History of the Jews, Vol. 5 (of 6)

The most disgraceful degradation and humiliation of the Jews consisted in the poll-tax, an impost unknown outside of Germany. Of what advantage was it that Emperor Joseph of Austria and Frederick William II had remitted it? It still existed in all its hideousness in Central and Western Germany, in the districts of the Main and the Rhine, where diminutive states bordered close on other diminutive states of the extent of a square mile, and where turnpike after turnpike at short intervals presented itself. If a Jew took a day's journey, he passed through different territories, and at the borders of each had to pay a poll-tax. A Jewish beggar, accompanied by his young son, once exhibited his poll-tax bills, which amounted to a florin and a half for six days, paid in various places. The way in which the tax was levied was more degrading than the duty of paying it. Very often the tax amounted to a few kreuzers, which only the poor, who were not exempt from it, felt as a burden. But the brutal procedure of the officers, and the ignominious treatment at each frontier-line offended also the rich. As long as the French armies were encamped in German territory, the Jews escaped paying the poll-tax. But no sooner was the peace of Lüneville concluded, and the French troops withdrawn, than the petty German princes re-imposed the tax, not in order to raise the small income derivable from this source, but to humiliate the Jews. They inflicted the insult also upon French Jews who crossed the Rhine for business purposes, defending their action by a literal construction of one of the articles of the peace of Campo Formio, which stated: "All business and intercourse shall for the present continue under the same conditions as before the war." The French Jews, proud of their citizenship, would not submit, severed their business connections with Germany, and complained of the injustice to the French government, by whom the question was not lightly passed over. The government commissioner Jollivet despatched a circular letter (1801) to the agents of the French Republic resident at German courts, instructing them not to permit French citizens of the Israelite faith to be degraded to animals. They were to make earnest representations to the governments concerned, and menace them with retaliation. Several small princes, like those of Solms, gave heed, and forthwith removed the poll-tax; from fear of the French the French Jews were freed from it, but it still weighed heavily upon German travelers. Every step towards the removal of oppressive restrictions in Germany was the result of great exertions.

In consequence of the peace of Lüneville, the Holy Roman Empire was now for the first time dismembered. The representatives of the Empire, assembled in Ratisbon, were driven to seek means of bringing their disunited members into some sort of order, or to decide upon the indemnity for the damage suffered. To this conference of the ambassadors of eight princes, occupied with traffic in territory, and regarded by the short-sighted as representing the German nation, the German Jews presented a petition asking for passive citizenship (November 15, 1802). This entreaty was drawn up "in the name of the Jews of Germany," by state attorney Christopher Grund. Which congregation, or what individuals zealous for emancipation had commissioned him to do this is not exactly known. It appears that the petition originated in Frankfort. It prayed that the representatives of the Empire remove from the German Jews the burdensome distinctions under which they labored; that the narrow confines in which they were forced to reside be thrown open, so that for the sake of health and free enjoyment of life, they might select their own dwelling-place in the cities. Further, that the bonds by which their population, their trade, and their industry were restricted to a fatal degree be loosened, and that, in short, the Jewish community be considered worthy, by the grant of civil rights, to constitute one united people with the German nation. The Jews, or their attorney Grund, cited the fact that they were "classed with dishonorable persons, outlaws, and serfs." The miserable condition of the Frankfort community, which, after the orders promulgated for the regulation of the town in 1616, had been deprived of natural freedom, and crowded together into the narrowest limits, served as a conclusive proof. The example of France and the Batavian Republic in emancipating the Jews was adduced; but the Jews could hardly have deceived themselves with the fond hope that the representatives of the Empire would concede so much to them. They hoped at least to have one restriction removed, viz., that of the poll-tax, and this point was insisted upon with great vigor. "The most degrading of all these disabilities," they said, "is the poll-tax, which removes the name of Jew from the category of rational beings, to place it among wild beasts, and forces him to pay his way when he sets foot upon one soil or another." Contrary to expectation, this petition to the representatives of the Empire was handed in and supported by the most distinguished member among them, the ambassador from the Electorate of Bohemia or Austria. He proposed the motion "that the Jews of Germany be allowed civil rights" (at the end of 1802). Meantime the Indemnification Congress had other affairs to engross its attention, and its members were unable to occupy themselves with the Jewish question. The petition was buried under a pile of state papers.

