Northeim

Town in the province of Hanover, Prussia. It has a population of 6,695, of whom over 100 are Jews. Jews lived there as early as the fourteenth or fifteenth century, and paid to the council of Hildesheim a semiannual tax ranging from ½ f. (= "Verding" = ¼ mark) to 3 g. Although the dukes of Brunswick had expelled all the Jews from their territory, the municipal council of Northeim in the sixteenth century granted the Jew Abraham protection for three years, beginning with 1556. In return Abraham paid 10 gulden a year. In 1568 Abraham was appointed to furnish silver for the ducal mint, and the duke even granted him the privilege of free trade outside of Northeim. In 1570 the council granted to Abraham's wife, Vögelken, in case her husband died, the right of residence at Northeim for life under the same conditions as were imposed upon him; and in the event of Abraham's death and her remarriage her second husband was to be given the same protection. The following year, 1571, Abraham was expelled from the city on suspicion of being in league with a band of robbers.

In 1576 one Moses, called "Münzner," with his wife Anna and his children, was granted the right of residence for six years, at first under the same conditions as Abraham, then in consideration of 15 gulden protection money. In 1589 he was granted protection and the right of residence for life for himself and for any one of his children who shouldmarry. In return he was required to pay 50 marks, 12 gulden a year, and his share of the city's taxes; his child, on being granted protection, was to pay 17 gulden and a certain annual sum as protection money. Two other instances in which Jews were received at Northeim in that period are known; but in 1591 Duke Heinrich Julius expelled them all from the city, although their periods of protection had not expired. No Jews were found at Northeim between this date and 1607. Then, at the instance of Duchess Elizabeth, three Jews were admitted for ten years, in consideration of an immediate and an annual payment. They were commissioned to furnish the necessary silver for the municipal mint, and the rate of interest they were to charge on loans to individuals was fixed.

On March 20, 1608, Duke Heinrich Julius issued a letter of convoy good for ten years to four Jews who wished to settle in the cities of Northeim and Göttingen, the consideration being 7 gold gulden to be paid annually to the ducal treasury. A resolution which was passed by the Hanoverian diet on April 3, 1639, put an end to the residence on the part of Jews at Northeim, and no Jews are found in the town until the time of the Westphalian rule (1809), when two Jewish families settled there. The community is under the rabbinate of Hildesheim, and formerly had its cemetery at Sudheim; now (1904) it has a cemetery of its own and purposes building a synagogue.

Bibliography:

  * Vennigerholz, Die Stadt Northeim;
  * Döbner, Urkundenbuch der Stadt Hildesheim, v. 28, 30, 41 et seq., 56; vi. 399, 428, 461 et seq., 485, 522 et seq., 532, 558;
  * Horovitz, Die Inschriften des Alten Friedhofs der Israelitischen Gemeinde zu Frankfurt-am-Main, p. 23, No. 252.



D. A. Lew.