish communities in Western Germany and what is now Switzerland between late 1348 and the middle of 1349 permanently altered the position of Jews in Central Europe, both by shifting the Jewish population eastward and by moving those Jews who remained behind to the periphery of economic society. A close examination of the chronology of the massacres on the local level rapidly disproves the traditional interpretation that the massacres were attacks of the classic 'scapegoat' type made in response to the onset of the first great modern European plague. Although the first massacres outside …