Judenporzellan (literally "Jewish Porcelain") is a designation for inferior porcelain produced by the

Royal Porcelain Factory Royal Copenhagen, officially the Royal Porcelain Factory ( da, Den Kongelige Porcelænsfabrik), is a Danish manufacturer of porcelain products and was founded in Copenhagen in 1775 under the protection of Danish Dowager Queen Juliane Marie. It is ...

owned by Frederick the Great in the late 18th century. To increase business, he decreed in 1769 that a tax on Jews in the form of coerced purchases from his factory would be levied on Jews in order to obtain marriage, death, business and other certificates and permits (Glueck 1998). Some accounts claim that the twenty porcelain monkeys belonging to the heirs of Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) are Judenporzellan (Hartmann 2006), although some authorities doubt the authenticity of these family stories based on chronology and provenance—at least one of the monkeys is of

Meissen Meissen (in German orthography: ''Meißen'', ) is a town of approximately 30,000 about northwest of Dresden on both banks of the Elbe river in the Free State of Saxony, in eastern Germany. Meissen is the home of Meissen porcelain, the Albrecht ...

manufacture (Todd 2003).

References

* Elon, Amos. ''The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch'' (p 43) New York: Picador 2002. * Hartmann, P.W
Das grosse Kunstlexikon
accessed October 12, 2006 * Glueck, Grace ''Art in Review'' June 5, 1998 New York Times * Todd, Larry ''Mendelssohn: A Life in Music'' 2003 Oxford U. Press * Nayman Shira ''Awake in the Dark'' 2006 Scribne
Leonard Lopate Show Oct 11, 2006 WNYC 12:13
German porcelain German pottery Jewish art Economy of Prussia {{Germany-hist-stub