The Great Fire of 1711: Reconceptualizing the Jewish Ghetto and Jewish–Christian Relations in Early Modern Frankfurt am Main

Disasters—natural or human-induced, unexpected or recurring—can open valuable windows onto otherwise unseen cultural structures, latent social tensions, and a full range of intergroup relations in different historical contexts. Such events may both reinforce and challenge existing norms and behaviors. How they are perceived and remembered can have a great deal to do with the perspectives and concerns of the individuals and communities that experience them, whether in person or even at a temporal or geographical distance. In this essay I examine the well-known fire that devastated the Jewish ghetto in Frankfurt am Main in 1711. The event garnered