History of the Jews, Vol. 4 (of 6)

by Heinrich Graetz

Volumes would not suffice to relate our miseries. The enemy spread over field and wood, seeking here for booty and there for life. Many of us died, sword in hand, others from want; they now rest in cold earth. We survivors were exposed to death in every form; those accustomed to luxuries were glad to seize mouldy bread to stay their hunger.

At last, the States-General were compelled by European wars to surrender the colony to the Portuguese. The devoted zeal of the Jews for the political welfare of the Dutch was a firm bond, never afterwards dissolved, between them and the republic. The toleration and equal position of Jews in the Netherlands were ensured for ever.

Whilst the first ray of a better time glimmered in Holland, the rest of Europe was still full of darkness for Jews. In Germany especially, the Jew even in the seventeenth century continued to be an outcast for whom there was no sympathy. He was pelted with mud, his beard was singed, and he was treated almost worse than a dog. There were only three or four important communities in Germany: Frankfort-on-the-Main, with over 4,000 souls; Worms, with 1,400; Prague, with 10,000 at most; and Vienna, with 3,000: the rest did not number many. Hamburg was still a young community. In the West German free cities of Frankfort and Worms, almost stronger antipathy to Jews prevailed than in Hamburg, having its root in the narrow-mindedness of the Philistine citizens and the guilds rather than in religious antipathy. Both cities treated the Jews within their walls as their "servi cameræ," and appealed in all seriousness to a deed of Emperor Charles IV, declaring that they had been sold to them in person and property. When Portuguese Marranos, wishing to remove from the Netherlands to Frankfort, and raise it to a commercial center of the first rank, like Amsterdam and Hamburg, asked permission to build a house of prayer there, the council roundly refused. The Jewish capitalists then addressed themselves to the lord of Hanau, and obtained very favorable terms.

The bitterness of the people of Frankfort against their Jewish neighbors was crystallized in a most revolting and absurd legislative enactment, entitled "the permissive residence of Jews" (Judenstättigkeit), and defining under what conditions or restrictions Jews might breathe the Frankfort air, or rather the pestilential atmosphere of the Jewish quarter. The city, chiefly Protestant, retained all the canonical restrictions introduced by the papacy for the purpose of branding Jews, such as, prohibiting them from having Christian servants or nurses, and requiring them to wear an opprobrious badge. They were treated exactly like criminals. Jews might not go outside their quarter except for necessary business, and two might not walk together, certainly not in the neighborhood of the town-hall, and especially not during Christian festivals or weddings, or if princes were staying in the city. They were also required to observe silence in their Ghetto, avoid offending Christian ears with any shrill sound, and see that strange Jews visiting them went to bed in good time. In fact, they might not harbor any strangers without the knowledge of the magistracy, nor even admit a patient into their hospital. They might not purchase food in the market at the same time as Christians. Though their business was jealously restricted, they were forced to pay more taxes than the Christian inhabitants. As they were obliged to wear special badges on their clothes, so they were required to have on their houses shields, with strange figures and names, such as "the garlic," "the ass," "the green or white shield," "red shield," "black shield." After these shield figures the inhabitants were named, "The Jew N of the ass," "the Jew N of the dragon." On the admission of a Jew, he was obliged to promise on oath to obey these stupid and heartless directions. Even this wretched existence depended on the favor of the magistrate, for in one paragraph the council reserved the power of depriving a Jew at any time of the right of residence. In such case the individual or family had to leave the city within a fixed space of time.

As the magistrate was empowered to deprive a single Jew of the right of residence, he could banish all from the city. This was inferred and demanded by the citizens or the guilds at variance with the council. They aimed at enlarging their liberties by limiting the aristocratic power of patricians in the magistracy, and they began with the Jews. The reason was that the councilors, in return for the substantial gratitude of the Jews, were indulgent in the administration of the laws issued against them; else they would not have been able to exist under the pressure of opprobrium and the "permissive residence." But this indulgence of the magistracy towards Jews was doubly hateful to the guilds. Hence they strove by all possible means to bring about the expulsion of the Jews from Frankfort. The Jews had obtained assurance of their safety as a community by charter from the emperor, but the decrees and threats of the emperor were little heeded at that time. At the head of the discontented guild-members stood the pastry-cook, Vincent Fettmilch, who, with his workpeople, belonged to the Reformers, a sect excluded from civic honors, and who sought to sate his fury against the Lutheran authorities by taking vengeance on the Jews. He was a daring man, who kept the councilors in awe, and openly called himself "the new Haman of the Jews." He was chosen by the citizens as their spokesman and ringleader, and deserved this leadership, for he executed his plans with much circumspection.

