Mardochai Castle

Marx Nathan / Mardochai Schloß (* 1672 in Frankfurt am Main ; † 1747/1748 in Stuttgart ) was a trader and since 1706 court factor in Stuttgart as well as head of the Israelite community.

family

Mardochai or Marx Schloß was the son of Nathan Moses Schloß (approx. 1645–1712) in Frankfurt. His daughter Judle married Elias Hayum in Stuttgart in 1733 ; both are the first parents of the Mannheim banking and manufacturing family Mayer.

Life

Mardochai Schloß, as Marx Nathan was called by the Jews after the ancestral home of his family in the Frankfurt Jewish Ghetto , came in 1706 from Frankfurt am Main to Stuttgart, where he worked as a court factor and trader, among others. a. also for wax lights and tartar , settled down. He should have married there soon.

As an Orthodox Jew, he deliberately kept a social distance from the powerful Secret Finance Councilor Joseph Suss Oppenheimer , but in the end in 1738, in his function as head of the small Israelite community in Stuttgart, he took on the task of preparing the death row inmate for execution at his request.

Joseph Suess Oppenheimer

Two months after the arrest of Joseph Suss and the beginning of the political upheaval on March 12, 1737, which was accompanied by the completely uncontrolled persecution of Jews , Marx Nathan wrote to the Stuttgart government in May 1737 to ask for protection for the Jewish community and his own family: “ But after the local handicraftsmen and boys persisted in shouting all sorts of insults, knocking, scolding us, even throwing stones, so that we are no longer safe from them, as then A few days ago after my future daughter, Seligmann, I was thrown from a house with a stone, which, if it hit him, could have been his death. “On September 16, 1737 he was officially sworn in as a witness in the Suss trial.

Only a few days before the execution, Suss asked to speak to the Jewish chief, whereupon Marx Nathan visited him in his cell on the Sabbath , the Jewish holiday on February 1, 1737, only three days before his execution, and was greeted euphorically by him and that with him Confession and prayers said.

Most recently, at his repeated request, he visited Suss again on February 3, 1738, on the last afternoon before the execution, and was again hugely hugged by Suss in the cell. Suss spoke the confession of sin again.

In his will, Suss asked the “honored Rabbi Mardochai Schloß” to let all Jewish communities know that he, Suss, “died over the sanctification of the name of the blessed God” - that is, in the Jewish faith.

Finally, Marx Nathan got him a copy of the Ten Commandments in Hebrew, which he even carried when he was executed, tied around his forehead with a black cloth.

At the end of April 1738, Marx Nathan financed the printing of a leaflet about the last hours of Joseph Suss Oppenheimer's life, which was written by Salomon Schächter , who had visited Suss with Marx in his cell.

literature

• Sigismund von Dobschütz: The ancestors of Elisabeth Goldschmidt from Kassel and Mannheim . In: "Hessische Familienkunde" (HFK), edited by the Working Group of Family Studies Societies in Hessen, Vol. 24, Issue 4 (1998), ISSN  0018-1064 , pp. 161f.
  • New publication with additions and corrections: "Maajan - The Source", Issue 76, Swiss Association for Jewish Genealogy, Zurich 2005; ISSN  1011-4009 .
• Hellmut G. Haasis : Joseph Suess Oppenheimer, called Jud Suess; Financier, free thinker, victim of justice , Rowohlt-Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg, 1998, ISBN 3-499-61133-3 .
• Hellmut G. Haasis (ed.): Totengedenkbuch for Joseph Suss Oppenheimer . With the Hebrew memorial sheet by Salomon Schächter, translated and new Hebrew sentence by Yair Mintzker (Princeton University). Worms Verlag, 2012. ISBN 978-3-936118-85-8 .

Web links

• Marx Nathan / Mardochai Schloß and Suss Oppenheimer at www.jewishencyclopedia.com