Die Rolle jüdischer Finanziers bei reichsstädtischen Expansionsbestrebungen im späten Mittelalter

This article deals with the role Jewish moneylenders played in the expansion policy of Imperial Cities in the Later Middle Ages. It focuses on the examples of Zurich , Bern and Ulm because it was in these cases that Jews made the most important contributions to the creation of urban territories. As will be shown, there were several ways by which city councils could make use of Jewish money to support their territorial ambitions: Unfortunately, one way of acquiring money for territorial expansion was the plundering of Jewish communities, which happened in Ulm in 1385, for example. Apart from that, the city councils could gain territorial profit from Jewish businessmen granting loans to noblemen who were endowed with landed property in the vicinity of the cities. When these nobles could not repay their loans to the Jews, they were forced to cede their territories to the city councils which, in return, repaid the noble’s loans to the Jewish moneylenders. Probably due to the high interests, the city councils themselves, however, hardly ever took out loans to finance territorial expansion directly.