In about 1612 a Jewish jeweller, with a dozen friends, in search of a home, presented a petition to the Senate of Hamburg, offering nine thousand marks for the right of residence in the city for twelve years, promising to pay an annual tax of four hundred marks, and professing themselves ready to submit to any conditions. But Hamburg, the Protestant, refused to listen even to the argument which so frequently overcame Papist fanaticism. Hamburg already contained Portuguese Jews disguised as Christians. These, induced by the example of their brethren in Amsterdam, had recently thrown off the mask, and by so doing had accentuated the indignation of the Lutheran citizens against the whole race. The Senate, indeed, aware of the commercial value of the Jews, declined to yield to the popular demand for their expulsion. The clergy lifted up their voices against the Laodicean lukewarmness of the Government, and the latter, anxious to avoid the reproach of lack of Christian fervour on one hand, and, on the other, the material loss which the banishment of the Jews would entail, appealed to the theological faculties of Frankfort-on-the-Oder and Jena for a justification of their tolerance. These august bodies approved of the Senate’s policy, but recommended the Jews of Hamburg to embrace Christianity. The Senate welcomed the approbation, ignored the recommendation, and granted to the Jews the right of abode on payment of one thousand marks a year, and subject to certain restrictions. For example, they were forbidden to have synagogues and to practise Jewish rites or circumcision, though they were allowed to have a cemetery of their own. As the colony grew in numbers, in wealth, and in commercial importance, it ventured to transgress many of these prohibitions. Relying on their power, the Jews of Hamburg quietly built a synagogue in about 1626.
This humble and unobtrusive building, however, created a sensation out of all proportion to its intrinsic merits. ♦1627♦ The Emperor, Ferdinand II., wrote an indignant letter to the Senate, complaining that the Jews should be allowed a freedom of worship which was denied to Roman Catholics. This shell from a Papist quarter set fire to the Lutheran powder magazine. The good ministers of Hamburg again lifted up their voices, and, with that middle-class logic which distinguishes Protestant controversialism, pointed out that, if the Jews were allowed freedom of worship, the same freedom should be accorded to Catholics—a monstrous absurdity, of course. The Lutheran clergy were reinforced by the Hamburg physicians, who nourished for their Jewish confrères the affection proverbial between men of a trade. The Senate, obliged to take cognisance of the clamour, summoned the Jews to give an account of themselves. They, with the sophistry of persecution and the confidence of wealth, replied that they had no synagogue, but only a house for prayer; threatening to leave Hamburg in a body, if they were forbidden the free exercise of their religion. The Senate was compelled to overlook the sophism, and to pay serious attention to the threat; the consequence being that, not only that synagogue was tolerated, but two more were built.[122]
The animosity of the Lutherans grew with the growth of Jewish prosperity. John Miller, Senior at St. Peter’s Church, an Inquisitor in everything but name, preached a crusade from the pulpit and in the press. The humiliation of the Jews became by degrees a monomania with Miller. He could endure neither their feasts nor their fasts. Their rejoicings vexed him, and their wailings drove him mad. Their unbelief filled him with horror, and their obstinacy with despair. ♦1644♦ At last Miller vented his feelings in a pamphlet remarkable for its pious scurrility. Three theological faculties endorsed Miller’s teaching, and declared that it was contrary to sound religion to permit Jewish doctors to attend on Christian patients. But the crusade produced no other result than to show how faithfully Luther’s spirit continued to animate German Protestantism in its dealings with the people whom the Reformer had so vehemently denounced in his lifetime.
The position of the Jew in other parts of Germany was far worse than in the commercial city of Hamburg. He was still spurned and scorned, oppressed, reviled, and hunted more fiercely than any pariah. Few Jewish congregations were left. At Frankfort-on-the-Main Jews were allowed to live on terms usually accorded to convicts. They were forbidden to wander forth from their Ghetto, except on urgent business. They were forbidden to walk two together in the neighbourhood of the town-hall, especially during Christian festivals and weddings. Whilst in the Ghetto itself, they were forbidden to talk aloud, or to receive strangers without the knowledge of the magistrates. They were forbidden to buy victuals in the market at the same time as the Christians. Handicapped in the race for money, they were yet overburdened with taxes. Their persons were marked with a badge and their houses with grotesque shields of quasi-armorial character. Even this sorry existence was not assured to them, for the town council reserved to itself the power of expelling any Jew at pleasure. As usual, the Jews contrived to obtain by artifice that which was withheld by force. They purchased indulgence, and the laws often remained mere memorials of Christian intolerance. But, while the magistrates derived profit from their merciful connivance, the guilds, which found formidable rivals in the Jews, strove to obtain their expulsion. The campaign was led by a brave and enthusiastic pastry-cook.
Operations commenced on a certain September day in the year 1614. The Jews were at prayer, when a great noise was heard outside the gates of the Ghetto. A free fight ensued, the Christians, with the heroic pastry-cook at their head, assaulting; the Jews defending. Many fell on both sides, until victory inclined towards the confectioner’s army, and the quarters of the enemy were given up to plunder, destruction, and desecration, which lasted through the night. 1380 Jews, who had taken refuge in the burial ground, were for some time kept in suspense as to their fate, but were at last suffered to leave the city unencumbered by any property whatsoever. The proceedings would have been more thoroughly reminiscent of the Middle Age but for the fact that, in spite of the inexorable pastry-cook’s warnings, there were now found Christians humane enough to feed and to shelter the miserable exiles. The pastry-cook and his party ruled Frankfort with impunity for a whole year.
Meanwhile similar things happened at Worms. There also the Jews were hated as competitors and detested as infidels; but the anti-Jewish movement in that town was led by a learned lawyer; not by an honest, if stupid, confectioner. Consequently the warfare assumed a different character. Instead of open assault, the lawyer preferred a siege. He closed the outlets of the town to the Jews, and hindered them from procuring even milk for their children. These subtle preliminaries were followed by an ultimatum addressed to the Jews, bidding them to evacuate the city, bag and baggage, within an hour. ♦1615♦ The wretches departed, leaving behind them their synagogues and cemeteries to the fury of the populace. The fugitives were allowed by the Archbishop of Mayence and the Count of Darmstadt to take up their abode in the villages and hamlets of the neighbourhood, where they met some of their brother-sufferers from Frankfort.
Soon afterwards the Council of Worms, indignant at its humiliation, invited the Elector of the Palatinate to take possession of the town. The prince accepted the invitation, and a few months later the Jews were permitted to return. Not long after the Jews of Frankfort also were re-admitted by the Electorate of Mayence and Darmstadt, to the sound of trumpets. The heroic pastry-cook was hanged and quartered, his house was razed to the ground, and his family banished. The city was compelled by the Emperor to pay to the Jews a large indemnity for their losses and sufferings, and they expressed their joy by ordaining that the eve of their return should be observed as a fast and the day itself as a feast. However, the social position of the Jews both in Frankfort and in Worms remained the same. In both towns they continued to live on sufferance. Only a limited number of families was allowed to reside, and only a limited number of individuals to marry.
♦1620–1648♦
The terrible Thirty Years’ War caused less suffering to the Jews of Protestant Germany than to the Christians. While Protestants and Catholics, animated by a spirit of intolerance and the lust for power, were eagerly butchering each other and devastating each other’s territories, the Jews made their fortunes by impartial speculations in the booty of both sides. Their opportunities must have been considerable; for it was during this war that the English and other European tongues were enriched with the German word “plunder.”