Jewish Country Houses

An utterly absorbing book taking in architecture, art creation, patronage and collecting. it is a triumph of sensitive editing and an expression of compelling intellectual collaboration. – Country Life

Through a series of striking case studies, this book explores the pan-European world of the Jewish country house, its architecture, its relationships and its things.

Country houses are powerful symbols of national identity, evoking the glamorous world of the landowning aristocracy. Jewish Country Houses 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 provided inspiration to the European avant garde. A few are now museums of international importance; many more are hidden treasures: 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.

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, this book is the first to tell that story.

‘This is a magnificent work of scholarship – it illuminates complex and ambiguous stories of assimilation and identity with verve and insight’ – Edmund de Waal

‘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 splendour. 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

To read more about this project, please visit https://jch.history.ox.ac.uk/home

Additionally, Hélène Binet  has made a short video for the exhibition of her Jewish Country Houses photographs at Strawberry Hill. You can find it here.