Court factor

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A court factor was a merchant employed at a court ruling center or court who procured goods (luxury), supplies from the army or capital for the ruler. Many court factors were Jews , for whom the contemporary source term court Jew was used. Another name is Hofagent. A number of court factors also served several courts.

history

With Isaak from Aachen , who took on diplomatic missions for Charlemagne , a merchant was already working in the service of a prince at the end of the 8th century . In the Middle Ages, pawn shops and lending against interest became a focus of Jewish merchants. They won their customers more through their practical experience and far-reaching relationships than through the ban on interest for Christians , which was only confirmed by the Catholic Church in 1179 and the ban on usury that was emphasized in 1215 , which was also soon neglected. For the growing financial needs of the economy and politics in the late Middle Ages , Christians (Italian banks , e.g. the Compagnia dei Bardi ) and Jews were granted loans against interest.

The first Jewish court factor in the sense of an office is Salomon or Salmon, who in 1315 was the court and kitchen master of Duke Heinrich VI. worked in Wroclaw. Samuel von Derenburg served four church princes in the Archdiocese of Magdeburg , such as Otto and Dietrich von Portitz . Vivelin of Strasbourg was one of the richest people in Europe in Alsace before his death in the plague in 1349. Aaron von Lincoln was already active in England in the 12th century. Isaak Abarbanel was a great financier in the Reconquista in Spain .

Beginning at the Vienna Imperial Court and the Berlin Court

The history of the actual court Jews did not begin until the 16th century: In 1582, Emperor Rudolf II created the institution of Jews at court in Vienna . He was free of taxes in the country and in the city, had no tolls and duties for his goods, was exclusively subject to the jurisdiction of the Obersthofmarschall , was exempt from wearing the Jewish emblem and was allowed to stay where the court was. From 1596 these liberated Jews also had to make special contributions for war purposes. Jakob Bassevi von Treuenberg , head of the Prague Jewish community from 1616 , received the title of nobility from Ferdinand II at Wallenstein's instigation in 1622 and, together with Prince Lichtenstein, became the tenant of coinage. In 1624, the minting business in the Imperial Mint in Vienna was transferred to the liberated Jew Israel Wolf Auerbach and his consortium.

With Michael von Derenburg the House of Hohenzollern in Kurbrandenburg also had a court factor from 1543 on. Elector Joachim II (1535–1571) appointed Lippold , who came from a Jewish family in Prague, as mint master in 1556 . He is considered the first court factor in the broadest sense; his task included the procurement of the coin metal and the care of the strike treasure.

Distribution in the German Empire in the 17th and 18th centuries

Court factors mainly worked for the royal courts of the Old Kingdom in the 17th and 18th centuries . They supplied the rulers with capital and goods, procured luxury goods , supplied the armies with provisions, weapons and horses and were entrusted with the production of coins . Because of their centuries of activity as merchants and money dealers, their partly international network and their greater willingness to take risks, Jews were welcome for these tasks at the courts. To facilitate their work, court factors were usually given privileges , privileges and titles, thus continuing the medieval tradition of the Jewish shelf. The arbitrariness of the judiciary often deprived them of property and position. Between the Thirty Years' War and the beginning of the 19th century, court factors were put into service at almost all courts in the empire . In the imperial cities they were not, like the other citizens, dependent on the council, but directly on the emperor and the empire. In the 19th century, the name Hofbankier was used .

A new communicative closeness arose between the Jewish court factors and the rulers and their officials, which opened up new economic, political and cultural scope for the court factors for themselves, their families and their communities. In the 18th century, and with their consent, the princes' practice of entrusting court Jews with the government of their home communities was widespread. They ruled them from afar in the manner of absolutist rulers, but did not yet form a caste or class of their own , but were only individual individuals of a very small privileged group of Jews. The formation of castes within the Jewish people only began with the marriages between leading court Jewish families, which resembled the international marriages of the aristocracy.