Nothing was to be expected from the German people, as those who watched the course of affairs readily perceived. The Jews therefore directed their zeal towards inducing the various governments to remit the poll-tax. Two men made their names famous in the struggle to remove this odious impost, viz., Israel Jacobson and Wolff Breidenbach. The former, court agent and finance counselor to the Prince of Brunswick, succeeded in procuring the abolition of the poll-tax in the territories of Brunswick-Lüneburg (April 23, 1803). During a number of years Wolff Breidenbach strove in the same cause, and effected more far-reaching results. Breidenbach was born in a village of that name near Cassel, 1751, and died at Offenbach 1829. He was a man of high culture, noble ideals, and so modest that his name has almost been forgotten in spite of all the sacrifices he made on behalf of the German Jews. He did not, like Jacobson, make provisions to have his name spread far and wide.

Deeply moved by the annoyances, and the contemptuous treatment inflicted on Jewish travelers in places where the tax was imposed, which came daily under the notice of Breidenbach in his business journeys, he determined at least to have the poll-tax remitted, and applied himself with all his energy to this task. Quietly he strove to have the chain loosened, where it weighed most heavily. He perceived that large sums of money would be required to provide presents for the police magistrates and the city clergy under the pretense of giving alms to the poor, and also "to erect beautiful monuments in honor of magnanimous princes" who would allow themselves to be influenced to leave the Jews untaxed and unoppressed. He was not able to meet this enormous expense out of his own means. He therefore issued a summons to German and foreign Jews (September, 1803), asking them to subscribe to a fund, from which the cost of abolishing the poll-tax might be defrayed. It was well known at the time who circulated this appeal, but out of modesty, Breidenbach did not append his name. By these means, and through negotiations with the minor German princes at the Diet in Ratisbon, carried on with the friendly help of the imperial chancellor, Dalberg, and finally by the recommendations of the princes themselves, who learned to esteem him, Breidenbach succeeded in obtaining the right of free passage for the Jews throughout the Rhineland and Bavaria. Even the narrow-minded, Jew-hating, most noble council of Frankfort was moved by Breidenbach's petition to abolish the poll-tax exacted at the gates and bridges.

The petition of the Jews to the representatives of the Empire for civil privileges, however restricted, the feeling displayed by several princes in favor of removing their bonds, and other signs, made the Jew-haters of Germany suspect that the old condition of imperial serfdom would soon vanish. They were terror-struck; they could not conceive the idea that the down-trodden Jews should be raised from their abasement in Germany. This painful idea induced a host of authors, most of them jurists, as if by mutual agreement, to employ all their efforts in various parts of Germany in opposing the deliverance of the Jews from slavery. Among these men were Paalzow, Grattenauer, Buchholz, and many anonymous writers, who persisted in their hostility for several years (1803–1805). They displayed hatred to the Jews, so malignant that it savored of the days of the Black Death, of Capistrano, Pfefferkorn, and the Dominicans. They produced an artificial fog, to prevent the spread of rays of enlightenment. In former days it had been the servants of the church who had branded the Jews with dishonor. Now the priests of justice assumed this part, and by perversion of justice sought to keep the Jews in servitude, for which course Fichte had prepared the way. As soon as the petition of the Jews reached the representatives of the Empire in Ratisbon, a jurist of South Germany opposed it, urging that a thousand reasons existed why Jews were unworthy of becoming citizens of the Empire and the provinces. The greater number and the most obstinate of the representatives of this Jew-baiting movement had their seat in Berlin, the city of enlightenment and of the Christianity taught by Schleiermacher. The character, teachings, and history of the Jews, even their prophets and patriarchs, in fact, everything Jewish, was attacked by these cowardly writers, most of whom wrote anonymously, and was made the subject of foulest abuse and vituperation.

The leaders of Berlin Judaism were at a loss how to oppose these systematic onslaughts. David Friedländer remained silent. Ben-David resolved to write an answer, but wisely abstained. The parts were now changed. In the days of Mendelssohn, and for some time afterwards, the German Jews had acted as guardians to the French Jews whenever the latter had any grievances to redress. Now freedom had made the French Jews so powerful and confident that they repulsed every attack upon themselves and their belief with courage and skill. The Berlin Jews, who had always been ready enough to boast of their courage, at the first hostile attack found themselves helpless as babes. In their perplexity they solicited the aid of the police, who issued an order that no pamphlet either for or against the Jews should be published. This step was regarded by their antagonists as a sign of cowardice or a confession of powerlessness. A new abusive tract, entitled "Can the Jews remain in their present condition without harm to the state?" gave additional weight to the accusations against them.

