Court Jew - Positions and Duties in Early Modern and Modern Germany

Positions and Duties in Early Modern and Modern Germany

Court Jews, called also court factors, and court or chamber agents, played a part at the courts of the Holy Roman emperors and the German princes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and at the beginning of the nineteenth. Not always on account of their learning or their force of character did these Jews rise to positions close to the rulers: they were mostly wealthy businessmen, distinguished above their co-religionists by their commercial instincts and their adaptability. Court rulers looked upon them in a personal and, as a rule, selfish light; as being, on the one hand, their favorites, and, on the other, their whipping boys. Court Jews frequently suffered through the denunciation of their envious rivals and co-religionists, and were often the objects of hatred of the people and the courtiers. They were of service to their fellow-Jews only during the periods, often short, of their influence with the rulers; and as they themselves often came to a tragic end, their co-religionists were in consequence of their fall all the more harassed.

The court Jews, as the agents of the rulers, and in times of war as the purveyors and the treasurers of the state, enjoyed special privileges. They were under the jurisdiction of the court marshal, and were not compelled to wear the Jews' badge. They were permitted to stay wherever the emperor held his court, and to live anywhere in the Holy Roman Empire, even in places where no other Jews were allowed. Wherever they settled they could buy houses, slaughter meat according to the Jewish ritual, and maintain a rabbi. They could sell their goods wholesale and retail, and could not be taxed or assessed higher than the Christians.

Their Sovereigns sometimes assigned them the role of local tax collection from the above named classes of the ruler’s subjects. These roles built up a long (and some would say still) standing enmity between the Jewish (educated middle and upper) professional class, and the Christian lower middle, working, lower and agricultural classes. The resentments had far-reaching consequences in the history of European Jews.

When the ruler’s bad economic decisions or profligate personal household spending resulted in a decline in national income or a rise in interest rates, with the resultant failure in small share Christian businesses and farms, the Court Jews domestically and abroad were easy to be blamed by the sovereign and his lesser nobles.

From 19th century central and eastern European industrialization and into the European wars and economic depressions of the 20th century the working classes and lower middle classes, small share entrepreneurs, and small scale farmers would draw upon these historical stereotypes. These Christian classes would rally against “International Jewish Money-Capitalism” and because of these beliefs support anti-Jewish policies.