A Daily Life of Disruption. The Jews of Münzenberg and Assenheim Facing the Effects of Local Power Struggles in the Sixteenth Century

In the end of the Middle Ages the Jews in Hess lived under the protection of the Counts of Hanau. However, members of the lower nobility held various claims to the small towns and villages in which they found their home. A complaint filed by the Jew Aynschel from Münzenberg illustrates the consequences of those conflicting claims. When he failed to pay his tax to the Count of Hanau, he listed all the authorities that had demanded payments from him and from other Jews in the vicinity: the servants of two lines of the noble house of Solms, the servants of the lords of Königstein and Isenburg, the reeve of the lord of Solms, the reeve of Gambach; he also had to pay for the expenses of entertaining the delegates convened at Münzenberg. In addition to monetary extortion, he and his coreligionists suffered from repeated instances of burglary, robbery and, in one case, even kidnapping. Whereas the members of the lesser nobility in the region were trying, on the one hand, to make every possible profit from the presence of Jews, they lobbied the territorial ruler, i.e., the Counts of Hanau, for their expulsion at the same time. On two levels, the Jews thus served them as a tool for gaining influence and wealth. This paper addresses the coping strategies employed by the Jews in battling with this continuous violence.