Reception in anti-Semitism and Nazi propaganda

As early as the 19th century, Jewish court factors were regarded as a negative feature of a premodern mercantilist princely economy that liberalism had overcome. Private bankers were no longer religiously oriented. The anti-Semitic propaganda of National Socialism used the role of the Jewish court factors to prove the alleged harmfulness of the Jews. The best-known example of this is the film Jud Süß by Veit Harlan . At the same time, Nazi history research was to give these theses a scientific coating with the book Hofjuden by Peter Deeg . Heinrich Schnee's research was also started in this context. Even later, snow could never completely break free of it. However, his work offers an overview of many sources.

Important court factors in the German Empire

Ansbach

Aurich

Bamberg

Berlin

Braunschweig

Buckeburg

Darmstadt

  • Bär Löw Isaak got rich at the beginning of the 18th century through the tobacco monopoly in Hessen-Darmstadt .

Dessau

Dresden

Dusseldorf

Frankfurt am Main

  • Josef Goldschmidt († 1572) became known as "Joseph of the Golden Swan". The Goldschmidt family branched out all over Europe.
  • The Speyer family lived in the "Goldener Hirsch" house.
  • The Hass- Kann family went back to Salomon zum Hasen around 1530, who lived in the house at the red rabbit.
  • Meyer Amschel Flörsheim converted to Christianity around 1760.
  • Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812) was still the court factor of the Hessian landgrave and administered his fortune in the Napoleonic era, but he opened the time of the great international banking houses ( Bankhaus Rothschild ).
  • The wine merchant Jacob Samuel Hayum Stern from the large Stern family followed the example of the Rothschilds and founded a Jacob SH Stern bank at the beginning of the 19th century .

Glückstadt

Hamburg

Hanover

Hildesheim

Hechingen

Innsbruck / Hohenems

kassel

  • In Kassel , Benedikt Goldschmidt (approx. 1575–1642) was an influential court banker . In 1635 he achieved the expulsion of all Jews who did not belong to his family from Kassel.
  • The son Simon Goldschmidt (1600–1658) was also the court banker and head of the remaining Jewish community.
  • Oberhof Agent Mosessie Joseph Bueding (1748 / 49-1811) was the founder of the bank, "the same name MJ Bueding " in Kassel.

Kleve / Wesel

Cologne / Bonn

Mainz

Mannheim

  • Lemle Moses Reinganum (1666-1724) started out as a horse dealer in the Palatinate War of Succession .
  • The court and militia factor Elias Hayum (Anten family Mayer) (1709–1766) was the progenitor of the Mannheim bankers and factory owners.
  • His son Elias Mayer (1733 / 37–1803) became a senior court and militia factor.
  • Gottschalk Mayer (1761–1835), founder of the company “ Gebr. Mayer Zigarrenfabriken ”, then continued the family tradition as a court factor in the third generation.

Munich

Paderborn

  • Behrend Levi made himself unpopular with the Jews because of his harshness.

Prague

Saarbrücken

Schwerin

Stuttgart

trier

Weimar

Vienna

Wurzburg

Court factors in the rest of Europe

Copenhagen

  • Meyer Levi Jacob

Madrid

  • Abraham Senior financed the war against the Moors in the 15th century.

Lisbon

London

Paris / Strasbourg

  • The army supplier Cerf Beer , who lives in Strasbourg , was granted French citizenship in 1775.

Stockholm

  • The engraver Aaron Isaak became a supplier to the army and, in 1789, to the court.