On an appointed day (27 Ellul == September, 1614, new style), while the community was assembled in the house of prayer, blow followed upon blow and thrust upon thrust, mingled with furious shouting, on the door of the Jewish quarter. Thereupon followed cries of anguish on the part of the Jews, who rushed hither and thither in despair and distracted flight. Bold youths and men seized weapons to ward off assaults or die manfully. On both sides fell the wounded and dead, until the superiority of numbers and the daring of the Fettmilch party decided the victory. Then all through the night until the next day followed plundering, desecration, and destruction of sacred places with brutal fury. The imperial commissioners could do nothing to check the riot; they were even compelled to put up a notice that the murderous band was not liable to punishment. Most of the Jews not sheltered by philanthropic citizens awaited death in trembling at the burial-ground, crouching together, many of them in shrouds. The rabble purposely left them in uncertainty as to the fate to which they were destined—life, death, or banishment—so that the Jews regarded it as a mercy from God when the fisherman's gate was opened in the afternoon of August 24th (new style), and they were allowed to depart, 1,380 in number, but without property of any kind. The advance of humanity, compared with earlier ages, is seen in the circumstance that compassionate Christians gave bread and other provisions to those who departed utterly destitute, and the smaller towns and villages sheltered them, though Fettmilch and the foes of the Jews had warned them against receiving the exiles.

It was long before the Frankfort Jews obtained satisfaction for these atrocious injuries. The magistracy and Emperor Matthias were equally impotent. Fettmilch's rabble for a whole year so tyrannized over the council that it could do nothing for the Jews. Some of the law faculties defended the robbers, by issuing an opinion that their attacks on the property of the Jews could not be regarded as theft, since they had occurred in the daytime or by torchlight. It was only by similar events at Worms that the end of the Frankfort troubles was hastened.

There the bitterness against one of the oldest German-Jewish communities, arising out of hatred of Jews and trade jealousy, took a different course. Not the guilds, but some members of the magistracy urged the banishment of the Jews, and the chief enemy of the Jews, instead of being a brutal but straightforward workman, was a crafty advocate and perverter of the law. Here, as in Frankfort, the chief motive was opposition to the magistracy, but the guild-members acted with more resolution and unanimity. The leader, adviser, and director of the committee of citizens was a learned lawyer, Dr. Chemnitz (Chemnitius), who thought that by lawyers' tricks he would be able to effect the banishment of the Jews with less danger than the Frankfort people had incurred by brutal violence. At first chicanery and insults of every sort were employed. The committee did not care to use violence, but strove to wear them out. It closed the outlets of the city against them, hindered them from purchasing food, drove their cattle from the meadows, and would not permit milk for Jewish children to be brought to the Jewish quarter.

After various movements, the Worms guilds, by Chemnitz's advice, assembled unarmed in the market place to take counsel, and sent a deputation to the Jews, ordering them "to retire from the city with bag and baggage" within an hour. The deputation reproached them with having caused the citizens to be suspected by the emperor, with having excited his hatred against them, and deprived them of every means of obtaining justice. The magistrates protested, but without effect, and so nothing remained for the Jews but to depart on the last day but one of the Passover (April 20th, 1615, new style). Fanaticism could not refrain from venting its fury on the holy places of the Jews, from devastating the synagogue which had stood for a thousand years, desecrating the burial-ground, and breaking to pieces several hundred tombstones, some of which gave evidence of the high antiquity of the community. The archbishop of Mayence and Count Louis of Darmstadt granted residence to the exiles in small towns and villages, and thus some of the exiles met their suffering brethren of Frankfort.

But the rejoicing of the foes of the Jews in Worms did not last long. The council, humiliated by the committee of citizens, secretly negotiated with Frederick, elector palatine, and, about ten days after the expulsion of the Jews, he moved infantry, cavalry, and cannon into the town, under the unavailing protest of the committee, and this soon brought the disorder to an end. Still it was nearly nine months before the Worms Jews were re-admitted by order of the elector palatine and the bishop of Speyer (January 19th, 1616, new style). Two months afterwards, the Jews of Frankfort were led back, as in triumph, with the sound of trumpets, and blowing of horns, by the commissioners of the electorate of Mayence and Darmstadt (Adar 20th==March 10th). Here the rioters were more severely punished than at Worms, because they had caused destruction, plundering, and bloodshed. Vincent Fettmilch, the pastry-cook, the Frankfort Haman, was hanged, and quartered, his house razed to the ground, and his family banished. The city was fined 175,919 florins by the emperor as compensation for the depredations committed on Jewish property. In memory of this extraordinary deliverance and honorable restoration, not an every-day occurrence in the German Empire, the Frankfort community appointed the day of their return (Adar 20th) to be observed as a feast-day, named Purim-Vincent, the day before being kept as a fast in memory of their sufferings.