Paul Christian Kirchner’s Original Jüdisches Ceremoniel Revisited

Paul Christian Kirchner’s book Jüdisches Ceremoniel is one the main sources of information on Jewish life in Germany in the early eighteenth century. It is known primarily for the engravings that embellish the imprint from 1724, published in Nuremberg by Peter Conrad Monath. Kirchner’s original version, however, was significantly thinner and included no illustrations at all.

An officiating rabbi from Fürth, Kirchner embraced Protestantism in 1709. To reaffirm his faithfulness to his new religion, he composed for the Christian readers an opus on Jewish customs and ceremonies. Titled Jüdisches Ceremoniel: d.i. Allerhand jüdische Gebräuche, welche die Juden in und auser dem Tempel... pflegen in acht zu nehmen. The book was first printed in 1716 in Jauer (Silesia) by Johann Christian Lorentz and was followed by three known editions in 1717: one in Lauban (Lower Silesia), and two others in Erfurt (Thuringia).

This relatively modest book was issued in at least nine editions with no adornments at all. Only in the imprint published in Frankfurt in 1720 by Johann Philipp Gerhard was the text preceded by a full-page engraving showing Ḥuppah ceremony outside the synagogue of Fürth.

Despite its remarkable reception, Jüdisches Ceremoniel took a turn following the intervention of the Hebraist Sebastian Jacob Jugendres, who edited and augmented the book extensively. In 1724, the book in its new format was published in Nuremberg by Peter Conrad Monath. This version is much lengthier than its predecessors and includes a series of engravings depicting the Jewish life cycle, the Jewish year, and synagogue and communal rites in Fürth in the early eighteenth century.

The proposed presentation will reconstruct the wedding ceremony described in the unillustrated early versions against the text and engraving in the Frankfurt version. It will furthermore examine the images of the wedding cycle in the imprint of 1724. Emphasis will be placed on the ritual and ceremonial objects described and illustrated in the original and the later publications while revealing the influence of Jugendres’ editorial intervention on the visuality of the images.