Based on a wealth of documented data this book deals with loj-uul on f 

Messianism. From the contents: 


iKi 


Hassidism Debunked 

Blind belief in the tsaddik gives way to a pernicious fanatKisiii, a inlliliiiit ni ir 
rantism. Mystic ecstasy is no longer distinguishable from drunkcniu' niul ihr i 
docs not let anybody outdo him. He becomes an adviser in busiiu .'. and fnniily Miiah 
if not impostor and fraud, healing the sick and the lame, "blessing" ihlldl 
with olf-spring—all for a price... The l.ublin, Jacob Isaac llinwii/ p<ii--i;a *1 li 
miracles according to a price tariff. No woman was safe in his piesen-*', In di d t ^ 
falling out of his window dead drunk, an event that legend luinril into a pnm hm 
tor his having accused God of delaying the coming of the Messiah. 

Ritual Sex 

The religious rites of the Frunkists consisted of ccsiatii song, and tin. i 
accompanied by wild clapping of hands, similar to the Hassidic danc‘?*. but with i ' 
participation and ending in an orgiastic ritual. The servivv usually began v. nh I ..inK 
kneeling down and fastening two burning candles to a wooden bench, diivtng a nail !»■«" 
the wood between them and pointing a cross in all directions, exclaiming 
para verti, seibul grandi asserverti!” (in Ladino, the Spanish dialect ol th. Sepli^d* 
Jews: ‘‘Give us the strength to see you, the great bliss to serve yon!") Mien tb iigb-. 
were extinguished and pandemonium broke loose. Men and women uiuli* a'd L 

‘‘to get at the truth in its nakedness" and took to copulating pell niell. with *= dv ihe 
leader keeping aloof in the midst of it all. 

Zionism without Zion 

lie petitioned the king to assign to him a territory in caslein (lalivia whfic he 
could settle with his followers in a vassal state with himself at the hcail I hr l. v, ..f :h 
whole world would flock then to Poland and enrich her. In olliei wind , a /IoeU ui 
without Zion, as it was advocated under the name of rcrritorlalism in the fu < • 

decades of the present century, leading to variou.s projects ol si-iiliiig th- Ir u 
eastern Europe in Uganda, Biro-Bidjan and other places. The plan found favi.i '• uh 
both king and magnates, but floundered on strategic considciations, that b. th' ii I 
of settling a group with close relations to Turkey on the riirkish bonlri 

Messianic Militarism 

Frank organized his following into a clandestine, highly dht Iplinrd, n*ilii i. . 
"encampment," with various ranks for men and women alike, battle trainlnr uid * - nlai 
nyincuvcrs. He told them they would have to take up arms befoic ion* tnd «;id. «. I 
his "apostles" to spread the word: "Go to the Jew.s and tell them lie r .tdv. a , u 

is coming. Train yourselves in warfare, also the women and the glib. «itid all thildi-ii 
over six. As it has been said: Wejissroel osso /jflyi/--and Isiacl foimed an aiiiiy M m 
nobody will perish." He saw himself already at the head of an aimy of ten m lllnn 
Jews and one million gentiles, the officers acknowledging no tcliglon, dl »lu d in 
red, the color of revenge. Years later, Frank’s "uhlans, hussam and cov »k " aiiinill. 
wore predominantly red uniforms. 

The Female Messiah 

Eve Frank became a sort of counterpart to the black madonna of t • n lokliovfc 

and next to the cult of Mary a cult of Eve established itself there with I fant h.iiM’’?lf 

submitting to it: “For she is the true Messiah! She will save the woiM' WI"Ip i. ti 
required of the Messiah to be a man or Jewish? The excnlus from I gypt wa» Inip^if^' i 
because the leader was a man.” 

Frankists in the U.S. 

A number emigrated in 1848 to the United States, carrying the I lanklsi tia‘iiii..M 
of intermarriage with them. Their most famous descendant wax thr lair hr?!-. ..*‘i 
leading Zionist, Louis Dembitz Brandeis, married to Alice (nddmaik of ah'itl- i 

Frankist family. His mother was a sister of Gottlieb Wchlc. I.lkr oihn Amni. o* i 

Frankist descent, Brandeis considered Eva Frank a saint and had hn pniiiii* on hr 
desk. Another member of the U.S. Supreme Court, Benjamin N C anh»/o. had aitHM*., 
his ancestors one of the most prominent supporters of Sabatai /cvl. 

Epilog 

There will always be finaglers making history. Besides, the flight fiom Ihr uh'in. 
has changed by now into a flight back to ghetto mentality by Clutiuih and oihn nro 

Hassidic groups with their weird, guru-like appeal to American intrlU ctiial . aldid and 

abetted by the sentimental writings of Bashevis Singer and lUic Wicxcl. 


Mandel The Militaii 




































































































A Peter Bergman Book 

Arthur Mandel: 

The Militant Messiah 
or 

The Flight from the Ghetto 
The Story of Jacob Frank 
and the Frankist Movement 

At the time this book went to press, the 
world was stunned by the news of the mass 
suicide in Guayana which demonstrated the 
power a pseudo-Messiah can have over his 
followers. The subject matter of the present 
study is a case in point. It throws light on 
a dark corner of the eighteenth century and 
offers a new view of Frankism, that strange 
mixture of mystic messianism, militarism, 
and sex, which originated among Polish 
Jews at the beginning of the so-called 
Emancipation, found a faint echo in the 
French Revolution and even reached the 
shores of the United States. 

The rise and fall of Jacob Frank, and of 
his daughter Eva and cousin Junius Frey, 
was so baffling to contemporaries and 
historians because in comparison all past and 
present Gurus, courtesans, and political 
mesmerisers seem nothing more than small 
bunglers. Based on both hitherto unknown 
documents and a host of Frank’s sayings 
which sound like the anti-establishment and 
sexual liberation slogans of today, Frankism 
is set here against the background of its own 
time and ours, a fascinating tale, cutting 
across cherished illusions with verve and 
wit. 

The author dares an incidental critique 
of Martin Buber’s Hassidic concept, which 
is spreading generally in New Theology, that 
“the same deed that would be evil com¬ 
mitted by an ordinary man, committed by 
the tsaddik is good,” a concept that raises 
the question: “What was the divine spark in 
Hitler or Stalin?” It is left to the reader to 
extend this question even to democratic 
dissemblers in messianic pose. 


About the author: 

Born in that part of Austro-Silesia which 
fell to Poland after World War I, Arthur 
Mandel studied in Vienna and Berlin and 
lived for some time in Paris and Geneva. 
Since 1942 in the United States, he taught 
European and American economic history at 
Stanford University and the University of 
California. Retired now, he turned to explor¬ 
ing the obscure byways of history, the 
present volume being the first fruit of this 
endeavour. 

