Broglie, Victor-Claude, Prince de°
BROGLIE, VICTOR-CLAUDE, PRINCE DE°
BROGLIE, VICTOR-CLAUDE, PRINCE DE ° (1757–1794), French statesman. Broglie supported the French Revolution, but opposed granting the Jews emancipation, both in writing (Opinion sur l'Admission des Juifs à l'Etat Civil, in Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris) and at the Constituent Assembly. Broglie argued that granting civil rights to German-speaking Jews would cause further unrest in *Alsace and Lorraine, that the majority of Alsace Jews were indifferent to citizenship, and that the Jewish claim for citizenship was based on a Jewish plot (January 1791). On September 27, 1791, after a draft resolution demanding equal rights for Jews was approved almost unanimously by the Assembly, Broglie proposed that the Jews be required to swear the Oath of Citizenship ("to Nation, King, and Law"), which amounted to a renunciation of their communal jurisdiction. A modified version of Broglie's amendment was finally approved. Broglie's arguments were among those that inspired *Napoleon Bonaparte's policy toward the Jews and their communal organizations.
bibliography:
L. Kahn, Les Juifs de Paris pendant la Révolution (1899); E. Tcherikower (ed.), Yidn in Frankraykh, 1 (1942), 109–52.