Advocacy as Business: Samson Wertheimer’s Honorary Protectorate for the Jewish Community of Frankfurt am Main

• In Event: Informal Governance and Jewish Advocacy in 18th Century Frankfurt and Vienna

Abstract

Samson Wertheimer (1658-1724), court factor at the imperial court in Vienna and Hungarian chief rabbi, is widely known to this day as an important financier of the Habsburgs and other principalities in the early modern Holy Roman Empire. In this role, he often traveled from Vienna to Frankfurt am Main, not least for the two imperial coronations in 1705 and 1711 that took place during his lifetime, to make his knowledge and capital available to the emperor. He undoubtedly knew the city and its affairs well, as he had studied at one of the yeshivot in Frankfurt as a young man and later married off two of his children there.
In the course of his life, Wertheimer's relationship with the Jewish community in Frankfurt resembles an honorary protectorate. From Vienna, he interceded before the emperor when it came to the reconstruction of the Frankfurt Ghetto (“Judengasse”) after a fire had destroyed it in 1711, and advocated for the Frankfurt Jews at multiple occasions. At the same time, he pursued his own interests in Frankfurt, above all the acquisition of houses and land.
This paper aims to present Samson Wertheimer's personal and business relationships with the city and Jewish community of Frankfurt. In this context, the paper explores the question of which communication strategies Wertheimer used in his interactions with the emperors on the one hand and the Jewish community representatives from Frankfurt on the other. Furthermore, the paper examines how his intercession relates to his other cases of Jewish advocacy with the emperor and Viennese imperial authorities.

Author

• Mirjam Thulin, Author/Independent Scholar