"What were a number of the most wealthy Jews or their fathers twenty or thirty years ago? Hawkers, who crawled about the streets in ragged clothes, annoying the passers-by with their importunity to buy some yards of Potsdam hair riband; or rustics, who, under the pretext of trading, stole into Christian dwellings, and often did damage to their owners."

This writer proposed to render the Jews harmless by means more revolting than those employed in the Middle Ages.

"Not only must the Jews again be enclosed in a Ghetto, and be placed under continual police supervision; not only should they be compelled to wear a patch of noticeable color upon their coat sleeves, but in order to prevent their increase, the second male child of each Jew should be castrated."

Protestant theology and German philosophy proposed regulations against the Jews unrivaled by the canonical decrees of Popes Innocent III and Paul IV.

In Breslau appeared similar libels which inflamed the hatred of the populace against the Jews. Even the well-meaning writings composed in their defense by Christians, such as Kosmann and Ramson – "A Word to the Impartial" – admitted the low character of the Jews, and seemed to imply that in every way it would be better for Christians if there were no Jews among them; but seeing that the evil existed, it must be endured. The honor of the Germans was partly redeemed by a man who belonged to the olden time, Freiherr von Diebitsch, once a major in the Russian service, to whom love of mankind was no empty phrase. He warmly defended the Jews against the venomous attacks of Grattenauer and his malicious allies (1803 and 1804), and thereby laid himself open to the charge of having been bribed. In view of the general prejudice against the Jewish race, he was prepared to see himself "caricatured, and represented as riding upon a sow or an ass." His kindly but pedantic pamphlets in defense of the Jews were not sufficient to close the mouths of their opponents.

Equally inadequate and fruitless were the attempts at vindication made by Jewish writers outside of Berlin, who found it necessary to lift their voice in opposition to the general outcry against their people.

Two Jews, one from Königsberg, the other from Hamburg, hit upon an excellent plan. Both recognized that the Jew hatred of the Germans could not be refuted by solid and weighty arguments, but might be silenced by ridicule. They were the forerunners of Börne and Heine, one being an unknown physician, the other writing anonymously (Lefrank). The former, in a satirical pamphlet written under the name of Dominicus Haman Epiphanes, expressed the opinion that unless all Jews were speedily massacred, and all Jewesses sold as slaves, the world, Christianity, and all states, must necessarily perish. Mankind would benefit enormously by the sale of the Jews: all immorality would thereby at once diminish, and the immortal Grattenauer, who had originated the glorious idea and had disseminated his noble abhorrence of the Jews, would everywhere be acknowledged a benefactor of mankind, and be deservedly commemorated by temples and monuments.

The other satirist, Lefrank, called his work "Bellerophon," (or the defeated Grattenauer). He wished to kill the chimerical monster "Jew hatred" in Grattenauer by mounting Pegasus. He addressed the Jew-baiter with the scornful "thou."

"Thou who hast grafted with so much success jurisprudence upon theology, thou who didst lick salt in Halle – not indeed Attic salt – thou who hast studied ignorance and stupidity under the great Semler, if thou art so proud of thy Christianity, that with contempt thou dost look down upon Jews, then pray let me ask thee why thy prisons are crammed with criminals condemned upon charges of high treason, murder, poisoning, robbery, and adultery? First remove from thy midst the scaffold, the gallows, the rack, the scourge, and all the ghastly instruments of torture and death, not one of which was invented by Jews. Divest thyself of the demon, and then wilt thou pity a people condemned to engage in traffic against its will, and accused because it does traffic. Deceit is said to be a widespread vice among Jews. Thy Christian tailor robs thee, thy bootmaker gives thee bad leather, thy grocer false measure and weight, thy baker despite prosperous harvests undersized loaves. Thy wine is adulterated, thy man-servant and thy maid-servant combine to cheat thee. Thou thyself – in the innocence of thy heart – offerest for sale wretched lies and spiteful malice written upon blotting-paper, for six farthings, which are not worth six pins, and thou darest assert that fraud is peculiar to Jews. See whether among all the bankruptcies now occurring in London and Paris there is a single Jewish failure." "Thou dost foolishly repeat the silly prattle of the great Fichte, when thou dost remark that the Jews constitute a state within the state. Thou canst not forgive the Jews the crime of speaking correct German, of dressing more respectably, and often judging more justly than thou. They no longer wear beards, which thou canst pull; they no longer speak gibberish, which thou mightest mimic… The Jew for over twenty years has striven to approach the Christian, but how has he been received? How many alterations has he made in his canonical laws to be able to join you; but from pure humanity ye turn your backs upon him… Yet thy pamphlet appears to me to be a good omen. The average man believes that winter can be parted from summer only by terrible thunder and hail-storms. Thus is it with thee. Persecution, fanaticism, and superstition are at their last gasp, and by mighty raging make their final effort through thee, before their spirit becomes entirely quenched."

