Moses Wulff
Moses Benjamin Wulff (1661 – 29 August 1729) was a German-Jewish court factor in Berlin and Dessau. A prominent Court Jew to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau, where he dealt in the administration, currency, and military affairs of the Anhalt-Dessau region, and established a Hebrew printing press that published important Jewish texts. He was a descendant of the Rema, Moses Isserles. Fleeing the Cossacks in the 1650s he found refuge in Hamburg.
Life[edit]
The family, which descended from Moses Isserles from Krakow, had fled Lithuania to Germany due to persecution. The grandfather Simon Wolf of Wilna came to Hamburg in the 1650s. A son Bernd (Baruch) went to Berlin, where he became court factor of the Elector of Brandenburg in 1672, later to Halberstadt and Minden. His brother was Benjamin's father, the economically unsuccessful Simha Bonem Benjamin Wulff, who headed the young Berlin community, and his mother was Deborah Wulff. Benjamin's wife was Zipora Wulff (1661–1714).
In Berlin, Wulff competed for a while with Jost Liebmann, the court factor and jeweler of the Great Elector. He managed to have him deported to Dessau, leaving his assets behind. In this residential city he became court factor first of Prince Johann Georg II, but especially of Leopold I, who was later called the old Dessauer and with whom he found a close relationship. There he took on tasks in tax administration, set up the post office and a large cloth factory, and was commissioned by Leopold to carry out diplomatic missions. This is how he achieved the elevation of his wife Anna Luise Föhse to the rank of prince at the Vienna imperial court. He founded a Hebrew printing company in 1696 and ran a Talmud teaching institute at home. From Dessau he also supported the Jewish community in Halle.[1] A well-known son was the later Anhalt court factor Elias Wulff.
Literature[edit]
- Max Freudenthal: From Mendelssohn's homeland: Moses Benjamin Wulff and his family. The descendants of Moses Isserles, Berlin 1900 ND 2006, ISBN 978-3-00-019835-9.
- Selma Stern/ Marina Sassenberg: The court Jew in the age of absolutism: a contribution to European history in the 17th and 18th centuries, series of scientific papers from the Leo Baeck Institute 64, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2001 ISBN 978-3-16-147662-4