The portrait of Fran 9 ois Chabot, a 
geomantic etching by F. Bonneville, has 
been reproduced with the permission of 
Bildarchiv, Oesterreichische Nationalbibli- 
othek, Vienna. 

Cover picture: Jacob Frank on his death bed 
surrounded by his body guard. 

Jacket design by Gunther Jansen 






THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


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The 

Militant 

Messiah 


or 

The Flight from the Ghetto 

The Story of Jacob Frank 
and the Frankist Movement 

Arthur hdandel 


A Peter Bergman Book 
published by 

Fiumanities Press 

ATLANTIC HIGHLANDS, NEW JERSEY 07716 















Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data 


Mandel, Arthur. 

The militant messiah. nproman 

“A Peter Bergman book.” For information address Peter Bergm , 

Bethlehem, Connecticut 06751. , 0 -, 

Bibliography and source references; pp. 174-isz. 

Includes Index. 

‘.'““.cob (1726-1791) ..a luni». F,=, .H.. 0 * 6 *. 

(1753-1794). 2. Pseudo-Messiahs. 3. Jewish Assimilation g 

I. Title. A Ai 

BM755.F68M36 296.6‘1’0924 [B] 79-443 

ISBN: 0-391-00973-7 
Copyright © 1979 by Peter Bergman. 

Printed in the United States of America 


Table of Contents 


Page 

1 The End ^ 

2 Childhood of a Messiah ^ 

3 The Polish Jews 

4 Ghetto Mysticism 

5 Hassidism Debunked 

6 The New Messiah 

7 Visions 

8 End of the Law 

9 Ritual Sex 

10 A Puzzle to Jews and Non-Jews 

11 In the Crossfire of Church and Synagogue 47 

12 Back to Poland 

13 Zionism Without Zion 

14 The Big Step ^ 

15 Messianic Militarism 

16 Before the Tribunal of the Inquisition 71 

17 The Female Messiah 75 

18 Why Bruenn? . 

19 Dobrushka-Schoenfeld-Frey 

20 The Messiah in Bruenn 

21 The Messiah—A Capitalist 

22 Frankists in Prague and in America 99 

23 The New Jerusalem 

24 Goethe, Mickiewicz, Casanova 107 

25 Decline 

26 Moses Dobrushka, the Jacobin 121 

27 Junius Frey, Grandseigneur 127 












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Page 


28 Junius Frey, Philosopher of the Revolution 132 

29 The Last Act 136 

30 Junius Frey, the Speculator 143 

31 Epilogue 149 

Appendix: 

The Memories of Moses Forges about the 

Frankist Court in Offenbach 155 

On the Intimate Letters about France 171 

Bibliography and Source References 174 

Index 183 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


Jacob Frank 
Eva Frank 

Leopoldine Chabot, nee Frey 
Frangois Chabot 

Title page of the Intimate Letters About France 
Title page of Junius Frey’s Philosophie Sociale 
Eva Frank’s house in Offenbach 
Frank leaving for his prayer service 
Frank on his deathbed 



The End 

When Danton an4 his friends were beheaded, two 
luothers, Junius and Emanuel Frey, were also executed 
all hough they did not belong to Danton’s faction. They 
had played a minor part in the trial—not enough for 
Paris' newspapermen to report about them. Only the 
correspondent of the Berlin Vossische Zeitung paid at- 
I cut ion to the Freys because they were well known in 
I he German colony in Paris. He may even have been a 
visitor in their house in the rue d’Anjou, which was a 
icfuge for German emigrants. He described how the 
brothers crouched in the back of the large two-wheel 
cart, the younger, Emanuel, crying on the shoulder of 
I he older, who tried to calm him. 

Behind the morose driver stood Danton, gesturing 
with his fists as he had always done, trying to harangue 
I he mob which lined the street. His words were drowned 
out by the crowd, the same crowd who—when was it? 
yesterday? yester-year?—had cheered him madly. 

It could not be far to the place of execution—the cart 
was already rumbling through the suburb Saint-Honore. 
Now it passed through rue d’Anjou. Junius took a look at 
I he windows of number 19. Was Leopoldine still there? 
She had been released from prison, that much he knew, 
but what had become of her? The shutters were closed 
light and nothing stirred behind them. 

The cart at last reached the Place de la Revolution. 


7 





THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


The brothers did not have to wait long. When their 
turn came, they embraced and kissed each other. 
Camille Desmoulins stopped sighing for his beloved 
Lucile for a moment as they were led past him, and 
Danton looked at them indifferently. He had had nothing 
to do with them. 

It was the 14th Germinal of the year II of the one 
and indivisible Republic, the 5th of April, 1794, of the 
old calendar. 

Who were the brothers Frey? 

The trial papers tell us, although they do not agree 
in every detail. Clerks did not take it too seriously then; 
the accused were doomed anyhow, and the clerk put 
down whatever he heard in the din without taking 
pains to ask for the spelling of the foreign names. The 
papers speak of the brothers as the bankers and army 
suppliers Junius Gottlob (Kotlo) and Emanuel Ernest 
Frey (Fraye). The executioner listed the younger under 
No. 564 as Emanuel Frez, his brother. No. 565, oddly 
as Junius Eschine Portock. Otherwise there is no diver¬ 
gence in the data. Both are called barons, living together 
with their 16-year-old sister Leopoldine, alleged daughter 
of Emperor Leopold II of Austria and wife of the former 
Capucin monk and prominent member of the National 
Assembly Fran9ois Chabot, who perished under the 
guillotine with Danton and the brothers Frey. Age of 
the latter: Junius 36, Emanuel 27; place of birth: 
Bruenn (Brune), Moravia, “pays imphial”; domicile: 
Vienna; for the last two years Paris, 19 rue d’Anjou, 
Faubourg Saint-Honor6, which was also Chabot’s 
address. 


8 



Childhood of a Messiah 

What had brought the brothers Frey and their sister 
to Paris? 

The answer goes back, via several intermediary points, 
to the village of Korolowka in the easternmost corner of 
the Polish province of Galicia where, in the year 1726, 
Rachel, the wife of Leib, an innkeeper, gave birth to 
a boy who, under the name of Jacob Frank, was to 
play an important, though by no means praiseworthy, 
role in Jewish history as the leader of a messianic move¬ 
ment. He was the second cousin of the brothers Frey, 
and Junius his heir apparent. 

