Spring of Nations in Brody
This article is focused on analyzing the Brody Jewish community's reaction to the revolutionary events of 1848-1849, investigating their meaning and implications as well as the appearance of new ideological concepts and visions of the Jewish population's place and role relations between different national groups. The example of Brody illustrates certain changes within the Jewish community under the influence of the Spring of Nations: changes in their attitude towards political life, changes in the ability to influence decision-making by voting in the elections, participation in the government's work as well as an overall increased politicization of the Jewish population. Such factors as the first political demonstration, first elections to the Vienna Reichstag had a strong influence on the formation of a new political consciousness. Without doubt, these changes played a decisive role in the subsequent formation of the concept of a Jewish nation. On the example Brody's Jewish community in the years 1848-1849, the author shows that unlike the Poles, which had already been ahead in this respect, the Jews of Galicia just started familiarizing themselves with the national concept as the most recent product of European culture. As a result, the Galician society, formerly divided into Christians and Jews, became more stratified with the emergence of national movements. This was due to the fact that new ethnic relations – relations between ethnic groups, which began to assert their own political rights – were added to the existing inter-faith relations. Of course, the city of Brody was special in a certain respect, as regards its Jewish inhabitants. If compared to Lemberg, for example, it turns out that in Brody, Jews counted for as much as up to 77% of all population, and Jewish merchants at that time basically controlled almost all sectors of trade, which was blossoming because of the city's free trade status. They were standing in trade relations with numerous cities across Europe. This rich and influential group in ...
