The Fritz Stern Dissertation Prize is kindly sponsored by the Friends of the German Historical Institute.

Prize Winner: Tamar Menashe: The Imperial Supreme Court and Jews in Cross-Confessional Legal Cultures in Germany, 1495-1690 (Columbia University, 2022)

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Tamar Menashe’s dissertation reconstructs Ashkenazi and Sephardi German Jews’ intensive pursuit of civil and religious rights before Germany’s Imperial Supreme Court (Reichskammergericht, the Imperial Chamber Court) in the context of the wide-ranging religious and legal reforms in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The dissertation reveals that the study of Jews’ surprising strategies of interconnecting law and religion in defense of themselves and their religious laws promited Jews’ civil rights in radical ways, and attained a de facto status of imperial citizenship for Ashkenazi and Sephardi-Portugese Jews.

Selection committee for the 2022 Fritz Stern Prize: Prof. Daniel Riches (Chair), Prof. Barnet Hartston, Prof. Philipp Nielsen.