Antisemitism, Dance, and the Law in Late Medieval Germany

During the late-medieval period, anti-Semitic discourse informed European Christians’ increased subjugation of Jewish people living in the Holy Roman Empire. In tandem with increasing restrictions on Jewish people’s mobility and residence in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, dance regulations authored by elite Christian city rulers supported Christian hegemony by suppressing Jewish practices, limiting Jewish-Christian exchanges, and upholding Christian moral views of the body. Traces of dance in written and visual sources demonstrate that late-medieval Germans engaged in dance as a medium to perform collective identities that shaped who did and did not belong inside of the German imaginary. While Jewish people contributed to the social and cultural landscape of German imperial cities by producing and participating in dance practices, dance legislation and strategies of archival and physical erasure limited their perceived contributions and role in German cultural heritage. This legal discourse has longstanding implications on Jewish belonging in the collective memory of Germany medieval heritage.