The (children’s) literature of the late 18th century plays a central role in the staging of the value complex of work, as its depictions, especially of productive work, decisively shaped the idea of what appeared compatible with one’s own self-perception from a bourgeois perspective. Little thought is given to the fact that these bourgeois perceptions clashed with the existence of so-called dishonest professions (as they had been known since the Middle Ages). In 18th-century children’s literature, it is primarily Jewish figures who appear as groups who pursued such dishonest professions. Almost without exception, they are shown performing activities that cannot be reconciled with bourgeois notions of work, which is why they do not appear to belong to the newly forming bourgeois society. Using children’s literary texts by non-Jewish authors, this article examines the way in which work is presented as a parameter in which the specific form in which it appears also determines membership of the Christian-bourgeois majority society.