Jacob Bassevi

This article deals with the imperial court banker Jacob Bassevi. For the Italian lawyer Jakob Basevi (1780–1846) see Jakob Basevi .

Jacob Bassevi von Treuenberg (* 1580 ; † May 2, 1634 in Mladá Boleslav / Jungbunzlau in Bohemia ) was the imperial court banker and financier during the Thirty Years' War. He was the first Jew in the Habsburg Empire to be ennobled.

Life

Jacob Bassevi, also Baschevi, was a son of Abraham Basch, who came from Italy. Bassevi began business activities at a young age and initially specialized successfully in trading silver , which was part of the then common currency of silver coins.

Through his wealth as a wholesaler, tax collector from Bohemia and army supplier, he contributed significantly to the financial management of Emperors Rudolf II , Matthias , and Ferdinand II . from the House of Habsburg . Together with other donors, he gave them financial credits, especially to Ferdinand II, who needed large sums of money to carry out the Thirty Years' War and the re-Catholicization after the Battle of White Mountain near Prague. From February 1, 1622, Bassevi, together with Hans de Witte , Albrecht von Wallenstein , Karl von Liechtenstein and Paul Michna von Vacínov , leased the coin rack of Lower Austria, Bohemia and Moravia from Emperor Ferdinand II for one year. Hans de Witte appeared as a representative of the consortium. To finance the lease and to raise funds for the growing credit claims of the widening war, coins were minted, some of which only had a sixth of the stated silver content. The trade in foreign coins was banned by the emperor. A huge inflation of the currency was the result. With this deterioration in the so-called Kipper and Wipper period, the consortium destabilized the supply situation for the population, which led to famine, looting and other atrocities. With this money, Liechtenstein, Wallenstein, Michna and others bought the goods of evangelical-Lutheran noblemen who were expropriated. Wallenstein used Bassevi's financial credits to reward the mercenaries for his campaigns in the Thirty Years' War.

Ennoblement

Bassevi's coat of arms, awarded together with the title "von Treuenberg" in 1622.

In recognition of his services, Bassevi was raised to the hereditary nobility with the title Knight of Treuenberg in 1622 by the Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand II . The coat of arms shows - evaluating all messages about it - in black a golden lion with three eight-pointed red stars, the coats of arms are red-black, the crest shows the golden lion in an open black flight. Emperor Ferdinand II granted him additional rights in 1622 in addition to the protection and umbrella privileges granted by his predecessors in 1599. So, regardless of the restrictions otherwise imposed on Jewish merchants, Bassevi was allowed to do business in cities, villages and marketplaces in all parts of the empire. This also applied to the capitals Prague and Vienna and other places, regardless of whether Jews had the right to settle there or not. The property of Jacob Bassevi von Treuenberg was exempt from taxes, requirements and other obligations; he had the right to live at court and was only subject to the jurisdiction of the court marshal.

meaning

Bassevi was first mentioned in 1616 as a representative of the Jewish community in Prague. He also exercised his influence on behalf of the Jews of the Empire and Italy. It is thanks to his efforts and those of other Jewish donors that after the Battle of White Mountain near Prague in 1621, the Jewish district of Josefov (Josefstadt) in Prague was spared looting and billeting. Bassevi was a close friend of the chief rabbi of Prague, Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller . He was arrested on June 26 (5th Tammuz ) 1629, had to answer to a commission in Vienna and was sentenced to a fine of 10,000 thalers. Bassevi contributed a fifth of the amount that prevented Lipmann Heller from being publicly whipped as an alternative. Bassevi also donated large sums to support poor fellow believers in Palestine .

With the loss of the imperial trust in Wallenstein as a lender, general and member of the Prague Mint Consortium, and after the brief occupation of Prague in 1631 by troops from Brandenburg and Electorate of Saxony under Hans Georg von Arnim-Boitzenburg , Bassevi von Treuenberg also fell out of favor and withdrew from grace in 1631 - three years before the murder of Wallenstein in February 1634 in Eger - back to Gitschin (today Jičín ), one of the centers of Wallenstein's possessions. There he continued to work as a financier for him and his duchies Friedland , Glogau and Sagan . Bassevi died on May 2, 1634 in Jungbunzlau . His wife Hendela Bassevi had died in 1628. Her tombstone, the only one of a woman in the Jewish cemetery in Prague , is still preserved.

Jacob Bassevi von Treuenberg was the prototype of the Jewish court factor in the special endowment with privileges and the deep fall after the withdrawal of trust . His fate stands at the beginning of the life stories of numerous Jewish bankers who were raised to the hereditary nobility of European countries.

literature

• Heinrich Schnee:  Bassevi von Treuenberg, Jakob. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6 , p. 625 ( digitized version ). - with further references
• Ottuv slovnik Naucny. Volume 19, 1900.
• Heribert Sturm (Ed.): Biographical lexicon for the history of the Bohemian countries. Volume I (A – H), published on behalf of the Collegium Carolinum (Institute) . R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich / Vienna 1979, ISBN 3-486-49491-0 , p. 54.
• Jewish Prague. In: Elena Romero Castello, Uriel Macias Kapon: The Jews in Europe - history and legacy from two millennia. Translation from Spanish. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-453-08033-5 S-148-151.
• Heinrich Graetz : History of the Jews. From the oldest times to the middle of the 19th century . 11 volumes. Friese, Leipzig 1853–1876. (Reprint: Directmedia Publications, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-89853-444-8 , p. 40 ff. (1 CD-ROM))
• Gerson Wolf : The Jews under Ferdinand II. According to files in the archives of the KK Ministries of the Interior a. Express. In: Yearbook for the history of the Jews and Judaism. Institute for the Promotion of Israelite Literature, Leipzig 1860, pp. 238–239.
• Bassevi von Treuenberg, Jakob In: Golo Mann : Wallenstein - His life. 2nd Edition. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1971, ISBN 3-10-047903-3 , pp. 237-241, 244, 253, 429.
• Johannes Baptista Rietstap : Armorial Général. Précéde d'un dictionnaire des termes du blason. Heraldry Tody Historique, London 1972, p. 128. (Repr. Of the London 1884 edition) (contains the entry that Bassevi received the title of nobility: von Treuenberg (there: von Treuenfels?) And a description of the coat of arms awarded)
• Jan Županič: The emergence of the Jewish nobility in the Habsburg monarchy. In: Ashkenaz - magazine for the history and culture of the Jews. 17th year, issue 2, 2007, special edition. Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-484-98612-2 , pp. 473-497.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 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