Diego d'Aguilar
Baron Diego d'Aguilar , also Moses Lopes Pereira or Diego Pereira d'Aquilar , (* 1699 in Portugal , † 10 August 1759 in London ) was a Marran financier and court Jew in Vienna .
Life
Diego d'Aquilar was probably born in Porto in 1699, the son of a Marran tobacconist. In 1722 he left Portugal and came to Amsterdam via London , where he devoted himself to the tobacco trade. He had returned to Judaism as Moses Lopes Pereira . 1725 he was from Charles VI. called to Vienna. There he reorganized the Austrian highly profitable tobacco monopoly. From 1726 to 1747 he was tenant of this monopoly and made considerable fortunes. In 1726 Charles VI awarded him. the Spanish barony . He became a central figure in the economic life of his time. In 1742, he borrowed 300,000 the yard Gulden so Maria Theresia , the Schönbrunn Palace could expand.
Aguilar used his influence at court several times to help persecuted Jews from Eastern Europe. Among other things, he helped to avert the expulsion of Jews from Moravia (1742) and to lift it from Prague (1748). He is considered to be the founder of the Turkish ( Sephardic ) community of Vienna (1735), which has grown steadily since 1750 and has become an important interface between western and eastern Sephardic culture.
When the Spanish Inquisition demanded his extradition in 1749 , Aguilar left Vienna with his 14 children and moved to London. Here, too, he was an active member of the Sephardic community. He died on August 10, 1759.
His eldest son, Baron Ephraim Lópes Pereira d'Aguilar (1739-1802), the second Baron of d'Aguilar, inherited the title and part of his fortune, which he acquired through marriage to the daughter of the Anglo-Jewish banker Moses Mendes Costa increased, went down in history for his eccentric behavior.
literature
- Salomon Wininger : Great Jewish National Biography. Volume 1, Czernowitz 1925, pp. 138f.
- Natan Michael Gelber : The Sephardic Community in Vienna . In: Jewish Social Studies. Volume 10/4, 1948, pp. 359-396.
- Josef Fraenkel (Ed.): The Jews of Austria: Essays on their Life, History and Destruction. London 1967, ISBN 0-85303-000-6 .
- Selma Stern : The court Jew in the age of absolutism. A contribution to European history in the 17th and 18th centuries. Tübingen 2001, ISBN 3-16-147662-X .
- Meir Lamed: AGUILAR, DIEGO D '. In: Encyclopaedia Judaica . 2nd Edition. Volume 1, Detroit / New York a. a. 2007, ISBN 978-0-02-865929-9 , pp. 508-509 (English).
- Kurt Schubert : The history of Austrian Jewry. Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-205-77700-7 .
Web links
- Michael Halévy : How Vienna got its Sephardi . The miraculous story of Diego de Aguilar. In: DAVID - Jewish culture magazine. 84 (2010).
- Meyer Kayserling : AGUILAR, DIEGO D '. In: Isidore Singer (Ed.): Jewish Encyclopedia . Funk and Wagnalls, New York 1901-1906.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gelber 1948.
- ^ Karl Vocelka: Maria Theresa and the Jews. Retrieved March 29, 2020 .
- ↑ Schubert gives 1759/63 as the year of death. (Schubert 2001, p. 56.)
- ↑ See Meir Lamed. Encyclopaedia Judaica.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Aguilar, Diego d ' |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Pereira, Moses Lopes; Aquilar, Diego d ' |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Marran financier and court Jew in Vienna |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1699 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Portugal |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 10, 1759 |
| Place of death | London |