Joseph Süß Oppenheimer

Career

As a financial adviser to Duke Karl Alexander, he also gained a prominent position as a court Jew and held the reins of the finances in his duchy. The Duke had high expenses, and also tried to maintain an army to defend the state. Taxes had to be levied, no matter how much the wealthy resented that, even if under that administration Wurttemberg flourished and its trade expanded. It was not just a matter of rival courtiers jealous of the success of a Jew having power over Christians. There was also resentment of the Duke for being a Catholic and ruling over a mostly Protestant Wurttemberg. But it wss much safer for both Protestants and Catholics to divert criticism to the Duke's Jewish administrator rather than directly against him, and to accuse him of all possible crimes. It was alleged that he debased the currency, seized and sold off the property of manufacturers who were declared bankrupt, tripled the "wealth tax," levied a tax on foreigners visiting the duchy, sold monopolies on coffee, beer, and tobacco to foreign companies, introduced lotteries, sold government posts to the highest bidder, and corrupted the judicial system.

However, not only did he deny the charges (although most of these things were common practices in most states at that time), but Duke Karl Alexander himself defended him. A year before his execution, the Duke responded to a petition against him:

Oppenheimer was a faithful servant of his prince and of the state, and was intent in every way upon the welfare of both, for which he deserved the thanks of all. Since instead he was persecuted by envy and ill-will to such an extent that attempts were even made to bring him into disfavor with the duke, the latter accorded him his especial protection and expressly forbade the continuation of such attacks.

But weeks later, the Duke died unexpectedly — and that ill-will immediately poured out upon his minister.

Arrest, trial and execution

When his protector, Karl Alexander, suddenly died on March 12, 1737, Oppenheimer was arrested and accused of various crimes, including fraud, embezzlement, treason, lecherous relations with the court ladies and accepting bribes. The Jewish community tried unsuccessfully to ransom him.

After a heavily publicized trial, he was sentenced to death. His defense against the charges put to him was not revealed to the public -- the actual trial was a closed one. His defense was in fact even removed from the process files themselves. The original transcript was only discovered and made public in 2011 when the Chief State Archive of Wurttemberg succeeded in acquiring the original from a private owner. Even so, the 7.5 shelf-yard process files for this case were kept in a secret annex and could not be fully accessed by researchers, up to 1918. It is noteworthy, in any case, that the designation of criminal offenses and a statement of reasons were dispensed with when the sentence was publicly announced. When his jailers offered a pardon if he converted to Christianity, he refused. The death sentence was signed by Duke Carl Rudolf, the guardian of Karl Alexander's minor son, Carl Eugen, on January 25, 1738; the Duke was said to have remarked that "This was a rare occurrence, for a Jew to pay the bill for Christian slaves."

Joseph Süß Oppenheimer was led to the gallows on February 4, 1738, and given a final chance, before the huge crowd gathered for the event, to gain a pardon by converting to Christianity, but he again refused to do so. He was hanged, with his last words reportedly being "Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is one". His corpse was gibbeted in a human-sized bird cage that hung outside of Stuttgart in the Pragsattel district for six years until the inauguration of Karl Eugen, Duke of Württemberg, who permitted the hasty burial of his corpse below the gallows.

It is now the consensus of historians that have dealt with this case that the trial of Oppenheimer was an unfair one and both racially and politically motivated, and many of the charges were exaggerated or entirely groundless. In effect, he was accused of serving his lord the Duke, and obeying his orders. In any case, it is said, if he had not been a Jew, the punishment even for the charges named would have been much lighter.

In literature, art and film

The story of Joseph Süß Oppenheimer was the subject of a number of literary and dramatic treatments over the course of more than a century; the earliest of these having been Wilhelm Hauff's 1827 novella titled Jud Süß. The most successful literary adaptation was Lion Feuchtwanger's 1925 novel titled Jud Süß based on a play that he had written in 1916 though never performed and subsequently withdrawn by Feuchtwanger.

Ashley Dukes and Paul Kornfeld also wrote dramatic adaptations of the Feuchtwanger novel. In 1934, Lothar Mendes directed a film adaptation of the novel in which Süß was portrayed by actor Conrad Veidt. An anti-semitic Nazi propaganda film titled Jud Süß was made in 1940 by Veit Harlan, in which Süß was portrayed by actor Ferdinand Marian.

In the 1990s, the German sculptor Angela Laich created a sculpture devoted to Joseph Süß Oppenheimer as well as illustrations for German historian Hellmut G. Haasis's book Joseph Süß Oppenheimer genannt Jud Süß. Finanzier, Freidenker, Justizopfer.

Biographies

Shortly after Feuchtwanger's novel was published, Selma Stern published a biography of Oppenheimer titled Jud Süß: Ein Betrag zur deutschen und zur jüdischen Geschichte. More recently, Helmut Haasis published a biography titled "Joseph Süß Oppenheimer, genannt Jud Süß: Finanzier, Freidenker, Justizopfer"