Issachar Berend Lehmann

Issachar Berend Lehmann, Berend Lehmann, Yissakhar Bermann Segal, Yissakhar ben Yehuda haLevi, Berman Halberstadt (April 23, 1661 in Essen, Westphalia – July 9, 1730 in Halberstadt, Kingdom of Prussia), was a Jewish-German banker, merchant, diplomatic agent as well as army and mint contractor working as a court Jew for Elector Augustus II the Strong of Saxony, King of Poland, and other German princes. He was privileged as a Court Jew and as a Resident. Thanks to his wealth, privileges as well as social and cultural commitment he was a Jewish dignitary famous in his day in Central and Eastern Europe.

Lehmann’s father belonged to the Jewish upper class of Westphalia, just like his brother-in-law, the court Jew Leffmann Behrens of Bochum, later established in Hannover. From him, older biographers assume, Berend Lehmann received some business training and then traded in Behrens’ commission. In 1692 he is active together with Leffmann Behrens at the imperial court in Vienna in business transactions to promote Duke Ernst August of Hannover's duchy of Hannover to an electorate.

His activity is first documented, as, at age 26, he did business at the Leipzig Trade Fair of 1687, where subsequently he was a regular visitor at the then three annual seasons. He resided in Halberstadt, where, from 1688, he is listed as married to Miriam, daughter of the deceased protected Jew, Joel Alexander. From him he derived his protected status. Two years later his first son, Lehmann Behrend, was born and he built his first, modest abode in the Jewish quarter of Halberstadt (Bakenstraße 37, partly existent in the building complex of Little Venice).

In 1694 he became a mint and general business agent to his own sovereign, the Elector of Brandenburg; a year later he was in a banking connection with the Saxon Electoral court at Dresden. In 1697 he was commissioned by the young Elector, Augustus the Strong, to procure money needed for the acquisition of the Polish throne. He received authority to sell or pawn lands situated outside the main territory of Saxony and collected loans worth millions of guilders from Christian and Jewish banking partners, with the help of which the Saxon field marshal Heino Heinrich Graf von Flemming persuaded the majority of the Polish nobility into electing Augustus the Strong King "in" Poland. In recognition of such services, Augustus made Berend Lehmann "Resident of the King of Poland in the Lower Saxon Circle". This was some sort of a consul’s privilege on which Lehmann repeatedly based his demands, more or less successfully.

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