Josel von Rosheim

Josel von Rosheim (* 1476 in Hagenau , Alsace , † 1554 probably in Rosheim , Alsace; actually Joselmann or Yoselmann (Joseph) Ben Gerschon Loans or Loanz ) was the representative and defender of the Jewish communities in legal and religious matters in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation as well as in Poland in the first half of the 16th century.

Origin and family

His family probably came from Louhans, France . Jacob ben Jechiel Loans , the famous Jewish personal physician of Emperor Friedrich III, became his ancestors . , who was ennobled for his medical achievements and, among other things, was the Hebrew teacher of the well-known humanist, lawyer and philosopher Johannes Reuchlin .

The history of the Josels von Rosheim family is marked by permanent persecution and suffering. 1470 of his father, Rabbi Elias's brother were, and two of his brothers in the southern Baden Endingen am Kaiserstuhl previously because of an alleged eight years Sukkot committed ritual murder executed. A butcher who lived in the neighborhood and was heavily indebted to Rabbi Elias appeared as the prosecutor.

Life

In 1470 Josel's father Gerschon settled in Oberehnheim . Together with the Jewish community, the family fled in 1476 from persecution by Swiss travelers to Hagenau , where Josel was born that same year. Nothing is known about his childhood and youth. He worked as a rabbi at the court of the Lower Alsatian Jews and lived from trade and money lending.

In 1507 Josel received the order from the Jews expelled from Oberehnheim to lobby the provincial authorities, including the emperor's officials, to have the expulsion order lifted. Probably because of his success in this matter, he became in 1510 together with Rabi Zadoc Parnas and Manhig (head, leader, spokesman) of the Lower Saxon Jews, later of the communities of the entire Alsace.

In 1514 he lived as a rabbi, trader and moneylender in Mittelbergheim, Alsace, and was accused of desecrating the host together with seven other Jews . Josel managed to prove her innocence. Then he moved to Rosheim, where he lived until his death.

Act

During this time he became known beyond the borders of Alsace as a defender of the Jewish communities in religious and legal issues. Gradually he grew into the role of "the common Jewry commander in Germany". However, he did not have a clear status in this function. He was even sentenced once to a heavy fine by the Reich Chamber of Commerce for having referred to himself as the “governor of common Jewry” in a petition to this court.

It was thanks to Josel's personal commitment that a number of planned expulsions of Jews from cities and communities were not carried out. It is noteworthy from the late phase of his activity that in 1548 he argued that the Jews were civibus because of what he considered to be the illegal market ban of the city for the Jews, which he led for the Jews of the city of Colmar before the Reich Chamber of Commerce Romanis ("Roman citizens"), like Christians, have free access to all markets in the empire.

On October 20, 1520, on the occasion of Charles V's coronation as emperor in Aachen , Josel obtained a letter of protection for all Jews of the empire, in which the rights granted by Emperor Maximilian I ten years earlier are confirmed.

During the Peasants' War in 1525 , Alsatian farmers decided to storm the town of Rosheim. What the two Alsatian reformers Wolfgang Capito and Martin Bucer did not succeed, Josel von Rosheim achieved: In a lengthy disputation, he convinced the leader of the farmers, Erasmus Gerber , to spare the city and the Jews - in contrast to the Sundgau , where the rebellious farmers were Demanded expulsion of all Jews.

Josel von Rosheim increasingly became the spokesman for the entire Jewry of the empire, he became the shtadlan , the official representative of the Jews in the Holy Roman Empire and in Poland recognized by the communities . As the “Regirer” of the Jews, he was also asked for support by congregations from other parts of Europe.

He continued to be successful. On May 18, 1530, he obtained the Edict of Innsbruck from Emperor Charles V, which reaffirmed all rights and freedoms as they had been confirmed at the imperial coronation in Aachen. In addition, at the Reichstag in Augsburg in 1530, Josel von Rosheim refuted Antonius Margaritha , who converted to Christianity and was the son of the rabbi of Regensburg , in a lengthy public disputation on all of his anti-Jewish charges, so that Margaritha had to leave the Reichstag. But the handbook The Whole Jewish Faith , written by Margaritha, was used again and again over the next centuries to substantiate anti-Judaistic allegations , since it was written by a converted Jew .

In 1530 Josel von Rosheim read his Takkanot at the Reichstag "in the name of all Jewry" . H. "Regulations" that gave uniform rules, especially to the financial transactions between Jews and Christians. In this way a number of anti-Jewish ordinances that accused the Jews of usury and money fraud could be prevented.

In the next few years he defended Jewish communities in Germany , Hungary , Prague , Italy and other places. After Martin Luther had refused to support him in the struggle for the repeal of the electoral edict of the expulsion of all Jews from Saxony and since 1543 had taken positions openly directed against the Jews with his work Von den Juden und their lies , Josel von Rosheim orientated himself more and more closely the positions of the Catholic Emperor. The Jews also financially supported his policy. They saw the imperial protection as their only possibility to survive as a Jewish people in the turmoil of the Reformation and the beginning of the Counter-Reformation.

Josel probably died in Rosheim in 1554. However, this cannot be proven with certainty, as there is no reference to a grave site in the records and traditions of the Jewish community in Rosheim.

With the death of Josel von Rosheim, the Jews in Germany lost their most important leader, so that this active policy of the Jewish communities with the imperial authorities came to a standstill again in the following years.

literature

• Friedrich Battenberg : Josel von Rosheim, commander of German Jewry, and the imperial jurisdiction. In: "To maintain good order". Contributions to the history of law and justice. Festschrift for Wolfgang Sellert on his 65th birthday. Edited by Jost Hausmann. Cologne [u. a.] 2000, pp. 183-224.
• Selma Stern : Josel von Rosheim. Commander of the Jews in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. Stuttgart 1959.
• Selma Stern: L'Avocat des Juifs. Les tribulations de Yossel de Rosheim dans l'Europe de Charles Quint. Traduit et préfacé par Monique Ebstein and Freddy Raphael, Strasbourg (éditions La Nuée Bleue / DNA) 2008. ISBN 978-2-7165-0739-4 .
• Ludwig Feilchenfeld : Rabbi Josel von Rosheim. A contribution to the history of the Jews in Germany in the age of the Reformation. Phil. Diss. Strasbourg 1898.
• Leo Sievers: Jews in Germany. The story of a 2000 year tragedy. Hamburg 1977, pp. 80-87.
• Hans Jürgen Rieckenberg:  Josel (Joseph) von Rosheim. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 10, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1974, ISBN 3-428-00191-5 , p. 609 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Volker Galle (ed.): Josel von Rosheim - Between the unique and the universal. A committed Jew in the Europe of his time and in the Europe of our time. Worms Verlag, Worms 2013, ISBN 978-3-936118-17-9 .

swell

• Josel von Rosheim: The historical writings of Joseph of Rosheim. Leader of Jewry in early modern Germany. (Studies in European Judaism 12) Ed., Introduced, commented and trans. v. Chava Fraenkel-Goldschmidt. Brill, Leiden [u. a.] 2006, ISBN 90-04-15349-7 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Josel von Rosheim in the catalog of the German National Library
• It's a shame that Luther didn't want to , article from November 7, 2013 by Hans Krebs on Augsburger Allgemeine .de about an exhibition on Rosheim