Fondazione Hallgarten-Franchetti, Villa Montesca, Italy
June 9th - June 11th 2025
Convened by Dr Fabrizio Boldrini (Hallgarten-Franchetti Foundation), Dr Maria Rita Bracchini, (Hallgarten-Franchetti Foundation), Professor Tobias Brinkmann (Penn State University), Dr Silvia Davoli (Oxford), Professor Abigail Green (Oxford), and Dr Luisa Levi d’Ancona Modena (Oxford)
This conference takes the Jewish country house – an important manifestation of Jewish emancipation in many different parts of Europe - as a starting point for reconsidering the relationship between Jews, politics, economy and the land during the 19th and 20th centuries. In some countries, the countryside could be an incubator for antisemitic politics, in others it was an investment opportunity, and everywhere landownership held a social aspect for members of the Jewish economic elite seeking status, influence, and integration. This conference will explore those tensions.
Historians have tended to understand the relationship between Jews, politics and the land in terms of productivization, colonialism, and Zionism, with a particular focus on Eastern Europe and Palestine. By contrast, this conference will explore the role of Jews, particularly Jewish landowners - both men and women - in the modernization and stewardship of the countryside and rural communities: activities that were driven not by a preoccupation with the Jewish future, but rather by concern for the future of the rural worlds, landscapes and societies in which Jewish landowners now situated themselves.
The conference will take place at the Fondazione Hallgarten-Franchetti in Villa Montesca, the Umbrian home of Leopoldo Franchetti, a Jewish parliamentarian best known for his work on agricultural reform, and his wife Alice Hallgarten-Franchetti, a key patron of Maria Montessori, educational reform and rural handicrafts. The built heritage of the Villa and the Franchettis’ local legacies will form an integral part of the conference.
The conference organisers are grateful to the Hallgarten-Franchetti Foundation, the University of Oxford’s John Fell Fund, Brasenose College, Oxford, Penn State University, and the Martin J. Gross Foundation for their support.
