02:00pm - 04:00pm  Jewish Biopolitics: The Birth of Civil Records in Eastern Europe

Speaker: Tomasz Jankowski, Ph.D. The introduction of vital registration (the recording of births, deaths, and marriages) for Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was an essential state-building measure associated with Enlightenment reforms. Registration of these vital events was one of the first steps in transforming Jews from state subjects into citizens, providing them with an official identity and, thus, better legal protection. Following the partitions of Poland-Lithuania, the annexing states—Austria, Prussia, and Russia—applied various solutions, ranging from relatively quick emancipation in Prussia to the maintenance of inefficient regulations in Galicia and the Russian Empire, which forced Jews to defend their right to informational self-determination and underreport vital events—the latter much to ...