Although he himself had no desire to study, Frank 
spoke of his father, not without pride, as a learned 
rabbi in Czernowitz and later Bucharest; on another 
occasion, however, and probably closer to the truth, 
he described him as a leaseholder of some Polish land- 
owner. Several years before his death, Frank revealed 
to his followers a great secret, according to which he 
was the son of a mighty king whose empire was seven 
years beyond the sea and who left him a treasure buried 
at the mouth of the Danube where it flows into the 
Black Sea. This fairytale sufficed to make his followers 
lill his empty pockets with gold and his creditors allow 
for advances. 

Frank’s mother came from a well-to-do family in 


9 


THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


Rzeszow, western Galicia. Frank loved her fine bed 
sheets and pillowcases embroidered with gold and silver, 
as well as the lace-covered shirts she used to sew while 
the maidservants made bedclothes from raw linen to be 
given away to poor Jewish girls as part of their dowry. 

His mother told him once of a dream he had when 
he was four years old, in which he saw God’s beauti¬ 
ful face. He was sitting on God’s knee and God gave 
him a ball of golden thread saying, “Hold on, my child, 
to this ball, and let it not fall out of your hand when 
the time comes to unroll it.” Whether this was a true 
childhood dream or a late fruit of Frank’s vivid imagina¬ 
tion may better be left undecided here. 

Frank was very fond of his grandmother, “a well- 
experienced stargazer” who protected him from the 
witches who surrounded his cradle with their queen in 
front. “Take good care of this child,” she is said to 
have admonished his parents, “for he will bring some¬ 
thing new into the world.” And he goes on reminiscing 
(as recorded by a disciple): “She was a truly decent 
and charitable woman. When there was famine in the 
country, she distributed food to the needy, Christian 
and Jew alike, and nobody was turned away empty- 
handed. People came to see her from far away for she 
was blessed with the virtues of our ancestral mothers, 
the wives of the biblical patriarchs. Half a year before 
she died, she fell very sick. They rushed to her bedside 
from all over because she was famous for her charity. 
People assembled in the synagogue and cried and im¬ 
plored God for her life and well-being, and handed 
out many alms. It was all in vain.” 

Frank’s father was a strict man. When his children 
reached the age of five, he used to seat them at the table 
and teach them good manners. Whosoever did not be- 


10 


Childhood of a Messiah 

liave got a spanking; the punishment was the same 
for refusing to eat. He once brought a sky-blue suit 
liome for his son, and when little Jacob asked him 
where he got it, he said from God in heaven. But then 
he put it away for the holidays. “So I took my clothes,” 
Frank remembers, “and buried them in the ground and 
came home all naked. And when they asked me: Where 
are your clothes,’ I Said, they have been stolen from 
me and now I must walk around in the nude. So they 
had to give me the new suit and the white shirt they 
had made for me to wear on the holidays, and I paraded 
in them all over town.” 

There was also an uncle in the house. “I used to 
crawl into his bed and would not leave him alone until 
lie joined me in saying good night to everybody, even 
the mice, big and small, as well as to the snakes and 
all the animals in the forest, including the birds; to all 
and everyone I said good night.” 



The Polish Jews 

These were not good nights for the Polish Jews. 
Polish statehood was disintegrating, and the Federa¬ 
tion of Jewish Communities, the so-called Synod of 
the Four Provinces, with it. This body, established in 
the sixteenth century for the collection of the Jewish 
head tax, had developed over time into an autonomous 
organism with judicial, fiscal, religious, educational, 
and even some penal prerogatives, a veritable state 


11 




THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


within the state. By the end of the seventeenth cen¬ 
tury, however, it was only a shadow of its former self. 
In addition to being torn apart by intrigue and corrup¬ 
tion, a faithful copy of the Polish diet, the Sejm, it was 
burdened by heavy debts to the Catholic church, 
mainly to the Jesuits, whose total assets in 1773, at the 
time the order was dissolved, consisted of lou’s from 
the Jewish communities bearing 30 percent a year. 

The indebtedness of the Jewish communities re¬ 
sulted from the general impoverishment of Polish 
Jewry dating back to the devastating revolts of the 
Ukrainian peasants during the seventeenth century, 
especially those under the command of the Cossak 
hetman Chmielnitsky. In the wake of Poland’s ex¬ 
pansion to the East, the Jews arrived in the Ukraine as 
tenants, publicans, and tax collectors of the Polish 
overlords who entrusted them not only with the man¬ 
agement of their domains, but even with the collection 
of church taxes. Thus it was not unusual for the Jew 
to post himself Sundays at the church door and collect 
an “admission fee.” The keys to the church were also 
in his custody, and no baptism, wedding or funeral 
could take place without his handing them over—of 
course, against payment of the customary dues. Little 
did it matter that he acted on behalf of his Polish 
master, who received the lion’s share. The Jews were 
first and foremost to feel the brunt of the revolts. They 
were massacred by the thousands (100,000 in 1648 
alone) and 300 Jewish communities went up in fire, 
the biggest holocaust before Hitler. 

The turmoil that followed (interior factionalism, 
decay of the towns, Swedish and Russian invasions) 
certainly did not help the situation. By way of “comfort” 
to their suffering people, Jewish officialdom had only 


12 


The Polish Jews 

to offer heavier taxation and the old tune that God 
had punished them for their sins; in other words, they 
should blame themselves for what had happened. Be¬ 
sides adding insult to injury, this only heightened the 
desire for salvation. Preachers and prophets appeared, 
heralding the imminent coming of the Messiah. 

Then, spreading like a hurricane through the Jewish 
world, the news carne of his arrival in 1665, in the 
city of Smyrna way down in Turkey, under the name of 
Sabbatai Zevi. Why, was he not, as predicted, born on 
the anniversary day of the destruction of Jerusalem and 
had he not done the abominable and pronounced the 
name of God without having been swallowed up by 
the earth? The Jews of Europe from as far away as 
Amsterdam and Hamburg were caught in a wild frenzy; 
many sold off their houses, packed their belongings, and 
took to the road to join the Messiah—only to run head- 
on into the frightful news of his conversion to Islam! 
Imprisoned by the suspicious Sultan, he had been hold¬ 
ing court in jail and receiving delegations from all over 
Europe until he was given the choice: conversion or 
death. He chose life, and his companions with him. The 
initial disappointment, far from being the end of Sabbatai 
Zevi’s adventure, turned quickly into a renewed and 
more obstinate faith. Had they not been told time and 
again of the Messiah’s sufferings, his birth pangs? Of 
the strange things he would have to do in order to 
bring salvation? Of the necessity of his descent into the 
abyss of sin and his passing through the 49 gates of ' 
abomination? Just as the “scandal” of the crucifixion 
became the symbol of salvation in the eyes of Christ’s 
disciples, so the followers of Sabbatai Zevi accepted 
the apostasy of their master as only one more proof of 
his veracity; and even his death, far from robbing 


13 






THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


them of their belief, only made them look forward 
faithfully to his second coming. 

