Isaac Behrens

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Isaak Behrens (Hebrew name: Isaak Liepman Cohen ; * around 1695; † 1765 ) was a German court Jew , grandson of court Jew Leffmann Behrens (1634-1714), took over together with his brother Gumpert Behrens (* around 1690; † between 1726 and 1738) the grandfather's company in Hanover , got into debt and was jailed for five years for alleged bankruptcy fraud. Both brothers were tortured while in detention. The proceedings of the Electoral Hanoverian judiciary against them were based on a suspicion that was never confirmed and was also motivated by anti-Jews. After his release and expulsion, Isaac wrote a documentary report of his experiences, a megillah .

Life

The inherited company

Isaak Behrens and his less active older brother Gumpert Behrens grew up in the lavish lifestyle of a prominent Jewish family into the banking and trading business of their famous grandfather. As a teenager, Isaak married the daughter Lea of ​​the equally famous Halberstadt court Jew Issachar Berend Lehmann ; the couple had seven children in 1721. In spite of its good reputation, when the brothers inherited it, the grandfather's company had little available capital, and the majority of its assets consisted of difficult-to-collect outstanding debts. The situation worsened as co-heirs had to be paid out, jewel prices plummeted, and customers withdrew their deposits to invest in the fashionable stocks. The three factories belonging to the company (cloth, candle wax, tobacco) worked with losses.

Indebtedness, bankruptcy, indictment and torture

In order to maintain their credit and a high standard of living, the brothers borrowed from Isaak's father-in-law, Issachar Berend Lehmann , who lives in Halberstadt in Prussia . As security, they gave him foreign and own bonds and jewels. When they set off for Halberstadt on April 1, 1721, in great financial embarrassment, in order to move some of the remaining valuables to Berend Lehmann's, they were arrested by the Hanoverian judiciary, declared bankrupt and accused of fraud to the detriment of their creditors. Allegedly they (mainly with Berend Lehmann) had hidden large values ​​and thus removed them from the bankruptcy estate. This claim has never been proven, and after three years of imprisonment, the brothers were tortured to force a guilty plea. They confessed nothing, most likely because there was nothing to be confessed. After an additional two years in prison, they were released and expelled from the country for life.

After the release

Nothing more is known about Gumpert Behrens than that he was no longer alive in 1738. Isaak, on the other hand, settled in Altona (then Danish) and wrote a Megillah in 1738 , ie an experience report to be read out at the Purim festival. It is also an important text in the Yiddish language in terms of linguistic history. Isaak Behrens died at the age of about seventy with one of his sons, a doctor in Rendsburg . His tombstone in the old Jewish cemetery in Hanover's northern part of the city has been preserved.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Behrens, Isaak, Megillah , 1738, manuscript in the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana of the University Library Amsterdam, Sign. Hs Ros 82. High German translation: Isaak Marcus Jost : A family Megillah from the first half of the 18th century. Faithfully translated into standard German by Dr. JM Jost In: Journal for Science and History of Judaism, Vol. 2 (1865), pp. 64–82
  2. ↑ Bernd Schedlitz: Leffmann Behrens. Studies on court Judaism in the age of absolutism (sources and representations on the history of Lower Saxony, vol. 97), Hildesheim 1984, p. 25
  3. ↑ Berndt Strobach: With liquidity problems: torture. The proceedings against the Jewish merchants Gumpert and Isaak Behrens in Hanover, 1721–1726 , epubli Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-8442-4986-6 , p. 83
  4. ↑ Berndt Strobach: With liquidity problems: torture. The proceedings against the Jewish merchants Gumpert and Isaak Behrens in Hanover, 1721–1726 , epubli Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-8442-4986-6 , pp. 13-20
  5. ^ Peter Schulze: Contributions to the history of the Jews in Hanover (Hannoversche Studies, Vol. 6), Hanover 1998
personal data
SURNAME Behrens, Isaac
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cohen, Isaak Liepman (Hebrew name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German court Jew
DATE OF BIRTH around 1695
DATE OF DEATH 1765