Born in Hamburg, she moved with her family when she was two to Altona and ten years later, when Altona was overrun by the Swedes, the family was allowed to return to Hamburg. When she was moved, she married Hayyim of Hameln, where she lived for a time before moving with her husband to Hamburg. She raised 12 children, after his death in 1689 carried on his business and in 1700 married a banker Cerf Loevy from Metz, where she lived until her death.

She is famous for her memoirs, written in Judeo-German, providing a vivid picture of Jewish life in German cities, an account of every day life in her time - the survivors of the Chmielnicki massacres, seeking refuge in her father's house, the frenzy evoked by the messianic belief in Shabbetai Zvi with sober tradesman selling their businesses and packing their backs in anticipation of the return to the Land of Israel, the round of the holidays and the advent of the Shabbetai, the problems of marrying off her children. The original manuscript was lost but copies kept by her descendants were preserved and published in 1896.

Bibliography:

GLUECKEL OF HAMELN. The Life of Gluckel of Hameln, 1646-1724. Translated and edited by Beth-Zion Abrahams. Pp. XVII, 190, [23] plates. London: east and West Library, 1962

GLUECKEL OF HAMELN: Zikhroynes. (The memoirs of Glueckel of Hameln / translated with notes by Marvin Lowenthal). New introd. by Robert S. Rosen. New York: Schocken Books, 1977, c1932

Natalie Zemon DAVIS: Gluckel of Hameln in Women on the margins: three seventeenth-century lives. Pp. 360, [28]. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995