Levi of Bonn

Levi von Bonn (alias Löw Kraus ; * approx. 1570 ; † around 1621 ) was a German-Jewish court factor at the Electoral Cologne court of Archbishop Ernst of Bavaria . He played a central role in the denunciation of the Frankfurt rabbinical conspiracy of 1603.

Life

Levi von Bonn (von Poppelsdorf ) was a Jewish ruler in Bonn . On February 8, 1598, the Cologne Elector Ernst, who was dependent on income, gave him a commission and appointment to supervise the Jews and to demand taxes and fines from them. He led a long process against the Koblenz doctor and Trier court factor Wolf zu Koblenz before the Electoral Cologne and the Reich Chamber Court . A year after the meeting, Levi was the defendant of Wolf von Koblenz in a trial in Menden in the Duchy of Westphalia (which Ernst was also in charge of). In order to incriminate the plaintiffs, he stated that it had been decided in Frankfurt not to recognize any judgments of the authorities in the future. At the beginning of the trial he had already turned to the Elector Ernst and said that there had been an outrageous conspiracy against the Christian authorities in Frankfurt. Levi's strategy worked, he was acquitted and plaintiffs had to pay compensation. His opponents were arrested. In 1605 he received a particularly favorable letter of protection from Emperor Rudolf II as a reward , which Emperor Ferdinand II confirmed in 1620. Here, too, he was preferred to other Jews.

In Frankfurt sources it is said that the Jew and alleged “butcher” Löw Kraus betrayed the Frankfurt rabbinical conspiracy of 1603 to Bishop Ernst. In other Hebrew documents, Levi is said to have consumed or sold non-kosher meat in 1615/16. Behind this was a dispute with the new land rabbi, who wanted to assert himself against a minhag , a special halachic custom that was considered a long-standing tradition in Kurköln, which Levi defended. The focus was on the cultic purity of an (expensive) slaughtered cow if it had injured itself internally on a swallowed needle. Levi stood up for the generous Cologne tradition. Only Birgit Klein's dissertation (Duisburg 1998) proved the identity of both people.

In 1610 there was an assassination attempt on Levi in ​​Bonn, behind which Jews from the city are said to have been. The elector used this to introduce new Jewish taxes. Although Levi was not allowed to buy a house, he rented the house on the market square on Sternstrasse, the Golden Ring. Before his death (after January 1621) Levi / Kraus called the Bonn Jews to him, confessed to them that he wanted to atone for his sins in death, and asked them to drag his corpse over the earth and to throw him down hard as if he were going to stoned while alive. This happened. Levi / Kraus had informed the elector at the same time that if he wanted to witness what Jews would do to a hated fellow believer after his death, he would only have to attend his funeral. So the elector had posted a secret observer who arrested the funeral company. His sons were probably Bernd Levi , against the Duchy of Cleves the Gomperz under Elias Gomperz argued, head to 1650 in several western territories of Brandenburg, and Salomon Levi, head in 1650 in the Bishopric of Paderborn , and Nini Levi, head of the Bishopric of Münster .

literature

• Volker Press : Emperor Rudolf II and the merger of German Jewry. The so-called Frankfurt rabbinical conspiracy of 1603 and the consequences. In: On the history of the Jews in Germany in the late Middle Ages and early modern times . Stuttgart 1981, pp. 243-293.
• Birgit Klein : Benefit and high treason. Elector Ernst of Cologne, Juda bar Chajjim and the Jews in the old kingdom. Hildesheim 2003. ISBN 978-3487119519
• Birgit Klein: Levi von Bonn alias Löb Kraus and the Jews in the old empire. On the trail of a betrayal with far-reaching consequences. Diss. Duisburg 1998 digitized version (PDF; 4.1 MB).
• 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 8, 2020]).

Web links

• Löw Kraus is Levi from Bonn, review of Birgit Klein, FAZ, April 4, 2004