Der Weg der Mikwe in die Moderne

At the beginning of the 19th century, the mikvah was still considered the womens bath of a social fringe group cold, unhealthy and no longer up-to-date but at the end of the development considered here there is the modern ritual bath of an emancipated minority. In her study, the author traces those social, political, cultural and religious factors that shaped this transformation in their interaction. Both the spatial structure and the understanding of the ritual itself were renewed in various ways and thus adapted to the conditions of a bourgeois living environment. The focus is always on both sides: the German public mainly perceived the mikvah as a medical problem through the doctors, whereas the Jewish community tried to fit old traditions into a new horizon of values in a general process of reform. In the introduction, the complex religious regulations on the mikveh are explained in an understandable way for the first time and their use since the Middle Ages is shown.