Excommunicated and persecuted by the rabbis who 
felt threatened in their positions, the heretics went 
underground, often under the guidance of outstanding 
personalities such as the much-maligned rabbi of Prague 
and later Hamburg, Jonathan Eibenschuetz (1690- 
1764), who escaped excommunication only by joining 
the signers of the ban (which was also signed by Aaron 
Baer Wehle, a leading Sabbataian and prominent 
member of the Prague Jewish community). Scattered 
all over Europe, the heretics kept in touch with each 
other, published a vast array of writings, and seemed 
only to wait for a renewed call to break camp. From 
their ranks came the many messianic prophets and 
“balshems” (from the Hebrew baal hashem, master of 
the divine name) who roamed the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries. Most popular among them were 
Mortke Eisenstadt, Haskel Wormser, Moshe Kamionker, 
and particularly Yidl Hassid and Haim Malakh who, 
at the head of 1,200 white-clad penitents, wailing and 
weeping Jewish flagellantes, made, in 1700, their way 
from Poland via Austria and Italy to the Holy Land. 
Failure and disappointment notwithstanding, they always 
found numerous believers. Here, apparently, was an in¬ 
exhaustible source for messianism to draw on and only 
a charismatic leader was needed to kindle the flame 
anew. He arose, not in one, but in two men; and 
although the popular movements they initiated were quite 
different in character—disdain for the world and escape 
into the realm of the soul in one, world hatred and 
destructive nihilism in the other—they were only two 
sides of the same coin, two different ways of reacting 
to the same cause, two veritable grass-root revolts 


14 


Ghetto Mysticism 

against the oppressive, petrified rule of the rabbis, with 
many affinities and a similar end. 



Ghetto Mysticism 

Has'sidism and Frankism, the two movements which 
deeply disturbed European Jewry during the eighteenth 
century and beyond, belong to the long chain of heretic 
sects that goes back to the early Christians and the 
Gnostics. The founders of both came from that remote 
corner of eastern Europe, the forest and mountain 
country of eastern Galicia and the adjoining Ukraine 
which saw the last offsprings of gnostic Manicheism 
and the Bogomils. 

The founder of Hassidism (from the Hebrew hassid, 
pious) was Israel Balshem (1700-1760), called Bal- 
shem Tov, the good balshem, in distinction to the 
many other balshems, among them even one in London. 
Israel was a simple Jew and tavern keeper, a dreamer 
who liked to roam through fields and forests, watch the 
clouds, and listen to the wind. In the year 1736 he 
is said to have had an illumination when “a little 
peasant” in the woods showed him the “religion of 
love,” which was probably the “religion of love” of the 
Khlyste, a mystic sect of Russian, Ukrainian, and even 
Polish peasantry that existed into the late nineteenth 
century. Jacob Frank (1726-1791), he too an un¬ 
educated man, also knew the Khlyste, and their orgiastic 
rites could hardly have escaped his attention. Despite 


15 



THE MILITANT MESSIAH 

these coincidences, no conclusions should be drawn 
concerning mutual influences. Contrary to the Jewish 
sects, the Khlyste had a negative attitude towards life; 
they abstained from meat and intoxicating beverages, 
kept long fasting periods, and chastised and castigated 
themselves (their name comes from the Russian khlyst, 
whip). If they are mentioned occasionally on the follow¬ 
ing pages, it is not for the sake of establishing correla¬ 
tions, but to show that different soils may bring forth 
similar flowers. Any similarity is strictly coincidental, 
that is, not the result of historical causality or inter¬ 
dependence, but rather (to borrow from Jungian ter¬ 
minology) a case of synchronicity, an independent 
parallelism of development, in this instance the unfolding 
of a certain process common to all established churches 
of the time. And the time was one of overall ferment 
and restiveness, a fertile ground for sectarianism in East 
and West alike. Some scholars even thought to discover 
in Hassidism traces of English Pietism and Mongolian 
Buddhism, while others regarded the Russian sects as 
a sort of Christian Hassidism. Be that as it may, whether 
Russian Khlyste, German Hupfer, English Jumpers, or 
American Shakers, they show some striking similarities 
with those wretched Jews of the god-forsaken hamlets 
in eastern Galicia both in the spiritual and formal 
sense. What they all have in common is the dissatisfac¬ 
tion, if not open disgust, with the empty formalism of 
institutionalized religion, coupled with the perennial 
longing for a personal communion with God, the unio 
mystica, frustrated time and time again by the churches 
and clergies of all brands and denominations. 

The Balshem proclaimed that God can be reached 
by anybody, no learned rabbi is needed. God is omni¬ 
present, not only in the synagogue at the determined 


16 


Ghetto Mysticism 

hours of prayer, but even in such unorthodox places as 
an open meadow or deep in the woods. He wants to 
be served not in sadness, penitence, and mortification 
of the body, but in joyful song and dance; not just by 
word of mouth, but by anything one does: walking, 
eating, working, making love; in short, with every part, 
movement and functjon of the body. Hence the noisy 
prayers of the Hassidim, their ecstatic outcries and 
clapping hands, their shaking and twisting bodies, their 
suddenly jumping off the ground while praying, their 
bendihg and swaying “like trees in the wind,” totally 
oblivious to what is going on around them. It was only 
perfect logic, in the light of such ideas, for a Hassid 
once to defend himself against the reproach of impiety; 
“Chewing tobacco or emptying my bowels is more 
meaningful than all your prayers.” Salomon Maimon 
(1753-1800), who took the jump from Hassidism to 
Kantian philosophy, described in his Autobiography how 
the Hassidim, “not unlike the Greek cynics, violated all 
laws of good behavior, ran around naked in the streets, 
relieved themselves in the presence of others and the 
like. ... Some even became insane and believed they 
did not exist at all.” 

Even sin may be turned into a service to God, for 
there is no evil as such; sin is “the throne of the good” 
and contains one of those divine sparks which fell 
down into the depths from the work of creation; and 
whoever raises it by “entering and smashing the shells 
that imprison it,” is the truly righteous one of his time, 
the tsaddik. Anybody can do it and many are called 
upon, but few are chosen. 

