Jud Michel

Jud Michel, also known as “the rich Michel”, was a financier and soldier of fortune. He made a singular impression on his contemporaries, including Martin Luther, who reported having heard of a rich Jew who traveled throughout Germany, drawn by 12 horses.

Jud Michel’s loans to rulers of Hesse, the Palatinate, and lesser principalities are first recorded in the early 1530s. His early life is somewhat a mystery and is supposed that he was an illegitimate son of one of the dukes of Regenstein, who were his benefactors at the beginning of his career but later became his bitter enemies. Hostilities began when the duke of Regenstein repudiated a promissory note to what Michel reacted by warning and challenging him and by instigating acts of arson against his property. Faced with the imperial court, Michel fled to Silesia where he organized effective support from nobility and Ferdinand I (1503 – 1564), to whom he had once loaned 2,000 gold gulden. Subsequently, he entered the service of Joachim II, elector of Brandenburg, with whom he conducted intricate economic transactions against the dukes of Regenstein.

Michel owned two houses in Berlin and one in Frankfurt on the Oder, although the community of the latter town objected to his presence there. Several accusations were brought against him and his wife over the years, including poisoning wells, but Joachim intervened on his protégé’s behalf. He died in 1549 from falling down a flight of stairs in peculiar circumstances.