St. Petersburg

Veneto

literature

  • Selma Stern : The court Jew in the age of absolutism. A contribution to European history in the 17th and 18th centuries. 1st edition Philadelphia 1950. Translated from English, annotated and edited. by Marina Sassenberg, Tübingen 2001, ISBN 3-16-147662-X . ( available online in books.google.de )
  • Vivian B. Mann / Richard I. Cohen (eds.): From Court Jews to the Rothschilds. Art, Patronage and Power 1600--1800. (Published in connection with the exhibition "From Court Jews ..." Jewish Museum, New York, Sept. 1996 - Jan. 1997). Munich / New York 1996.
  • Rotraud Ries, J. Friedrich Battenberg (Ed.): Court Jews. Economy and interculturality. The Jewish business elite in the 18th century . Christians Verlag, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 978-3-7672-1410-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Dan Diner : Court factor . In: Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture . tape 3 . Springer-Verlag, 2016, ISBN 978-3-476-01218-0 ( google.de [accessed on March 25, 2020]).
  2. ↑ Michael Toch: Economic history of medieval Jews: questions and assessments . Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 2016, ISBN 978-3-11-044649-4 ( google.de [accessed on March 25, 2020]).
  3. ↑ SMOL VON DERENBURCH (SAMUEL OF DERENBURG) - JewishEncyclopedia.com. Retrieved March 25, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Michael Toch: Economic history of medieval Jews: questions and assessments . Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 2016, ISBN 978-3-11-044649-4 ( google.de [accessed on March 25, 2020]).
  5. ↑ Kurt Schubert : Jüdische Geschichte , CH Beck, 7th edition, 2012, ISBN 978-3-406-44918-5 , p. 91.
  6. ↑ Hans Behrens: Adaptation - Defense - Awakening / German-Jewish literature between 1935 and 1947 using the example of the narrative texts "The world stands on three things" and "The scales of the world" by Gerson Stern , Igel Verlag, 2017, ISBN 9783868157161 , p 22.
  7. ^ Heinz Gstrein: Jüdisches Wien , H. Wien, 1984, ISBN 9783700802648 , p. 14.
  8. ↑ Rotraud Ries: Jews as noble functionaries . In: Werner Paravicini (ed.): Courtyards and residences in the late medieval empire. Images and terms , edit by Jan Hirschbiegel / Jörg Wettlaufer, T. 1-2, 1: Terms. Sigmaringen 2005 (Residency Research 15.II, T. 1), pp. 303-306. [1] .
  9. ↑ John F. Oppenheimer (Red.) And a .: Lexicon of Judaism. 2nd Edition. Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, Gütersloh u. a. 1971, ISBN 3-570-05964-2 , col. 294.
  10. ^ Hannah Arendt : Elements and origins of total domination. Anti-Semitism, imperialism, total rule , Piper, Munich / Zurich 1986 (TB). (11th edition. 2006, ISBN 978-3-492-21032-4 ), pp. 158ff.
  11. ^ Heinrich Schnee: The court finance and the modern state. History and system of court factors at German royal courts in the age of absolutism. According to archival sources, Vol. 1–6, Berlin 1953–1967.
  12. ^ Judengasse: Speyer. Retrieved April 5, 2020 .
  13. ^ Judengasse: Haas, also Gerotwohl. Retrieved April 5, 2020 .
  14. ↑ Judengasse: Can. Retrieved April 5, 2020 .
  15. ↑ Hildesheim, Jewish cemetery Teichstrasse. Retrieved April 7, 2020 .
  16. ↑ Thomas Albrich: Jewish life in Tyrol and Vorarlberg from 1700 to 1805: Jewish life in historic Tyrol . Haymon Verlag, 2014, ISBN 978-3-7099-7341-7 ( google.de [accessed on April 5, 2020]).
  17. ↑ Monika Grübel, Georg Mölich: Jewish life in the Rhineland: from the Middle Ages to the present . Böhlau Verlag Köln Weimar, 2005, ISBN 978-3-412-11205-9 ( google.de [accessed April 6, 2020]).
  18. ↑ Erika Bucholtz: Henri Hinrichsen and the music publisher CF Peters: German-Jewish bourgeoisie in Leipzig from 1891 to 1938. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2001 (series of scientific treatises of the Leo-Baeck-Institut; 65) Zugl .: Berlin, Techn. Univ. , Diss., 2000 ISBN 3-16-147638-7 , p. 18.
  19. ^ Andreas Reinke, Barbara Strenge: An inventory overview . Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 2016, ISBN 978-3-11-095413-5 ( google.de [accessed April 7, 2020]).