Glikl of Hameln גליקל מהמלין
merchant and memoirist, author of the first Yiddish memoirs by a woman
Glikl was born in Hamburg in 5406, betrothed at twelve and married at fourteen. Her husband Chaim dealt in jewels, and she worked the business alongside him. When he died leaving her with fourteen children, she did not hand the firm to relatives but took it over herself: fairs in Leipzig, Frankfurt and Amsterdam, accounts, lawsuits, and marriages arranged for her children across Europe from London to Vienna.
To cope with grief and sleeplessness she began to write, in Yiddish, for her children. The result is seven books of memoirs covering half a century. Everything is there: prices and contracts, epidemics and pogroms, the terrors of the road, quarrels with sons-in-law, love for her husband, and moral tales set between entries about bills of exchange. One famous passage describes how in 5426 her father-in-law, believing in Shabbetai Tzvi, packed barrels of linen and provisions for the journey to the Land of Israel — and how they stood unopened for years.