Memoirs of Gluckel of Hameln, The.
[Judaica]. Gluckel of Hameln. The Memoirs Of Gluckel Of Hameln. Translated with introduction and notes by Marvin Lowenthal. Illustrated. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1932.
8vo.; discrete bookseller’s stamp on front endpaper; red cloth stamped with design “adapted from an original 17th-century Judisher Lederschnitt binding in the State Library at Munich”; top edge sunned; tan dust-jacket, few small chips.
Together with:
Gluckel of Hameln. The Life Of Gluckel Of Hameln. 1646-1724. Written by herself. Translated from the original Yiddish and edited by Beth-Zion Abrahams. With forty illustrations. London: East and West Library, (1962).
8vo.; red cloth; green price-clipped dust-jacket, very minor edgewear.
Together with:
[Gluckel of Hameln]. Winston, Margoa. Gluckel Von Hameln: A Dramatization Of Her Autobiography. New York: Behrman’s Jewish Book House, 1941.
8vo.; maroon cloth, with printed labels affixed to front and spine; one small damp stain to fore-edge.
A first edition, second printing of the first English language translation of this landmark seventeenth-century memoir; a first edition of another translation; and a first edition of a play based on the memoir. Gluckel’s descendents made two contemporary copies of the since lost original manuscript. They were employed for the work’s first publication in 1896 in the original Judeo-German, a predecessor of Yiddish. Shortly after, German and Hebrew translations appeared. Lowenthal’s translation is almost complete; the few abridgements do not affect Gluckel’s narrative. He writes, he notes in the introduction, without a “Yiddish flavour” to honor Gluckel’s fluency in Judeo-German. However, he does try to “give the English a seventeenth-century ring” to parallel the Latinisms and Gallicisms of the original.
This unique memoir was written by a mother in the late 1600s for her children, but since its English publication, has achieved the status of a classic of Renaissance and Jewish literature as a rare example of a Jewish woman’s writing. Gluckel of Hameln was born in 1646 in Hamburg, three years before the Jews were expelled from the city during the upheaval following the Thirty Years War. After her arranged marriage at the age of fourteen to Chaim of Hameln—whom she grew to adore—Gluckel returned from Denmark. Hamburg once again allowed Jewish residents, though they lived precariously with severely curtailed freedoms. Chaim began humbly, bartering gold door-to-door, but trade soon flourished and his fortune increased. Gluckel was devastated by his early death in 1689.
Left with eight of their twelve children unmarried and an extensive business to conduct, Gluckel began writing her memoirs to overcome her grief and tell her children “from what sort of people [they] have sprung.” She completed the first five “books” in the next ten years, meanwhile expensively marrying off the rest of her children into important Jewish families. The marriages depleted Gluckel’s finances, and she grew afraid of not being able to provide for herself anymore. She had always equally dreaded the shame of bankruptcy and being financially dependent on her children, so she decided to re-marry in 1700. Tragically, the marriage failed to keep her from either of these fates: her new husband quickly declared himself bankrupt and then passed away, forcing Gluckel to move in with one of her daughters. In her late 60s, Gluckel wrote two more “books” of her memoirs (dated 1715 and 1719) before her death in 1724.
Gluckel’s memoirs illuminate the daily lives of seventeenth-century European Jews. Among the difficulties recorded are the effects of the plague and the ever-changing whims of royalty towards Jews. Writing about the international trade community, Gluckel includes the details of both the serious handicaps Jews faced and of the fortunes some made for themselves and their countries as royal agents. Aside from the history captured, Gluckel’s voice and life story gi
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