Court Jew

宮廷ユダヤ人 ／ court-jews　—　People & places

Jewish financiers who managed the finances of monarchs in the absolutist states of Central Europe from the late sixteenth century.

They were entrusted with supplying grain, cloth, and weapons for the army, contracting for the minting of coins and procuring gold and silver, providing commercial credit and cash, and serving as tax collectors and envoys. While they had direct access to the monarch, their careers could end abruptly upon the monarch's death, sometimes costing them their fortune and their lives. The Oppenheimer family of Hanover, where the founder of the Rothschild family apprenticed, was a lineage of this system.