Jewish Country Houses - (Tauber Institute Series for the Study of European Jewry) by Juliet Carey & Abigail Green (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

An exploration of the world of Jewish country houses, their architecture and collections, and the lives of the extraordinary men and women who created, transformed, and shaped them.

Country houses are powerful symbols of national identity, evoking the glamorous world of the landowning aristocracy. Jewish country houses--properties that were owned, built, or renewed by Jews--tell a more complex story of prejudice and integration, difference and connection. Many had spectacular art collections and gardens. Some were stages for lavish entertaining, while others inspired the European avant-garde. A few are now museums of international importance, many more are hidden treasures, and all were beloved homes that bear witness to the remarkable achievements of newly emancipated Jews across Europe--and to a dream of belonging that mostly came to a brutal end with the Holocaust.

Lavishly illustrated with historical images and a new body of work by the celebrated photographer Hélène Binet, this book is the first to tell the story of Jewish country houses, from the playful historicism of the National Trust's Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire to the modernist masterpiece that is the Villa Tugendhat in the Czech city of Brno--and across the pond to the United States, where American Jews infused the European country house tradition with their own distinctive concerns and experiences. This book emerges from a four-year research project funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council that aims to establish Jewish country houses as a focus for research, a site of European memory, and a significant aspect of European Jewish heritage and material culture.

Review Quotes

"What renders Jewish Country Houses more than a good, instructive read is its alluring visual personality, a composite of drawings, portraits, vintage photograph albums, postcards, and, most strikingly of all, the photographic artistry of Hélène Binet, an internationally renowned architectural photographer." -- "Jewish Review of Books"

"Jewish Country Houses is a comprehensively researched, superbly written, and magnificently produced book, a veritable treasure trove that affords the discerning reader endless literary, historical, and visual pleasure." -- "J-Wire"

"A monumental tribute to statements of social arrival, the families that conceived them and the complex, multi­faceted cultures that informed them. . . . Lavishly illustrated with historical images and sumptuous photographs . . . combining coffee table looks with serious scholarship."-- "The Art Newspaper"

"Among images of gilded staircases and wedding-cake ceilings--and Baron James de Rothschild's 1862 Château de Ferrières, 'a hodgepodge of all styles' that incorporated the innovation of central heating--are stories of gardens flattened by war, homes looted, art collections confiscated by the Gestapo. The book is at ease with its air of inquiry: When we speak of Jewish country houses, are we discussing an architectural phenomenon or something more abstract--landownership as a symbol of national identity, of emancipation, of exploitation, of assimilation? The book's reply: 'Yes.'" -- "New York Times Book Review"

"Brilliant and beautiful . . . Jewish Country Houses is a multilayered book, serving a variety of purposes. One is an ode to the beautiful homes themselves, hauntingly captured by Binet." -- "Canadian Jewish News"

"Hélène Binet's haunted photographs of spectacular country residences built by Jewish people across Europe are filled with the melancholic grandeur of fallen empires."-- "The Guardian"

"[M]eticulously researched and lavishly illustrated. . . . Identity and memory are the central intertwined themes of the volume. They function as dual lenses through which the Jewishness of these houses comes into focus. . . . The instability of what these houses might say to us, and how this is in large measure a function of what we choose to hear and see, is most eloquently captured in the glorious shots by the acclaimed architectural photographer Hélène Binet that stud the volume. Is this a site of proud Jewish identity or mournful memory? It depends how you look. . . . [A] beautiful, informative, and enjoyable book."-- "Times Literary Supplement"

"These houses . . . symbolize 'the dream of belonging' held by European Jews, and that moment when it seems possible. But the houses also represent something that is irreparably gone, destroyed by the Holocaust."-- "The Forward"

"From outstanding art collections and extravagant entertaining to creating a home in the face of prejudice, Jewish Country Houses tells the stories behind Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, built as a neo-Rennaissance château for Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild, and Georgian Gothic Revival Strawberry Hill in Twickenham, owned by both the Countess Waldegrave and the 1st Baron Michelham after Horace Walpole, among other houses."-- "Country Life"

"These images stand as a reproach to those who tidy away and smarten up - Binet's pictures, and the project more widely, are all about letting the light in on the difficult and imperfect."-- "inews"

"Jewish elite transformed the traditional notion of the country house from a site of settled privilege into a dynamic microcosm of bold self-inscription--a catalyst for new forms of sociability, patronage, art collecting, and philanthropy. Interweaving a wide array of sources and perspectives from different cultures, these essays explore gripping tales of belonging and rejection, memory and erasure, dispossession and resilience."--Esther da Costa Meyer, Princeton University

"I learned something new on every beautifully illustrated page. It sets the familiar country house story in a new, Europe-wide landscape, and tells a tale of often tragic splendor. The authors show that these are more than just houses--they are monuments to the long nineteenth-century battle between prejudice and assimilation, played out in magnificent buildings and princely collections."--Neil MacGregor, former director of the British Museum and author of A History of the World in 100 Objects

"This is a magnificent work of scholarship--it illuminates complex and ambiguous stories of assimilation and identity with verve and insight."--Edmund de Waal, artist and author of The Hare with Amber Eyes

"This lusciously illustrated book provides an essential tour of the Jewish country houses of Europe and the UK. Each of the thirteen essays furnishes an authoritative understanding of a specific house and uses a combination of new and historic images to showcase the lives of the inhabitants and the homes' rich interiors. The final essay compares this tradition to Jewish American country houses. A must-have book for anyone interested in elegant houses or Jewish history."--Laura Leibman, Princeton University

About the Author

Juliet Carey is a senior curator at Waddesdon Manor, UK. Abigail Green is an Oxford historian and author of the award-winning Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero. Hélène Binet has been described by architect Daniel Liebeskind as "one of the leading architectural photographers of the world."