GERMANY. Sachsen, Thüringen und Schlesien (Śląsk), circa 1650. Medal (Silver, 46 mm, 29.25 g, 12 h), so-called 'Federjudenmedaille' mocking lack of self-awareness. By C. Wermuth. Jew wearing a feathered hat, bent to the left and looking into a bag inscribed 'vi/tia / ali/ena', while carrying a large sack on his back inscribed 'vitia - prop-ria'. Rev. Cupid, holding bow and arrow in his right hand, mounted on a bridled lion jumping right and turning its head back; below, Amor vincit / omnia. Brettauer 4765. Fieweger -. Jungk -. Kirschner 13. Kress 107, 11 March 1958, 1631. Wohlfahrt 55091. Extremely rare and exceptionally well preserved, with beautiful toning, and undoubtedly among the finest known examples of this highly interesting medal. Tiny marks, some doubling and a slightly stained obverse, otherwise, good extremely fine.



The so-called ‘Federjudenmedaillen’ are a group of complex anti-jewish medals dating mainly from the decades around 1700, many of them attributed to the Gotha engraver Christian Wermuth (1661-1739). Their obverses caricature a Jewish figure burdened by a heavy sack labeled Vitia propria (‘one’s own vices’ in Latin), while he closely examines a much smaller pouch marked Vitia aliena (‘the vices of others’ in latin), invoking the biblical image of the mote and the beam as a warning against hypocrisy.

The feathers on his hat – probably rooster feathers – gave the type its name and were used as a mocking allusion to cuckoldry, sexual rivalry, and marital deception. These obverses were paired with different reverses, creating hybrid medals in which explicitly anti-Jewish ridicule was combined with broader moralizing satire directed at deceived husbands and human folly. In this way, the ‘Federjude’ type belongs to the wider tradition of Baroque satirical medallic imagery in which religious prejudice, caricature, and moral admonition were closely intertwined.

The specimen offered here is one of the finest known examples of this extremely rare type. On this remarkable medal, the anti-Jewish ‘Federjude’ stereotype is paired with the courtly motto Amor vincit omnia (‘Love conquers all’ in Latin), taken from Virgil’s Eclogue 10.69. To modern eyes, the connection between the two sides is far from obvious, but the juxtaposition is most plausibly understood as a satirical distortion of the ideal of marriage as a union founded on love.

Johann Höhn’s celebrated wedding medals, for instance, use the same motto alongside Cupid riding a lion and a couple shown at their wedding ceremony (Antoine-Feill, II, 446). Here, by contrast, the ideal of virtuous marital love is deliberately set against the insinuation of illicit sexuality associated with the ‘Federjude’ caricature.