The self-confidence manifested by Lefrank was the surest sign of the ultimate victory of the Jews.

Under existing conditions, in view of the fact that the Jews were apt to underrate and despise their own power, the hope of emancipation was deceptive. In Protestant as well as in Catholic countries, in Prussia as well as in Austria, the people were even more blindly opposed to them than their princes. That an Austrian voice might not be wanting in the chorus of Jew-baiters, a German-Austrian official, named Joseph Rohrer (1804), wrote against the "Jew people." He drew a dreadful picture, especially of the Jews of Galicia, without hinting that the Galician peasants were in a still lower state, and that the nobility was more degenerate than either class. Paalzow, Grattenauer, Buchholz, Rohrer, and their allies succeeded in their design. The idea of the emancipation of the Jews in Germany could not yet be entertained. With all his zeal, Breidenbach could not effect the abolition of the capitation-tax in all places. It still remained in force, a sad reminder and disgrace, in certain German provinces. Cannon had to be brought into the field to destroy these putrefying, deeply implanted prejudices.

A ray of light from the sun of freedom shining on the Jews of France penetrated even to Russia. The heart of Emperor Alexander I was filled with mercy towards the numberless Jews dwelling in his kingdom. He appointed a commission to consider a proposal for improving their condition. But a Russian commission takes time over its work, and after two years' careful consideration of the interests of Christians, and of the most effectual way of benefiting the Israelites, an ukase was at length published in 1804. By this law, farmers, manufacturers, artisans, those who had acquired a university education, or who had visited the upper or lower schools, were exempt from the exceptional laws against Jews. To wean them from using the jargon, special privileges were granted to those who would learn one of three languages – Russian, Polish, or German. The culture of the Jews within his kingdom was desired by Alexander, who hoped that another Mendelssohn would spring from their midst. Attendance at schools was not enforced; it therefore depended on the Jewish community to support boys' schools (Chedarim) as best they could. Nor could it be otherwise amongst the millions of serfs in Russia, not one of whom was permitted to visit a school.

A limitation was, however, introduced at that time which nullified all privileges in favor of the Jews. Those who dwelt in the country were ordered to depart within a short space of time and crowd together in the cities. Cruel subtlety dictated this order. The Polish landowners, who from indolence had given over the care of their breweries and the sale of produce to industrious and trustworthy Jewish managers and farmers, were ruined by the removal of the Jews from the villages, and thus rendered incapable of revolt. This law could not be carried out for the time being, but remained in existence as a dead letter, until later days. The worst result was that the Jews were treated as strangers, although they had been more than half a century in the Polish provinces. Naturally they did not advance in culture, being hindered and persecuted by Rabbinism, and even more so by Neo-Chassidism.

CHAPTER XII.

THE JEWISH-FRENCH SYNHEDRION AND THE JEWISH CONSISTORIES

Jew-Hatred in Strasburg – Bonald's Accusations – Plots against French Jews – Furtado – David Sinzheim – Assembly of Notables – Italian Deputies – The Twelve Questions – Debate on Mixed Marriages – The Paris Synhedrion – Its Constitution – Napoleon's Enactments – Israel Jacobson – Consistory of Westphalia – Emancipation in Germany – In the Hanse-Towns – Restrictions in Saxony.

1806–1813 C. E

Since the days of the Romans, the world had not witnessed such sudden changes and catastrophes as in the beginning of this century, when a new Empire was founded with the intention of establishing a universal monarchy. All the powers bent even lower before Napoleon, Emperor of the French, than before the First Consul Bonaparte. The pope, who in his heart cursed him and the whole new order, did not hesitate to anoint him successor to Charlemagne. The German princes were the first to recognize cringingly this innovation, the elevation of an upstart over themselves. As if Napoleon by contact with the Germans during his wars against Austria and Prussia had become infected with their Jew-hatred, his feelings with reference to them from that time underwent a change. Although he had before shown admiration for the venerable antiquity and gigantic struggles of the Jewish race, he now displayed a positive dislike to them. His unfavorable attitude towards the Jews was used by the Germans in Alsace to induce him to deprive the French Jews of their privileges and reduce them to their former state of abasement.

