Jew Suss

Life, Legend, Fiction, Film

Susan Tegel

• Publisher: Continuum
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781847250179
• eBook ISBN: 9781441115522
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

Joseph Suss Oppenheimer (1698-1738), better known as Jew Suss, was a court Jew, who advised the Duke of Wurttemberg. Clever and handsome, even ostentatious, he fitted easily into court life, despite his humble origins. However, his unpopular economic policies made him enemies and when the Duke died suddenly Suss was arrested, convicted of 'destestable abuses' and exectued in Stuttgart in an iron cage. His spectacular rise and fall inspired a media outpouring in the eighteenth century and he has been much written about subsequently. In the twentieth century two films were made about him, one British in 1934, the other German in 1940. Goebbels took an active interest in the latter. After the war its director, Veit Harlan, was tried for Crimes against Humanity for having made the film. Despite his acquittal, the film's association with the Holocaust remains controversial to this day. For almost three centuries the life of Jew Suss has been adapted, distorted and transformed. This book tells the story of these transformations.

Notes

Notes to Chapter 1: Joseph Süss Oppenheimer: origins and early career (1698–1732)

1 Haasis, Joseph Süss Oppenheimers Rache, p. 106.

2 Haasis, Joseph Süss Oppenheimer, genannt Jud Süss, p. 10.

3 Ibid., p. 13; Stern, Jud Süss: ein Beitrag zur deutschen und zur Jüdischen Geschichte, p. 303.

4 Davis, Women on the Margins: three seventeenth-century lives, p. 9.

5 Stern, Jud Süss, pp. 16–7.

6 Ibid., p. 9; Haasis, Joseph Süss Oppenheimer, p. 20.

7 Jersch-Wenzel, ‘Jewish economic activity in early modern times’, p. 95.

8 Stern, Jud Süss, p. 9.

9 Ibid.

10 Haasis, Joseph Süss Oppenheimer, p. 33.

11 Ibid., p. 14.

12 Ibid.; Stern, Jud Süss, pp. 8 and 9 cite an interrogation from 4 June 1739.

13 Haasis, Joseph Süss Oppenheimer, p. 14.

14 Stern, Jud Süss, p. 9; Schnee, Die Hoffinanz und der moderne Staat, Geschichte und System der Hoffaktoren an deutschen Fürstenhöfen im Zeitalter des Absolutismus, iv, p. 112.

15 Haasis, Joseph Süss Oppenheimer, pp. 14–16; Stern, Jud Süss, p. 9. Stern describes the third brother Daniel as a full brother while Haasis (p. 16) describes him as a half-brother, claiming that Süss made a ‘careless mistake’, when on 4 June 1737 under interrogation, he mentioned only one sister and two older half-siblings. Adverse to accepting Daniel as a full brother, Haasis maintains that Süss’ father married three times, rather than two, that Daniel came from the second marriage and Süss from the third, thus making Daniel the elder and that each of Süss’ two elder Oppenheimer half-brothers came from a different marriage while a third half-brother, along with two sisters, came from his mother’s second marriage. Stern, based on Süss’ own testimony, states that Süss had two older half-brothers, one brother and one sister. There were of course half-siblings from Süss’ mother’s second marriage although, aside from Haasis, they have gone unnoticed, possibly because they were on the maternal side and thus not Oppenheimers, added to which Süss had little contact with them. Stern (pp. 187–8) provides an early legal document, dated 17 November 1718, which relates to Süss and Daniel in which Süss refers to the latter as his ‘brother’ and another document (p. 303) from May 1737 in which Daniel enters a plea to the Imperial court on behalf of his ‘brother’, now under arrest.

16 Stern, Jud Süss, p. 9; Haasis, Joseph Süss Oppenheimer, p. 16.

17 Haasis, Joseph Süss Oppenheimer, p. 33.

18 Schnee, Die Hoffinanz und der moderne Staat, iv, p. 113.

19 Stern, Jud Süss, p. 9; Haasis, Joseph Süss Oppenheimer, pp. 13–15.

20 Bernard, Ausführlicher Diskurs mit Einem seiner Guten Freunde von allem, was Ihme in den drey letzten Tagen des unglücklichen Jud Süss Oppenheimers, pp. 39–40; Stern, Jud Süss, p. 10; Elwenspoek, Jew Süss Oppenheimer, The Great Financier, Gallant and Adventurer of the Eighteenth Century: A Study Based on Various Documents, Private Papers and Tradition, p. 29, the latter citing Bernard as the source.

21 Stern, Jud Süss, p. 9; Schnee, Die Hoffinanz und der moderne Staat, iv, pp. 112–13.

22 Haasis, Joseph Süss Oppenheimer, pp. 17, 206, 207 claims that Jewish women married late though provides no source. This contradicts a very good source, Glückel of Hameln (1646/47–1724), whose memoirs, rare for a woman during this period and unique for a Jewish woman, were published almost two centuries later at the end of the nineteenth century: The Life of Glückel of Hameln 1646–1724 Written by Herself. Married at the age of 14, as were her daughters, Glückel at no point suggests that this was unusual. Jewish females in Hamburg, according to Davis, Women on the Margins, pp. 11, 224 n.20, married at a younger age than Christian females, a practice ‘not uncommon among better-off Jews in Central and Eastern Europe’.

23 Haasis, Joseph Süss Oppenheimer, p. 15; Emberger and Ries, ‘Der Fall Joseph Süss Oppenheimer’, pp. 34–5. See also Schnee, Die Hoffinanz und der moderne Staat, iv, p. 113.

24 Bernard, Erinnerung ausführlicher Diskurs, p. 23.

25 Stern, Jud Süss, pp. 15, 206.

26 Cser, ‘Zwischen Stadtverfassung und absolutischem Herrschaftsanspruch (1650 bis zum Ende der Kurpfalz 1802)’, pp. 46–153.

27 Ibid.

28 Haasis, Joseph Süss Oppenheimer, pp. 16, 206.

29 Stern, Jud Süss, pp. 187–8; Emberger and Ries, ‘Der Fall Joseph Süss Oppenheimer’, p. 34.

30 Stern, Jud Süss, p. 139; Stern, The Court Jew, A Contribution to the History of the Period of Absolutism in Central Europe, p. 73; Haasis, Joseph Süss Oppenheimer, pp. 19–20.

31 Ibid., p. 19.

32 Rieger, Sicherer Bericht von dem Juden Joseph Süss Oppenheimer Welcher an 1738. Den 4. Febr. bey Stuttgard executirt wurde, p. 2; Haasis, Joseph Süss Oppenheimers Rache, p. 106.

33 Haasis, Joseph Süss Oppenheimer, p. 274; Schnee, Die Hoffinanz und der moderne Staat, iv, p. 113.

34 Haasis, Joseph Süss Oppenheimer, pp. 239–47.

35 The Life of Glückel of Hameln, esp. p.139.

36 Davis, Women on the Margins, pp. 11, 224 n.20.

37 Emberger and Ries...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Joseph Süss Oppenheimer
• Württemberg’s court Jew (1733–1737)
• Trial and execution (1737–1738)
• The legend
• Wilhelm Hauff’s
• After Hauff
• The historians
• Lion Feuchtwanger’s
• The British film
• Veit Harlan’s
• Veit Harlan’s
• Veit Harlan’s
• Veit Harlan on trial (1945–1950)
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Filmography
• Bibliography
• Copyright