Page 38 - The Track Of The Jew Through The Ages - Alfred Rosenberg

The Track of the Jew through the Ages

there is the rule that no Christian can maintain a claim against a Jew
if he is not in a position to bring forward for himself at least one
Jewish witness. The meetings of-the Jewish judicial court took place
mostly in the synagogues and even prelates of the Catholic Church
had to take the trouble to go there if they had legal conflicts with
Jews.
But the Jews were able to extend these privileges to all
fields with their age-old inherited insolence. In the widespread pawn
business that they conducted it was considered as sufficient if a Jew
stated about a stolen object which he had found that he had honestly
bought it! In demanding his possession the legitimate owner was
obliged to pay the price that the Jewish pawnbroker said that he had
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reckoned. The Goslar Rights granted to the Jew, and to him alone,
the privilege to lend money even on things that he knew were stolen.
Thus, whereas the German, if he were found in possession of legally
acquired goods, was obliged to return this to the owner without any
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damage, the Jew could demand a price that was set by himself!
Further freedom of usury was the goal that was aimed at
with greatest persistence and mostly also reached. The legally
established interest-rate fluctuated between 33 percent and 120
percent, but the one actually demanded was often significantly
higher. That is why we see again and again the nobility, citizens and
peasants in the greatest dependency on the Jews; a load ofdocuments
give evidence of that.
A Count Walram von Zweibriicken found himself in the
hands of 1 7 Jewish usurers; in 1 33 8, in the small town of Oberwesel,
no fewer than 217 debtors to the Jews were named; the Count of
Ottingen pawned his golden crown; the landgraves Balthasar,
Friedrich and Wilhelm von Thiiringen were entirely in the hands of

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Stobbe, Die Juden in Deutschland, Braunschweig, 1 866, p. 1 1 9 [Johann Otto
Stobbe (1 83 1 - 1 887) was a professor ofjurisprudence and historian whose work on
the Jews, Die Juden in Deutschland wdhrend des Mittelalters in politischer, socialer
und rechtlicher Beziehung was published in Braunschweig in 1866].
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[Goslar, a city in Lower Saxon) acquired independent municipal and mercantile
,
rights in 1219.]
47
Formore details seethe excellent work of G. Liebe [(1859-1912)], Das Judentum
in der deutschen Vergangenheit, Leipzig, 1903, pp. 12-15.
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