— THE JEWISH EXCYCLOPEDIA
Alsace
culm for the Jews of Alsace. During tlmt Were the victims of incessnnt chicanery
perioil ratlier
they than
actual persecution. <'xcept in the later decades of the century when acts of Fifteenth violence were reneweil (14T(>-TT), at Century, the commencement of the general agitation produced liy the IJiirgundian wars lietween Louis XI. and Charles the Hold. In 14;3t) Emperor 8igismund prohibited the citizens of llasrenau from renting or sellinir houses to the Jews On Oct. 31. 1437, he C'Alsatia Illustrata," v. 170). prohibited the Jews of C'olmar from acquiring any real estate in the town or its suburbs, without special permission from the mayor, who seems to have wearied of his proteges for in 147H only two families were tolenited within the city. My decree of Emperor FredericU III. the Jews of SehU'ttsladt were, in turn. e.xpelU'd from that citv Dee. 12. 1471»(J. Genv, "Die Keiehsstadt Sehlettstailt." p. 20(i); but he refused to sanction the expulsion of those at C'olmar no doubt because they found iutluenlial defenders at his court
The
—
(Mossmann. op. cit. p. IK). The opening of the sixteentli century marked a revival of economic and religioiis antipathy toward
Jews of Alsace. To the city of where during the .Middle Ages there had l)een no Jews. Maximilthe
The
Jlilnster.
Sixteenth Century.
ian I. gave permission to admit or reject members of that race: hut the citizens decided to exclude from the rights of citizen-
ship
all
Jews
persons who even borrowed niunev from the
Illustrata," v. 281). At le"ngth(.Tan. granted to the city of t'olmar the long-desired right to expel the Jews, so that whenever their business affairs called them to that city they were com]ielk'd to pay a toll and to wear the yellow badge on their garments. Maximilian also (••
.Vlsiitia
22, l.jlO). this ruler
presented the Jewish synagogue and the cemetery to his secretary, Jean Spiegel of tSchlettstadt. Driven from the city, the Jews dwelt in the villages .surrounding C'olmar and continued to do liusine.ss with its citizens; they were then proliibitiMl from depositing their wares with Christians. In order to rid himself of his neighbors, the mayor obtained i)ermission from Charles V. to forbid their This did entrance into the city (Aiiril 2.'). 1.541). not hinder the imperial chancellery from renewing, on May 24, 1.J41. at the request of H. Josel of RosnEiM. all the privileges enjoyed by the C'olmar Jews. U. Josel exercised, though unotheially, the functions of cnllect<ir of the customs and protector
Jews of
were far from being as luimerous then as they were one or two
of the
f)f
These
latter
A
detailed census ordered by the Ensisheim showed only 52 families in the
centuries later.
regency
Alsace.
whole of Austrian Alsjice; and in l."i74 they were expelled from the country. Then there began between the city of Colmar and its .Jewish inhabitants a struggle for the favor of the imperial chancellery a struggle marked for its corript influence, and which, after contininng for several years, ended From that in l.'54!t disa<lvantagi'Ously for the Jews. time until its union with France. C'olmar became the most important and the most anti-Semitic city of Tpjier Alsjice. So strong was this sentiment in 1022 that the mayor positively refused the bishop of Strasburg, and through liim the archduke Leopold
—
of Austria. i)ermission for one of his subjects, a Jewish horse-dealer named Kossmann of AVettolsheim, to enter the city; and it was only in 1691 that Jews were again allowed to set foot in Colmar (•'Kaufhauschronik," ed. AValtz, ji. .W). In the other cities similar conditions prevailed. In 1517 the mayor of Landau consented to admit ten Jewish
458
families to the city on the paynuut of 400 tl. (820(1) annually; but in 1525 lie dccicU'd to ixpel them, and linally did so, although opjiosed by the Elector Palatine. At OlKMiiai the chief bailiff. Jaccjues de Morimont. forbaile Jews to enter the city except on market-days (" Alsatia Illustrata." v. 270). At Weissc'uburg an imperial edict declared void the agreeniints which the city lia<l enlcred into wilh the Jews (ih.v. 247); whileal .Schlettstadt, after havinggreatly restricted the businessof the Jews, under an imperial edict issued Feb. 24, l,"i21, the mayor availed himself of a suit for the recovery of a debt, brought by the Jews again.st some of the citizens, as a pretext for their total expulsion in 1.52!) {CJeuy, op. cit. p. 207). In the seventeenth century a noteworthy immigration of Jews into .lsace liesan, caused mainly Ijy the Thirty Yiars' War. They The Seven- canu' from the right bank of the Rhine, teenth where the authorities were powerless to control or impede them. Century, At that time military rule superseded civil authority everywhere; and both the chiefs of the various factions and those of the army availed themselves of the keen conuuereial instinct of the Jews to equip their cavalrv and to replenish their commissariats. To the soldiers they were indispensable as agents for the disposal of iiillage. From the beginning of the Thirty 'i' ears' War Jews .settled on the laiKlsof the bishopric of Strasburg, in the county of Ilauau-Lichtenberg, on the estate of the lords of Hibeaupierre, and in other cities, especially at Hagenau. Desiring to augment their revenues, the nobles of the vicinity of Lower Alsace sold to the "
Jews
the right to settle in the villages; for there they jireferred to dwell. Denizens of the cities in the Middle Ages, the Jews of Alsace, driven by irresistible force to the coiuury districts in the seventeenth century, became a niral class with no taste for agricultural pursuits, and remained such even in the eighteenth century. By the Peace of Westphalia in mix. Austria eedi'd her jiossessions in Alsace to France, and in 1681 Louis XIV. took possession of Strasburg. In the first general census of the "Jewish nation" of Alsace, taken in 1689 by order of Intendant Jacques de la Crrange, a total for the whole province of .525 Jewish families is given. These, allowing at least live persons to ejieh family, would represent about 2.600 souls. Of this nundier, 391 families belonged to Lower Als;ice, 134 to Upper Alsiiee and to the Suudgau. The urban .Jewish po]iulation was insigniticant (Landau hail 3 families. Hagenau 19,
Buchsweiler
18, Saverne 6. Obernai small villages the number of families was larger. There were 37 families at Westhofen, 20 at Marmontier, 17 at Bollweiler. and 14 at ll.'genheim (" Hevue d'Alsjice." 18.59. p. .564). From 1G97 the increa.se in population was considerable; iuhis"]MemoiresurrAlsace"(p. 229), revised to that date. La Grange gives 3, 655 .Jews in Al.sjice. of wliom 897 were in I'pper and 2.766 in I.,ower Alsace; and they formed about one-seventieth of the total population of that time. In 1716 there were 1.269 families, numbering over6,000 individuals, and from that time, owing to the jirolonged peace which the province enjoyed in the eighteenth century doubtless also to the uninterrupted Statistics immigration the growth was astonin the ishingly rapid. The statistics for 17,50
Wei.ssenburg
8,
3); l)ut in certain
—
Eighteenth show Century,
been
the
number
2,.585;
of families to have in 1760 it had increased in 1785 to 3.942 families,
to 3,045, and aggregating 19,624 individuals.
ulation of the cities did
not
The Jewish popshow any material