For the tsaddik is the mainstay and pillar of the 
world. And if the world has not perished yet, we owe 
it to him. The tsaddik has superhuman powers at his 


17 




THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


command, he can be in two places at the same time, 
has access to heaven where (as the Balshem told of 
himself) he converses with the Messiah and the ancestors, 
pleads the case of his people, remonstrates with, and 
may even summon, God to court as a witness or 
defendant! Arguing with God is an old Jewish habit, 
starting with the patriarchs (Jacob’s by-name is Israel: 
he who wrestled with God) and going on to Moses, 
the prophets, and so forth. When Nahman of Horodenko 
emigrated, in 1764, to Palestine with his community, 
their ship was caught in a storm. The tsaddik asked the 
men to put on their shrouds and prayer shawls and to 
assemble on deck, and thus turned to God: “If the 
heavenly tribunal has decided our doom, I, in the name 
of this holy community, appeal this decision and ask 
it be rescinded!” The sea, so the story goes, calmed 
down immediately. 

Reprimanding God puts the tsaddik obviously in 
great jeopardy. He takes the danger upon himself out 
of love for his people, whose absolute faith is his only 
protection. He often has to use the weirdest means, 
such as disguising himself as a peasant, thief, or robber 
and even committing the forbidden in order to unite 
with the transgressor and keep him from sinning. 

The slightest doubt by any of his followers may be the 
tsaddik’s doom and prevent him from ever finding the 
way back to himself. One owes him, therefore, absolute 
obedience, for whatever he does is good, whether it 
looks so or not. To the historian of religion this may 
sound like talking about the wide-spread medieval sect 
of the “Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit,” who 
considered themselves to be one in God and above good 
and evil like the thirteenth-century German mystic Mas¬ 
ter Eckhart to whom God and man were essentially 


18 


Ghetto Mysticism 

equal, a view which, after his death, was condemned as 
heretical. 

In Hassidism the concepts of good and evil undergo 
a certain qualification. They no longer are determined 
by the deed itself, but depend on the doer. The same 
deed that would be evil committed by an ordinary man, 
committed by the tsaddik is good. For the tsaddik is 
holy and what he does, says, touches is holy. Even to 
speak of him is holy and equal to prayer. Decisive is not 
the What but the How or, in the words of Martin Buber, 
“not the given action, but the dedication of all action.... 
There is no definite, exhibitable, teachable action, but 
the hallowing of all actions without distinction. Each 
action can be the one on which all depends; what is 
decisive is only the strength and concentration of hallow¬ 
ing with which I do it. . . . For all that man does he 
shall do with his whole being.” Certainly, Buber con¬ 
cedes, “the man who has to do with evil in this manner 
runs a great risk,” but he is protected by the circum¬ 
stance that “sin is just that which by its nature cannot 
be done with the whole being.” 

This was written in the 1920’s. Today we know better. 
What was the divine spark in Hitler or Stalin? Evil 
may, and good need not necessarily, be done “with 
one’s whole being.” After all, the human condition is 
not so much the dilemma between right and wrong as 
that of right against right. And there is often no way 
out of it. 

Hassidism, although frequently called a sect, was a 
popular movement. It had won over most of eastern 
Europe’s Jews by the middle of the nineteenth century. 
The Balshem did not teach esoteric ideas for the few 
or advocate a secret brotherhood with hair-raising initia¬ 
tion rites or introduce unintelligible symbolism. He 


19 





THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


brought religion down to earth and taught a mysticism 
to be lived by everybody, easy to grasp and fitted to the 
psychic needs of the little man who, poor and un¬ 
educated as he was, saw himself suddenly placed above 
the rabbis and their scholarly arrogance. No obstruse 
casuistry here, no bone-dry, hairsplitting exegesis; but 
parables and folktales, songs and tunes, not in the 
unintelligible, though sacred Hebrew, but in the vernac¬ 
ular Yiddish, “the language of the kitchen maids,” 
which was now fit for reciting the prayers. And 
enthroned above it all—the holy tsaddik, the man of 
God. 



Hassidism Debunked 

It is here, in its very heart, that Hassidism carried 
the germ of doom. Once more an intermediary arises 
between man and God. The road to salvation passes 
through the tsaddik. Only his devotees find grace in 
the eyes of God, only he who is devoted to the tsaddik 
is devoted to God. From popularization to vulgarization 
is but one step. Contempt for the study of the scriptures 
turns into contempt for any study whatsoever, par¬ 
ticularly the secular sciences, but also for the Jewish 
philosophers of the Middle Ages like Maimonides “who 
built upon what Aristotle, damned be his name, spat 
out.” (Maimonides was and still is the perennial target 
of Jewish orthodoxy; his Guide of the Perplexed was 


20 


Hassidism Debunked 

the first book to be burned by the early Inquisition, 
and that at the request of the rabbis of Montpellier in 
1232.) Blind belief in the tsaddik gives way to a per¬ 
nicious fanaticism, a militant obscurantism. Mystic 
ecstasy is no longer distinguishable from drunkenness, 
and the tsaddik does not let anybody outdo him. He 
becomes an adviser in business and family affairs, if 
not impostor and fraud, healing the sick and the lame, 
“blessing” childless couples with off-spring—all for a 
price. This erosion of the role of the tsaddik was not 
an isolated or late phenomenon. Thus the tsaddik Eli- 
melekh of Lezaisk (died 1786) likened his position be¬ 
tween God and man to that of an intermediary between 
seller and buyer and charged a brokerage fee for his 
services. And that “luminary” of Hassidism, the tsaddik of 
Lublin, Jacob Isaac Hurwicz, performed his miracles 
according to a price tariff. No woman was safe in his 
presence; he died in 1815 by falling out of his window 
dead drunk, an event that legend turned into a punish¬ 
ment for his having accused God of delaying the coming 
of the Messiah. What Buber saw in Hassidism applies 
to the time of the Balshem at best, and only with 
reservations. After all, the Balshem was, like the other 
balshems, a fortune teller, healer, and exorcizer whose 
main income came from the sale of amulets for the 
protection of women in childbed and which were so 
much in demand that he employed two men for their 
manufacture. Thus the populace saw him, thus his disci¬ 
ples saw him, and thus surely he saw himself. 

