On the occasion of Alfred Haverkamp's sixty-fifth birthday, three of his former students have collected some of the major articles by the honoree and made them available once again, which allows the reader to gain a better understanding of the author's research orientations. Haverkamp is the Director of the Arye Maimon Institute for the History of Jews at the University of Trier, Germany, and one of the leading scholars in this field. Whereas most historians tend to focus on the dramatic aspect of medieval anti-Semitism, and have exclusively examined cases or long-term developments that confirm the tragic history of Jews particularly in medieval Germany, Haverkamp's interests have always been directed at creating a more holistic picture. It is one thing to shed light on seemingly never-ending pogroms and persecutions, which would suggest that Jews in medieval Germany already had experienced a foreshadowing of the Holocaust (R. I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950-1250, 1990; L. B. Glick. Abraham's Heirs: Jews and Christians in Medieval Europe, 1999). It is quite another thing to study the actual sources and to examine in great detail how Jewish communities developed, bloomed, and then experienced a dramatic decline during the Middle Ages, and what their relations with the Christian community were like. Haverkamp has never been blind to the many tragedies that had occurred during that time period, and he has also never ignored the very dark clouds shrouding the late Middle Ages, a time when the persecutions and expulsions of Jews and of whole Jewish communities experienced unforeseen dimensions. Nevertheless, the carefully researching historian can also detect many cases of "concivilitas" in medieval German cities, which finds intriguing parallels in literary documents (see my study "Juedisch-deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters und der Fruehneuzeit als Dokumente des Kulturaustauschs. Mit besonderer Beachtung juedisch-deutscher Volkslieder des 16. Jahrhunderts," Amsterdamer Beitraege zur aelteren Germanistik 50 (1998): 185-207).
Medieval Jewish life, but also anti-Semitism, have always been an integral part of medieval urban history. Consequently, Haverkamp has also focused on individual cities and urban groups, their conflicts with each other, and their political position within the imperial politics. Other aspects dealt with in individual articles are: convent life, the aspect of public life and communication in cities, the medieval transportation system, and Hildegard of Bingen. The articles reprinted here have been published between 1981 and 2001 in collections of articles on special medieval topics. Most of these volumes are, for instance, not part of the holdings in the University of Arizona library. Intriguingly, a good portion of all articles reprinted here had originally been published in Italian and English, but were translated into German for this Festschrift.
There is no question about the high scholarly quality of all of Haverkamp's contribution, but since they were published before, suffice here to provide a list of the content of each of them: 1. conflict between Archbishop and the city of Trier in 1377; 2. Archbishop Balduin of Luxemburg and his relationship with Jews; 3. the relationship between the city of Piacenza and the German emperors; 4. the correlation between topography and social contacts within German cities during the late Middle Ages; 5. the connection between intra-urban conflicts and imperial politics; 6. Jews in the Arch-Bishopric of Trier during the Middle Ages; 7. communities and religious orders in the twelfth century; 8. Jewish quarters in late-medieval German cities; 9. history of Jewish migration and settlement in medieval central Germany; 10. the public in the Middle Ages; 11. cohabitation of Christians and Ashkenasi Jews during the Middle Ages; 12. the survival and function of ancient roads built by the Romans; 13. cities as cultural centers in Germany and Italy during the early Middle Ages; 14. expulsion of Jews in the Middle Ages and the early modern age; 15. Hildegard of Bingen in her role as abbess and as a public spokesperson; 15. the role of baptised Jews in twelfth-century Germany.
The volume concludes with a list of Haverkamp's publications, a list of those doctoral dissertations and habilitations written under his guidance, followed by Rainer Stichel's brief analysis of the sixteenth-century manuscript illustration of St Petersburg, Russia, here used for the cover, and an index of place names and persons. I am missing, however, a subject index. Otherwise, this is a worthy festschrift in honor of a remarkable historian who has contributed much to the renewed investigation of the relationship between Jews and Christians in Germany during the Middle Ages.