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- Hameln 33: Anekdote om sønnens bryllup.
Leder (Parnaas) af det jødiske samfund i Hessen. Hameln 33, note 1: Samuel Stuttgart, who lved in the town of Witzenhausen, was Jewish government represenatative of the whole of the electorate of Hesse, being elected to the office by his fellow jews.
"Benedikt is mentioned for the first time in Kassel in a tax list of 1620. He paid 500 Reichstalern. Three out of ten heads of households paid more than he did (Hallo 1930). Benedikt is not the first Court Banker of the landgraves of Hessen by the name of Goldschmidt. He was preceded by Joseph of the goldener Schwan of Frankfurt am Main, who is mentioned in 1562 with his son Hirsch. Probably he is identical with Joseph Goldschmidt of the Goldener Schwan who is mentioned by Dietz (1988, pp. 145-48). Schnee (1954, p. 318) thinks that Benedikt belongs to the same family as Joseph. “Benedikt Goldschmidt became the founder of the institution of Court Agent in Hessen and the ancestor of the Goldschmidt family which lived in Kassel and which held a leading position among the Court Jews of Kassel before the rise of the House of Rothschild. Benedikt Goldschmidt was banker to the court of the landgraves Moritz (1592-1627), Wilhelm V (1627-1637) and Wilhelm VI (1637-1663). They used him to take care of their financial business in Frankfurt am Main. His financial strength is shown by the fact that he paid 2000 Dollars (Talern) in Gold in advance, which Hessian Jewry had to contribute during the Thirty Years War. At the first general Jewish diet (Judenlandtag) of 1626 Goldschmidt divided this sum among his coreligionists in Oberhessen and Niederhessen. The Court Banker was also the Obervorsteher of the Jews [of Hessen]. As a court official he enjoyed the very important privilege of being released of the burden of having to quarter troops. Benedikt Goldschmidt complained immediately, when the city council of Kassel imposed to quarter troops in his home in spite of his privilege, by appealing to his privilege of 1625 and 1636, for which he had paid 600 Reichsthaler in advance. The landgrave supported his Court Jew and the soldiers were quartered somewhere else. Soon the court agent attracted other coreligionists to Kassel. The town was opposed to this and in 1635 even achieved that all Jews had to leave Kassel. Only Benedikt and his dependents were allowed to stay. ... In 1631 he pleaded his right of ritual slaughter against the butchers’ guild in Kassel and won. ... He died in 1642” (Schnee 1954, pp. 318-19).
Hallo writes about the relationship between Benedict and the local Jewish community. “Only Jews who were in the service of the Court were living, barely visible, in Kassel itself. First among these was Hayum, since 1602 authorized supplier of silver to the mint, and soon after him his rival and the one to replace him later, Benedikt Goldschmidt, a Court Jew in the strict sense. On the other hand, Isaak, Hayum’s son-in-law, the Rabbi, lived in Bettenhausen, perhaps also from 1602. He would come to the town for prayer services or – as Benedikt called it in 1622 – “to our Shul”, which as far as known for these years, was located in the house of Jost Riemers in the important Marktgasse” (Hallo 1931, p. 12). “The documents which have been preserved show clearly how serious friction developed between the two groups, the party of Rabbi Isaak in Bettenhausen and the Rabbi of Friedberg who sometimes cooperated with him, on the one hand, and the government-supported party of Benedikt the Jew, known as Goldschmidt, on the other hand. The friction was not in the least caused by the fact that Isaak used his sermons in the synagogue ... for angry attacks on Goldschmidt. He accused him of being a “traitor” of the Jews to the government. While the outcome of the many insulting quarrels is not known anymore, two results are clear: first the undisputed victory of the Goldschmidts, which was crowned by the expulsion of all other Jews from Kassel in 1635, because the State cared more about the economic power of its Jews than their religious discipline; and second, although almost useless, the order of 1625, to appoint an officially recognized Hessian Rabbi. This order probably took into consideration the for the State irritating interference of the Rabbis of Fulda and Friedberg with Hessian Jewish affairs. One can guess that the role of Rabbi in Bettenhausen was finished after this. It is unknown, whether it was considered to have the official Rabbi reside in Kassel. Anyhow, in 1656 he resided in Witzenhausen. Because of the isolation of the Goldschmidts, there was no chance of having a synagogue in Kassel. Numerically, these Jews at the Court were just not strong enough to gather the ten adults necessary for the service. Moreover, the possibility that they would voluntarily subordinate themselves to a Rabbi in Kassel can be ruled out in the case of this family of “self-made regents”, as Isaak called Benedikt in 1622” (Hallo 1931, pp. 12-13). (Schelleken)
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- There is an early tombstone in Bettenhausen (B119) of a Moshe Baruch ben Moshe Jehuda Segal. The date cannot be read anymore. Next to him lies Röschen, housewife of ... who died in 1647. The name of her husband is illegible now, but the proximity strongly suggests that she is Moshe Baruch’s wife. The early date suggests that Moshe Baruch is no one else but Benedict Goldschmidt. Moreover, on the tombstone of his son Abraham (Bettenhausen B442b) Benedict is also called Moses Baruch. Apparently, he went through another change of name after a serious illness. Most probably, his father’s name is Jehuda, to which Moses was appended after an illness. (Schelleken)
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Om slægterne Brændgaard & Heilesen
1575 - 1642 (67 år)