What came afterwards, and it came surprisingly fast, 
was what inevitably had to come. Every aberration, 
every degeneration of Hassidism was contained in its 
very origin (as even Buber admitted). Jews may be 
as prone to mysticism as other people are, but there 


21 





THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


is an old rationalistic residual in their way of thinking 
which puts a sceptical, if not ironical, damper on their 
relation to God and on mystical exaltation in general. 
Nothing illustrates this better than the following anec¬ 
dote reported by the Talmud: The rabbis were once 
arguing about some point of law when a voice was 
heard from heaven taking sides with one of them; 
thereupon another turned around and shouted: “Quiet 
up there! Here we decide by majority vote!” Or that 
popular story of the old Jew who had kept the com¬ 
mandments scrupulously all his life and then said on his 
deathbed: “Would be funny if there were nothing over 
there either.” What goes by the name of Jewish mystic¬ 
ism is not so much a search for God, as for the hidden 
meaning of the Holy Scriptures, and that is essentially 
the history of the Hebrew people. This is what the 
Cabbala is after, and Hassidism is her legitimate child. 
Not the story of a people, but the passion of a man, the 
New Testament could give rise to the intimate confes¬ 
sions of the great Christian mystics. Christian mysticism 
is unhistoric, Jewish mysticism impersonal and not con¬ 
ducive to a personal outpouring of the soul. God, the 
all-creator, is too remote to allow for more than ex¬ 
uberant admiration of his awesome majesty. A religion 
without myths or mythology, a deity which, according 
to the Jewish credo, cannot be imagined or experienced 
in any way (hence not the hidden God of mystic- 
gnostic lore, the deus absconditus) but a God who 
cannot communicate with man (Spinoza’s substance )— 
to be sure, this does not preclude mysticism altogether, 
but lends itself equally well to agnosticism or atheism. 

What happened to the Balshem was only what had 
happened to many a prophet before him. Like most 
of them, he has left no writings of his own. The stories 


22 


Hassidism Debunked 

he told on his walks through the fields or in the dark¬ 
ness of his little room and which are a true match for 
the Fioretti of St. Francis of Assisi, were written down 
after his death by his disciples, who added some of 
their own and put them into the mouth of the master. 
As time went on, these tales grew in volume. How¬ 
ever, as long as the Balshem was alive, everything 
seemed idyllic and free of coercion. But already his 
immediate successor, the “Great Maggid” (preacher) 
DoV Baer of Mesritch (died 1772) put the movement 
into a straightjacket. Unlike the Balshem who travelled 
from place to place to see the people, the Maggid 
established a permanent residence and made it the holy 
duty of every Hassid to come to see him at least once a 
year, bearing gifts. He also introduced the hereditary 
succession; for holy as the tsaddik, so is his son and 
even grandson (which gave rise to the accession of sev¬ 
eral baby-tsaddiks, not unlike the Tibetan baby Dalai- 
Lamas). The Balshem’s only son was feeble-minded; in 
his stead, one of his grandsons by his daughter became 
a tsaddik, greedy and pleasure-seeking, with an ostenta¬ 
tious household, magnificent coach, brassband, and even 
court jester. The “Great Maggid,” blessed with seven 
sons, crowned them all tsaddik, whereupon they 
promptly took to competing with each other, not always 
in irreproachable ways. With Israel Friedmann, the 
Maggid’s grandson and founder of the notorious dynasty 
of Sadagora, we are already way down the road of the 
dark men of Hassidism with their princely courts, lux¬ 
urious lifestyles and bejeweled women. 

There are many sayings of the Balshem and his 
disciples that fit Buber’s philosophy of mystic existen¬ 
tialism quite well; others do not at all. By concen¬ 
trating on the former and underestimating, if not over- 


23 






THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


looking, the dark side of Hassidism, Buber arrived at 
an idealized, retouched picture, just as if one tried to 
interpret Christianity in the light of the beautiful—but 
only the beautiful—logia of Jesus Christ, omitting his 
curses and damnations, let alone the dogmatic intoler¬ 
ance of the Church. To the adherents of contemporary 
Hassidism, so far as they ever heard of him, Buber 
was an “apikoires” (bowdlerized from Epicurean), a 
blasphemer, and Buber seemed to be aware of it when 
he said he “carried the message Hassidism did not want 
to be, but was and is, into the world against its will.” 

Hassidism encountered the immediate opposition of 
official Judaism, especially that of the greatest rab¬ 
binical authority of the time, the Gaon (scholarprince) 
Elia of Vilna (at whose funeral in 1797 the Hassidim 
danced for joy.) Denounced by their opponents 
(Missnagdim in Hebrew) as heretics and believers in 
Sabbatai Zevi, the Hassidim were repeatedly excom¬ 
municated. In the struggle that followed, the two sides 
were not too choosy in their means, not excluding book 
burning and physical force. Before long, however, the 
axe was buried and the two enemy brothers hurled 
themselves upon a third one, the Enlightenment coming 
from the West and slowly making its way into the ghetto. 
And here they did not even shrink from murder, witness 
the poisoning of the rabbi Dr. Abraham Kohn by the 
Hassidim of Lemberg in 1848. 

Subsequently the conflict between Hassidim and 
Missnagdim simmered down to a reconciliation starting 
with the rehabilitation of the scriptural studies by the 
tsaddik of Ladi, Shneyer Salmen (died 1812) who, 
denounced by his enemies, still had to spend some 
time in Russian prisons. He succeeded afterwards in 
legalizing the “Sect of the Hassidim” with the Tsarist 


24 


Hassidism Debunked 

government, probably in reward for the services he 
rendered them during the Napoleonic war, (Only a 
last minute getaway saved him from falling into the 
hands of the French.) What a paradox: the tsaddik 
allied with the Tsar who oppressed the Jews, against 
Napoleon who brought them their freedom wherever 
he went. 

Spying and informing on Socialists and Zionists alike 
have ever since remained trademarks of Hassidism, and 
the tsaddiks, with few exceptions, were con men of the 
Russian and Austrian, later Polish and Rumanian, po¬ 
lice. One of these exceptions was Nahman of Bratslav, 
the great-grandson of the Balshem and, next to him, 
the most outstanding personality of Hassidism. He 
attacked the tsaddiks (“devil’s henchmen,” he called 
them) for their corrupt way of life and their venality, 
arousing only fury and hatred. An inflammatory cam¬ 
paign was unleashed against him in the course of which 
his house was burned down and he himself almost 
killed. Broken in body and spirit and chased from town 
to town, he died in Uman in 1811 at the age of 38. 
Yet, even this most pathetic figure turned fanatic when 
it came to fighting the hated Enlightenment. His “noble 
character” was of some questionable nature, besides. 
Thus, when he decided to travel to Palestine and his 
wife asked him what she was to live on while he was 
away, he answered: “You will move to your father’s, 
your older sister will hire herself out as a servant, the 
younger one will be taken in by somebody else, your 
mother will find work as a cook, and I will sell all we 
have to pay for the trip.” More will be said later about 
the astonishing similarities between this radical repre¬ 
sentative of a refined Hassidism and Jacob Frank, the 
prophet of an equally radical materialism. 


