Glückel of Hameln (also spelled Gluckel or Glikl of Hamelin; also known as Glikl bas Judah Leib) (1646, Hamburg – September 19, 1724, Metz) was a Jewish businesswoman and diarist, whose account of life provides scholars with an intimate picture of German Jewish communal life in the late-17th-early eighteenth century Jewish ghetto. It was a time of transition from the authority and autonomy of the Medieval kehilla, toward a more modern ethos in which membership in the community was voluntary and Jewish identity far more personal and existential; a time historian Jacob Katz has defined as 'tradition and crisis',in his 1961 book by that name.[1]. Written in Yiddish, her diaries were originally intended for her descendants. The first part is actually a living will urging them to live ethical lives. It was only much later that historians discovered the diaries and began to appreciate her account of life at that time.
Glückel grew up in the city of Hamburg. When she was twelve years old, her parents betrothed her to Hayyim of Hamelin, whom she married 1660. After the marriage, the couple lived in his parents’ home in Hamelin.[2] A year after their marriage, the couple moved in with Glückel’s parents in Hamburg, where Hayyim became an affluent businessman. Already involved in his business during his lifetime, when he died in 1689, she took over the business, conducting trade with markets as far as Amsterdam, Leipzig, Berlin, Vienna, Metz and Paris.
In 1700 she remarried, to a banker from Metz in Lorraine, and relocated there. Two years later, her husband Cerf Levy failed financially, losing not only his own fortune but hers as well. He died in 1712, leaving her a widow for a second time. [Liptzin, 1972, 14]
In her diaries, begun after her first husband's death in 1689, she describes key events in both Jewish and world history, such as the messianic fervor surrounding Sabbatai Zevi or the impact of the Swedish wars waged by King Charles XII. At the same time, she also describes day-to-day life among the Jewish inhabitants of the Rhine valley. Other scholars point to the fact that they constitute an early document in Yiddish, predating the rise of modern Yiddish literature, while still others note that they were written by a woman, a rarity for Jewish texts from that period.
Her diaries were left off in 1699, shortly before her second marriage, and resumed 1715–1719, after her second husband's death. [Liptzin, 1972, 15]
Glückel's twelve children by her first husband married into the most prominent Jewish families of Europe. [Liptzin, 1972, 14]
The handwritten manuscript of Glückel's diaries was kept by Glückel's children and grandchildren. It was created by Glückel's son Moshe Hamel who copied her original manuscript, and the copy was inherited first by Moshe's son Chayim Hamel (d. 1788) and then by members of the next generation, Yosef Hamel and Chayim Hamel Segal of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad). The manuscript was deposited in the Bavarian State Library in the second half of the nineteenth century. [Comments by David Kauffman, quoted by Rabinovitz 1929]
The Bavarian State Library manuscript was published as a book in 1892 by David Kauffman in Pressburg (Bratislava) under the name "Zikhroynes Glikl Hamel" (Yiddish: the Memoirs of Glikl Hamel). Bertha Pappenheim, a descendant of hers, translated the Memoirs into German and published them in Vienna in 1910. An abridged translation into German with commentary by Alfred Feilchenfeld appeared in 1913, and went through four print runs by 1922/23. The first Hebrew translation was published in 1929 by Rabinovitz, who had also added detailed references for the many quotes often used by Glückel.
The Jewish Museum in Berlin has devoted an entire exhibit to Glückel of Hamelin, intended to provide a sense of what life was like for the Jews of Germany before their emancipation.
Sol Liptzin describes Glückel as "well versed in the legendary lore of the Talmud", familiar with the popular, ethically oriented Musar tracts, and "profoundly influenced by Tkhines, devotional prayers for women". "Her style," he writes, "had the charm of simplicity and intimacy and the qualities of sincerity, vividness and picturesqueness." [Liptzin, 1972, 15]
Among Gluckel's descendants have been Heinrich Heine, Samson Raphael Hirsch, and Bertha Pappenheim (also known as Anna O.).
Original publication:
German translations:
Translation into English:
Translation into Hebrew: