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

(SWITZERLAND).

n.p. (Nicolaus Köllner)

Basle

1768

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.

Prijs, 292

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.