Johann Caspar Ulrich. Sammlung Juedischer Geschichten....in dem XIII und folgenden Jahrhunderten bis auf MDCCLX in der Schweiz

AUCTION 63 | Thursday, November 13th, 2014 at 1:00
Fine Judaica: Books, Manuscripts, Autograph Letters, Graphic and Ceremonial Art

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Lot 222
(SWITZERLAND).

Johann Caspar Ulrich. Sammlung Juedischer Geschichten....in dem XIII und folgenden Jahrhunderten bis auf MDCCLX in der Schweiz

<<first edition.>> Allegorical engraved frontispiece of the Jews requesting protection from an enthroned Helvetia, with the village of Legnau and its synagogue visible in the background. Two engraved plates of synagogue of Langnau and Endingen, the oldest Jewish communities in the Swiss Confederacy. Together with one folding plate of the Jewish cemetery. Occasional use of Hebrew type. pp. (18), 504. Touch browned, frontispiece laid down, blank portions of title-page removed and filled to size and slightly soiled, folding plate torn with loss of outer portion. Contemporary gilt-tooled green calf, heavily scuffed, upper cover loose. Lg. 4to. Prijs, 292

Basle: n.p. (Nicolaus Köllner) 1768

Est: $1,200 - $1,800
PRICE REALIZED $1,000
An unsurpassed (and unbiased) chronicle of Jewish life in Switzerland from the 13th-century until 1760. Sammlung Juedischer Geschichten is the most comprehensive history of the Jews of Switzerland, with special emphasis upon Zurich and the city’s relations to its Jewish residents. The author (1705-68), a Swiss Protestant theologian, studied Hebrew and Rabbinics in Bremen with a Jewish apostate, Christian Gottlieb Fromman and later in Lengnau with Jacob Guggenheim. Ulrich, preached tolerance of the Jews and writes in his foreword here: Nehmet denn, acheinu Bnei Israel, liebe Israeliten, dieses Buch, von einem Mann der Euch liebet… Mein Absehen gehet nur dahin, Euch zu zeigen, wie es euern Voraltern in der Schweitzerischen Golus ergangen sene [“Accept this book, dear Israelites, from a man who loves you… My view is only to show you how your forefathers fared in the Swiss Exile.”] See Vol. XV, col. 1527.