The storms of the Revolution had put an end to the old accusations against the Jews of Alsace. Jewish creditors, usurers, Christian debtors were alike impoverished by the Reign of Terror; the olden times were swept away. When quiet was restored, many Jews, who through their energy had acquired some property again, went back to their former trades. What else could they do? To commence to learn handicrafts and agriculture could not be expected of men advanced in years. Even young men found it difficult, as bigoted Christian employers in the German-speaking provinces did not care to take Jewish apprentices. A numerous class of the populace of Alsace offered well-to-do Jews a source of income. The peasants and day-laborers, before the Revolution serfs, had been liberated through it, but possessed no means wherewith to purchase land and commence work. Their cattle and even their implements of agriculture were lost during the stormy years; and many of them had fled to escape military service. These peasants, on the return of peace, had addressed themselves to Jews for advances of money, to obtain small parcels of the national land for cultivation.

The Jewish men of substance had responded, and probably demanded high rates of interest. The peasants, however, were not the losers, for, although originally destitute of means, they had greatly improved their condition. In a few years their possessions in landed property amounted to 60 million francs, the sixth part of which they owed to Jews. It was, indeed, hard for the peasants of Alsace to obtain ready money to discharge debts to their Jewish creditors, especially as the wars of Bonaparte called them away from the plough to bear arms, and many lawsuits ensued against the debtors. The Strasburg Trade Court of Justice alone, during the years 1802–4, had to decide upon summonses for debt between Jewish creditors and Christian debtors amounting to 800,000 francs. The defaulting peasants were sentenced to hand over their fields and vineyards to the Jewish creditors, some of whom may have acted harshly in these matters.

These circumstances were made use of by the Jew-haters. They generalized the misdeeds of the Jews, exaggerated the sufferings of the Christian debtors forced to pay, and stamped the Jews as usurers and bloodsuckers, so as to deprive the French Jews living in their provinces of their recently-acquired equalization, or if possible to prepare some worse fate for them. As at all times, the citizens of the German town of Strasburg took the most prominent part in this movement against the Jews. They had made a vain attempt to keep the Jews out of their city and to persecute them during the Reign of Terror. With fierce rage they beheld the number of Jewish immigrants increase. There were no Jewish usurers in their midst; on the contrary, there were wealthy, highly respected, and educated Jews, such as the families of Cerf Berr, Ratisbonne, and Picard, most of whom lived from their estates. Nevertheless the people of Strasburg raised the loudest clamors against the Jews, as if the latter were the cause of their impoverishment. The prefect of Strasburg, a German, aided and abetted the merchants. When Napoleon stayed in Strasburg (January, 1806), after the campaign of a hundred days against Austria, he was besieged by the prefect and a deputation of the people of Alsace with complaints showing how harmful to the state were the Jews; how like a crowd of ravens they ruined the Christian populace, so that whole villages passed into the possession of Jewish usurers, how half the estates of Alsace were mortgaged to Jewish creditors, and other malicious charges. Napoleon thereupon called to mind that during his campaign some Jews near Ulm had bought stolen articles from the soldiers, which had greatly displeased him. The Jew-haters suggested that these may have been Strasburg Jews, who followed in the track of the army in order to enrich themselves by means of the booty; and that all Jews were usurers, hawkers, and ragmen. To incite the emperor still more to acts of hostility, the following grave statement was added – that, in the whole of Alsace, indeed, in all the (German) Departments of the Upper and Lower Rhine, the people were so embittered against the Jews that a general massacre, scenes such as were witnessed in the Middle Ages, might ensue. In taprooms the question of slaughtering the Jews was often discussed. His mind filled with such evil impressions, Napoleon left Strasburg, promising redress of these grievances. That this impression might not fade away, the enemies of the Jews besieged the minister of justice with loud complaints about the baseness and hurtfulness of the Jews. Judges, prefects, all German-speaking officials vied with each other in attempts to deprive the Jews of their civil rights. The minister of justice, carried away by the complaints, was actually on the point of putting an exceptional law into force against the Jews of France, forbidding them for a time to do any business in mortgages.