25 





THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


Mention should be made in this connection of such 
prominent Hassidim as Moshe Friedmann, son of the 
above mentioned tsaddik of Sadagora, who turned his 
back on Hassidism and joined the Enlightenment at 
the risk of his life; the son of the tsaddik of Ladi, who 
turned his back on Judaism and became a Catholic 
convert; and Mendel of Kotsk, probably the most po¬ 
pular tsaddik of his time, who turned his back on God 
and became an atheist, only to be imprisoned in a cage 
by his followers for the remaining twenty years of his 
life. 

To the non-Jewish world Hassidism remained terra 
incognita into the 1920’s; Poland, the Balshem’s home¬ 
land, no exception. Dwelling together for centuries 
and rubbing shoulders every day, Poles and Jews knew 
next to nothing of each other. They lived in different 
worlds and spoke different languages. This mutual igno¬ 
rance lasted as long as there were Jews in Poland. If 
there was a growing number of Jews who spoke Polish, 
there were hardly any Poles who spoke Yiddish (or 
jargon, as they liked to say derogatorily). In vain were 
the efforts of such prominent writers as Julian Niemce- 
wicz and Eliza Orzeszko to break down the barriers of 
hatred and contempt. To the Pole, the Jew was by and 
large a cheat and fanatic when poor, a boaster and 
braggart when rich, a scabby, evil-smelling garlic eater 
in any case. To the Jew, the Pole was more animal 
than man when poor, an arrogant nincompoop unable 
to handle his own affairs when rich, a chronic drunk 
in any case. When it came to Hassidism, even Eliza 
Orzeszko identified it with orthodox Judaism tout court 
(however, by the time she did so, in 1882, she was no 
longer off the mark) and the Balshem was to her just 
another of those “half savage” rabbis. 


26 


The New Messiah 


On the whole, prewar Polish literature was, if not 
indifferent or hostile, critical-tutorial toward the Jews, 
of a well meaning, yet impotent do-goodism that did 
no harm. Hassidism drew a complete blank and found 
refuge only in the works of one single writer, Stanis- 
law Vincenz, who, without criticizing or moralizing, 
accepted it as it was and included some beautiful Has- 
sidic legends in his stories of the Carpathian highlanders. 

Today, with no Jews left in eastern Europe, what 
has remained of Hassidism except the somewhat ques¬ 
tionable groups in Jerusalem, western Europe and the 
United States? Perhaps the “singing rebbe” Shlomo 
Carlebach with his electric guitar? Books remain. Books 
by such Yiddish and Hebrew writers as Agnon and An- 
ski (author of the Dibbuk), J. L. Perez and M. J. 
Bin-Gorion, and most of all the Tales of the Hassidim 
by Martin Buber, a monument aere perennius to the 
vitality and creative power Hassidism once was. 



The New Messiah 

This was the world into which the child Jacob was 
born—he who could not sleep without telling the mice 
good night and who was to become the Balshem’s 
antipode. It is highly improbable that the two men 
ever came to see each other. Hassidic tradition has it 
that the Balshem participated in a church-organized dis¬ 
putation between rabbis and Frankists “because he spoke 
Polish.” The official record, however, does not mention 


27 




T 


THE MILITANT MESSIAH 

him. Anyhow, the rabbis would not have called on the 
assistance of an excommunicated person who was not 
even a rabbi, and the reconciliation between Missnagdim 
and Hassidim came only long after the Balshem’s death. 
The rabbis were ignorant of the Polish language, and 
their speaker was the wealthy wine merchant Baer 
Bolekhover, not the Balshem. Speaker for the other side 
was the Polish adventurer Anton Kossakowski-Molivda 
who had been active among Russian peasant sects; once 
friend and adviser to Frank, he later became his accuser 
before the Warsaw Inquisition. Frank arrived only 
towards the end of the disputation (which took place in 
Lemberg, from July to September, 1759) and was too 
busy preparing, or rather delaying, his baptism to actively 
take part in the proceedings. Be that as it may, the two 
protagonists must have heard of each other. Neither 
mentions his counterpart, but the Balshem is said to have 
died broken-hearted at the news of Frank’s conversion 
to Catholicism. Although the two dates are not far apart 
—November 1759 and May 1760—the story may be 
taken as a pious mystification to emphasize the noble 
mind of the Balshem and to blame the renegades for 
his death. 

Frank was the very opposite of the Balshem in char¬ 
acter as well: not a quiet, introverted child, but an 
unruly boy of unusual strength, the terror of the town. 
He relished telling of his youthful doings, which ranged 
from more or less harmless rnischief in the synagogue 
to serious robberies and holdups. One night he went 
from house to house banging a wooden hammer twice 
against each door, the customary signal of a death in 
town. Everybody came running out into the street in 
their nightgowns shouting. Who has died? At the age 
of twelve he commanded a gang of a hundred boys. 


28 


The New Messiah 

Jewish and non-Jewish, who hijacked travellers, threw 
sand into their eyes, and robbed them of their last shirt. 

The unsteady life of the family may have had some¬ 
thing to do with it. A follower of Sabbatai Zevi, Frank’s 
father was forced to move from place to place, settling 
finally in Bucharest which then belonged to Turkey. He 
gave his 13-year-old in apprenticeship to a spice mer¬ 
chant, much to the youngster’s dislike. Soon the boy 
had a gang of teenagers at his command, fighting bloody 
battles with other gangs and terrorizing the neighbor¬ 
hood. An extortion attempt landed him in jail, and 
only the intervention of “a noble lady” helped him out 
of it. Back it went to the spice shop, but not for long. 
Trying it on his own, he dealt not in spices, but in silk 
and jewels, a trade which took him, during the next few 
years, as far as Smyrna. He bragged about his luck with 
women, who were not only his best customers, but who 
also favored him in other ways—allegedly thanks to a 
magic stone in his possession which made him irre¬ 
sistible. A less magical explanation may be found in his 
manliness and animal strength, underscored by his 
pockmarked face. The sexual element later played a 
dominant role in the rites of his sect. Next to women, 
Frank’s passion was horses. He was an excellent horse¬ 
man and once crossed the swollen rapids of the Dniester 
river on horseback to the astonishment of a crowd of 
onlookers. 

Smyrna became the turning point of his life. Under 
the guidance of a certain rabbi Issakhar he plunged 
into the mysteries of the Cabbala, soon acquiring the 
reputation of a Cabbalist, although by his own admis¬ 
sion he understood little of it. A small following gathered 
around him, led by his steady companions Mortke of 
Prague, Nahman of Poland, and the “blind Nossen.” 


29 




THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


Upon learning from his teacher that the call of God was 
to reach the Messiah in Salonica, he decided to go there 
and become a servant to God’s yet to be chosen emis¬ 
sary: 

“I want to serve him with all my heart. If he needs 
wood, I shall cut wood for him. If he wants me to 
fetch water. I shall do it. If he needs somebody to fight 
his wars, I shall put myself at the head of his hosts. 

