Fettmilch uprising

[1] The uprising lasted from May until it was finally defeated in November through the intervention of the Holy Roman Emperor, the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, and the Archbishop of Mainz.

The uprising had its origins in the consolidation of the patrician regime in Frankfurt at the end of the 16th century, along with the discontent of the citizens about the council's mismanagement of the city and the limited influence of the guilds on civic politics.

Alten Limpurg was opposed by another patrician society Zum Frauenstein [de], which contained the city's wholesalers, and shared the remaining 18 seats with representatives of the artisans' guilds.

In addition to these concrete but very diverse demands, there was a general discontent that had been brewing for decades about the perceived self-servingness of the council, which had begun referring to the citizens as "subjects" in its public pronouncements.

This new civic constitution, which remained in force until 1806, expanded the council's membership by 18 seats and established a nine-man committee representing the guilds, which had the right to audit the city's financial accounts.

When the new audit process took place in 1613, it turned out that Frankfurt was deeply in debt and that the council had expended, among other things, the fund that it should have used for supporting the poor and the sick.

In addition, it became known that the patrician Johann Friedrich Faust von Aschaffenburg [de] had tried to get the emperor to block the passage of the citizens' contract.

This contained the fateful sentence, stating that the emperor would not hold the city responsible if the Jews "departed into death, perished, or were slain."

Since the Council was not able to produce any evidence on the location of the 9.5 tonnes of missing gold, the radical wing of the guilds under Vincenz Fettmilch gained ground.

The Senior Mayor Johann Hartmann Beyer [de], one of the 18 new councillors created by the citizens' contract, negotiated with the protestors and on 19 May, he signed an agreement with Fettmilch providing for the resignation of the council.

When this had not happened by 22 August, the emperor threatened to place every Frankfurter under the Imperial ban, who was not prepared to swear under oath to submit to his command.

Around noon, the now-drunk journeymen stormed the Frankfurt Judengasse, the walled ghetto on the east side of the town, which was accessed through three gates.

The Jews eventually fled to the neighbouring cemetery [de] or into the Christian part of the city, where many of them were hidden by friendly Frankfurt citizens.

In a long trial, which extended through almost the whole of 1615, Fettmilch and thirty-eight of his associated were not prosecuted for the riots against the Jews directly, but for lèse-majesté, since they had disregarded the commands of the emperor.

After the executions, which included an extensive reading of verdicts and lasted several hours, an imperial mandate was proclaimed, which ordered the restoration of the Jews expelled in August 1614, with their old rights and privileges.

Only twelve Jewish couples were allowed to marry each year, while Christians only had to prove to the civic administration that they had sufficient assets in order to get a marriage license.

The Jews' economic rights were broadly equivalent to those of Christian non-citizen residents, since they could not operate shops, engage in small-scale commerce, establish commercial partnerships with citizens, or own land.

A new feature of the new Judenstättigkeit was that Jews were now explicitly permitted to engage in wholesaling, although they were sometimes required to have sureties as with grain, wine, spices, and long-distance trade in cloth, silk, and other textiles.

It is possible that the emperor expanded the economic power of the Jews in this way so that they could act as a counter-weight to the Christian merchant families, which the abolition of the guilds had left in charge of Frankfurt.

A celebratory song, Megillat Vintz or Vinz-Hans-Lief was published by Elchanan Bar Abraham in 1648 and continued to be sung at the Purim Vinz festival into the 20th century.