CENTRAL EUROPE - TAXATION OF JEWS - MANUSCRIPTS - Lot 50

CENTRAL EUROPE - TAXATION OF JEWS - MANUSCRIPTS Taxation of Jews and their food in Central Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. Exceptional collection of handwritten and printed documents intended for tax collectors. A volume of 192 leaves, often folded, in folio (with the exception of a few leaves printed in 4° or in 8°), in two parts, the first printed in red and black (pp. 1 to 146), the second handwritten in ink (f. 147 to 192), unbound, with wetness on a few dozen leaves at the beginning, the rest in good condition, and a few loose documents attached. I. Printed part The register includes, for the printed part, three different instructions, all three promulgated in Brünn (today Brno, in the Czech Republic). and each accompanied by its appendices: Instruction of October 31, 1798, ff. 2 to 6, followed by its appendices f.7 to 11; Instruction of August 9, 1805, f. I2 to 18, followed by its appendices f. 19 to 41c)Instruction of October 31, 1798, f. 42 to 78, followed by its appendices $. 79 to 146. 79 to 146These three increasingly detailed instructions provide a vivid insight into everyday Jewish life, starting with the collection of taxes on families, and those on the consumption, trade and eventual export of kosher meat, fish, kosher wine...Dozens of individuals, their places of residence, sometimes their town of origin or, in the case of travelers, their destination, are mentioned in the pass models (Joshua Nathan, Moses Sitgras, Moses Binder, Salomon Bleicher, Simon and Markus Ehrlich, Salomon Deutsch, Salomon Hirsch, Moses Ehrenreich, Levi Mayer, Aaron Kraus, Samson Auspi(t)zer, etc.). The towns that appear most frequently are Brünn, Lamboritz, Nikolsburg. Auspitz, Vienna, Holitsch in Hungary, Jägensdorf in Silesia. The countries mentioned are Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary and Poland. In terms of content, these very detailed instructions go so far as to specify the parts of the animal which, being non-kosher but "tröfe", are not subject to taxes, the condition of the knife for slaughter, the intervention of the local rabbi, and the risks of decacherization of the meat during handling (ff. 45 - 46). The purchase of fish for Shabbat is specifically mentioned on f. 56 ("der Fisch Einkauf zur Shabes Mahlzeit"). Particularly detailed passages (ff. 56v° - 66v°) concern kosher wine and its trade. II. Manuscript part The second part of the volume, f. 147 to 192, paginated from l to 91 at the time, (with two flyleafs not included in this pagination), is occupied by later handwritten copies, reproducing more than seventy supplementary instructions, dated from August 1830 to June 1833, by several hands, in German, mostly short (one to two pages, or even less) also concerning the collection of taxes on Jews and their food, with numerous references in the texts to the printed instructions in the first part of this volume. Enclosed are six unbound printed documents also concerning taxes on Jews, one undated, the others dated from October 1830 to March 1833 (one of which is 6 pages in folio), and three loose documents, one signed by a bishop (in Czech?), the other two concerning coins under the reign of Maria Theresa.