FOOTNOTES:
[2] Joseph Süss Oppenheimer was the son of Michaele, a famous Jewish beauty, daughter of Rabbi Salomon of Frankfort, a musician of talent. Michaele was not only possessed of wonderful beauty, but God had blessed her with a glorious voice. She married Rabbi Isaschar Süsskind Oppenheimer, also a singer and musician, and together the couple wandered from city to city, and from palace to castle, discoursing sweet melodies. The lady's morals suffered from this vagrant life, and the Jewish community of Frankfort stood aghast at her amours. Jewish women are usually remarkably virtuous, and Michaele's evil reputation was easily achieved.
There was an ugly story concerning the birth of Joseph Süss. In brief, he was reported to be a love-child; but the dates do not tally, and it is certain that Rabbi Isaschar accepted the infant as his own. From his mother Joseph Süss inherited marvellous personal beauty, and from both his parents his musical gift. From the mother too, if we are to believe all the tales, he received a nature of abnormal, passionate sensuality.
At an early age Süss was sent to his relatives in Vienna, the famous bankers Oppenheimer. Here the boy was reared in splendour and refinement, and instructed in the intricacies of banking, usury—in short, in finance. He repaired occasionally to his family in Frankfort, halting on the road to visit an aged relation in Stuttgart, Frau Widow Hazzim, at whose house in the Judengasse he made the acquaintance of Wilhelmine von Grävenitz.
Süss matured early, and became, not a musician as he had boasted in his childhood, but a very capable financier. He fell in with Duke Karl Alexander of Wirtemberg during a sojourn at Wildbad. His Highness sought a secretary and treasurer, and he was immediately captivated by the young Jew's personal beauty, his fascination, his vivid intelligence, and knowledge of business. The Duchess was interested, attracted, and delighted in Süss's music and the haunting charm of those ancient Hebrew melodies which his father, Rabbi Isaschar, had taught him. Süss was taken into his Highness's service, and when Karl Alexander succeeded his cousin Eberhard Ludwig in the Dukedom of Wirtemberg, the Jew accompanied his patron to Ludwigsburg and Stuttgart. He was made Minister of Finance and became, in reality, ruler of the court, for the Duke gave over everything to his trusted favourite. The treasury was exhausted by the Grävenitz's magnificence, and Süss set to work to replenish the empty chests.
It would be too long to recount here the endless money-raising schemes which were put in motion by Süss; suffice it to say, that never had Wirtemberg been so squeezed even in the time of Eberhard Ludwig. But if Süss procured vast sums, he spent them as readily. The festivities at Ludwigsburg were more opulently splendid and more numerous than ever, and the Duke had six mistresses and a favourite to enrich instead of one Land-despoiler! Süss lived like a prince—and a very lavish prince at that—and the money, of course, came from the Duke's treasury. Now Michaele's heritage became noticeable; if the Duke had six mistresses Süss had sixty. No woman could resist him; they said he was so gloriously handsome, so witty, so 'differing from the rest of mankind,'—not an original statement from amorous dames!
Thus Süss inherited his mother's nature, and together with his unbridled passion for love came the illimited desire for, and need of, gold.
By the first, he incurred the hatred of those men—husbands, brothers, fathers of the women he took for his pleasure; by the second, the undying animosity of the oppressed taxpayers. The end came swiftly. Four years of debauch and lavish expenditure, and death fell suddenly upon Karl Alexander of Wirtemberg. He died at nine of the clock one evening, and the next dawn saw Joseph Süss a hunted fugitive. He was caught between Ludwigsburg and Stuttgart, and immediately thrown into prison. Here he languished, a prey to terrible anxiety and remorse; his only visitants were pastors of the Christian religion who tortured him with argument. 'You are a Jew, but you do not even adhere to the damnable tenets of your vile cult,' they said.
'I am a man and no coward, and I will not abjure the faith of my fathers,' he responded. They held out spurious hopes of pardon would he swear to the pure faith of the Crucified, but Süss remained nobly obdurate. Then the Church—she to whom Christ bequeathed His sweet message of pardon, of tenderness, and of leniency—deserted the faithful Jew, and the law of human cruelty and punishment took hold of him. He was accorded no trial. His sins were as scarlet indeed; besides, he of the despised race had dared to rule. The name Jew was a stigma in itself, and this word the people howled round the tumbril which bore the erstwhile gorgeous favourite to a death of ignominy. A few women in the crowd sighed and shed a tear when they saw the godlike beauty of the man, broken to pathetic ruin by adversity, white-haired, vilified, aged by his degradation; but chiefly the crowd howled and reviled, and the men spat in the Jew's face and covered him with a load of horse-dung and foul ordure. They hung him finally after unspeakable tortures. Then his body was left to rot in Stuttgart's market-place in the sight of all. A hideous carrion dangling in a silver cage, which his judges had caused to be constructed as a terrible warning to those who would profit by the favour of princes.
Tragic enough in itself, this story of the downfall of a superb ruler and courtier, the more appalling, when we consider that it was chiefly a cruel triumph of race hatred. No unbaptized Jew in German history has risen to such official eminence as Joseph Süss Oppenheimer, and there is little doubt that, had he not been of the race of Israel, even though he had committed the same crimes, he would not have suffered this fearsome death.
