without fanfare or ideological justification, and the states of western Europe
had recognized this situation by treating the ostensibly unemancipated Jews
as citizens for all intents and purposes.
France and Germany: Judenverbesserung, Haskalah,
and legal emancipation
The situation of Jews in central Europe was more complex. There was less
economic incentive in central Europe to admit Jews than in England, the
Netherlands, southwestern France, and the New World. In central Europe,
the impetus for change was war, not property. Moreover, in contrast to the
ecumenical moods born of mixed Catholic and Protestant populations in
western Europe, adversarial religious camps in central Europe were separated
by political boundaries.
As the rulers of central Europe, particularly the leaders of the
Hohenzollern and Habsburg dynasties, tempered the harshness of absolute
rule under the influence of the ideas of the Enlightenment, they altered the
governing strategies and Jewish policies accordingly. In contrast to the grad-
ual and bottom-up process in western Europe, the emergence of a neutral
society in central Europe was a top-down process imposed initially by
enlightened absolutist sovereigns. Court Jews emerged as living illustrations
of Jewish potential and utility if allowed greater felicity and enabled to pros-
per under a more enlightened regime.
Indicative in this respect was Mayer Amschel Rothschild. The rise of the
Rothschild family as the last and greatest of the court Jews began with Mayer
Amschel’s rags-to-riches ascent from a petty merchant and money changer in
Frankfurt to the head of the wealthiest family in Europe – if not the world.
Rothschild (1743–1812) was born and grew up in the ghetto of Frankfurt am
Main, and worked with his father as a petty merchant and pawnbroker.
Originally sent to Furth to train for the rabbinate, he changed careers and
took a job in a banking house in Hanover. In 1760, he started his own bank-
ing house in Frankfurt and also traded in art and exotica. Eventually he
became the financial agent of William IX, landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, who
had inherited the largest private fortune in Europe. By 1794, Rothschild was
investing 150,000 gold coins for the prince. By 1801, he had became the
prince’s chief financial agent. Between 1800 and 1806, he invested 1.75 mil-
lion thalers. From 1798 to 1821, Rothschild’s sons became leading financiers
in several leading European cities: Nathan Mayer in London, James in Paris,
Salomon in Berlin, and Karl in Naples.
Yet Mayer Amschel Rothschild, despite his wealth, was never legally
accepted into mainstream society. In this regard, the Enlightenment had
particular implications for Jews in central Europe. The primacy of reason
over faith, building on Spinoza’s distinction between natural law and
The age of enlightenment and emancipation, 1750–1880 145