Salonica was the refuge for many Jews fleeing Poland 
and other parts of Europe. They were called Franks by 
their Turkish coreligionists, and so our hero came to be 
called “Jacob the Frank”, and later, back in Poland, 
simply Jacob Frank. Frank or Frenk was a generic 
name for European in the Near East, going back to the 
time of the Crusades and the predominantly Frankish 
Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1099-1199. Strangely enough, 
the oriental immigrants in modern Israel are called 
Frenks, probably because so many of them speak French, 
having been educated in the schools the Allicince Israelite 
Universelle established for the dissemination of the 
French language among the, Jews of North Africa and 
the Near East. 

Salonica was the seat of the Messiah according to the 
Doenme (Turkish for apostates), those followers of 
Sabbatai Zevi who, together with him, had been con¬ 
verted to Islam without renouncing their Judaism, some¬ 
what like the Spanish Marranos or pseudo-Christians, 
many of whom had found a hdven in Turkey. The rites 
of the Doenme (some of whom, we are told, survive in 
present-day Turkey) culminated in orgiastic dances to 
the singing of the biblical Song of Songs. They believed 
in the immortality and pre-existence of the Messiah (in 
Jewish lore he existed even before the creation of the 
world); summoned by God, he appeared on earth in the 


30 


The New Messiah 

persons of Moses, Jesus Christ, and Sabbatai Zevi. Frank 
reached Salonica in 1753; he familiarized himself with 
the teachings of the Doenme and decided to proclaim 
himself Messiah. He betook himself to the main 
synagogue of Salonica and announced he was the rein¬ 
carnation of Sabbatai Zevi. The latter, he said, had been 
unable to accomplish his mission because he did not 
taste “the sweetness of power.” Still in Smyrna, Frank 
once had asked his mentor, Rabbi Issakhar, why Sab¬ 
batai Zevi had to die; he was told that “Sabbatai had 
come to taste everything, even the bitterness of death.” 
Whereupon Frank queried, “Why then did he not taste 
the sweetness of power?” 



Visions 


A true visionary, Frank had visions, first on Novem¬ 
ber 20, 1754: 

Riiah Hakodesh (Hebrew, the holy ghost) de¬ 
scended on me and I heard a voice calling, “Go and 
get me the wise Jacob, and as soon as he enters the 
first room, all doors shall open before him!” Two 
maidens, the fairest there are, took me under my 
arms and fiew me through space toward the rooms. 

In some of them there were women and maidens; 
in others, teachers and pupils, and I had only to 
hear one word in order to understand everything. 

In the last room there was the First One (Sabbatai 
Zevi) in the midst of his disciples, wearing Frank- 


31 







THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


ish clothes. He said to me: ‘‘Are you the wise 
Jacob? I have heard of you, of your courage and 
strength of mind. I made it up to here, but I am 
too weak to continue. If you care, gird your loins 
and may God help you! Quite a few have tried it 
and have broken down under the burden.” He 
pointed through the window to a dark abyss that 
looked like the Black Sea and a mountain beyond it 
which reached into the sky. And I exclaimed, “Well 
then, I shall go! So help me God!” 


This was easier said than done. He proclaimed him¬ 
self Messiah and Santo Senor, but somehow the spark 
did not catch fire this time. First of all, the new Mes¬ 
siah was not well to do; messiahs seldom are. Second, 
he had just married the beautiful, but poor, Hanna. 
His arrogant behavior in the synagogue irked the people; 
the next time he was thrown out into the street and 
greeted there with not only mud and rocks, but worse, 
with laughter and derision. Frank never forgot the abuse 
he suffered in Salonica and kept complaining about it 
for years; he felt like a jeweler displaying a very 
precious stone with nobody around to appreciate it. 
“Laugh your mouth full,” he scolded his scoffers, “but 
let me tell you, there will be more Jews following me 
than you have hair on your heads!” Yet, matters grew 
worse. He was ejected from his lodgings, had to sleep in 
the open and even beg for food, “but I took it upon me 
for the love of God.” Finally he fell ill with boils all 
over his body; by then he was definitely sick and tired 
of the Messiah career and wanted to go back to the 
jewel trade, to the great dismay of the trio Mortke- 
Nahman-Nossen: “What? That’s what you want? Making 
money? This is not your way!” He gave in, but Salonica 
was no longer an abode for him. His health had im¬ 


32 


Visions 


proved somewhat, but his reputation was gone. And so he 
decided, upon the advice of his friends, to go to Poland 
where great numbers of Sabbataians lived in expectation 
of their Messiah’s return. Later he presented this deci¬ 
sion as the result of a series of visions in which the 
prophet Elia and Jesus Christ ordered him to Poland. 
He did not obey at first: Why Poland when he was 
doing fairly well in Smyrna? Thereupon he fell sick 
again and saw in his fever dream a gray-bearded man 
telling him, “You will get well in Poland; here you will 
die.” He brushed the apparition aside, but his fever 
rose; his condition grew worse until he lost his voice 
and cOuld not move. They held some down to his nose 
to see whether he was breathing, then closed his eyes 
as if he had died. Let him tell in his own words what 
followed next: 

I saw a beautiful bearded man before me who 
told me to go to Poland. I turned toward the wall, 
but there on the wall he stood again and I became 
terribly scared. He took me by the hand, where one 
feels the pulse, and told me to rise. I tore loose and 
threw myself around, but there, in the middle of 
the room, he stood again, all nude, with outstretched 
arms and open wounds on his hands and feet. I 
jumped out of my bed and fell to my knees before 
him. But he said, “I have sent you Elia twice, but 
you did not listen. So I came myself. Do not fearl 
You will go to Poland.” I answered, “How can I 
go to Poland without even speaking their language? 

I have my bread here and a young wife who will 
not go with me.” But he said, “You go first, she 
will follow later. I am going to give you a sign by 
which you will recognize the believers in the true 
faith. Whenever the going gets rough, I shall send 
you Elia.” With these words he disappeared and I 
have never seen him again. The people around me 


33 








THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


had not seen or heard anything of this. When I 
jumped Out of my bed and fell to my knees, they 
had run away, scared stiff, and were now staring 
into the room from outside. But I got up and ate and 
drank as if nothing had happened, and was well 
ever since. 

Off to Poland! He left his wife in the care of her 
parents in Nicopol (today Bulgaria) where she bore him 
a daughter, Eve, or Avatcha as he liked to call her. It 
was also in Nicopol that he almost fell victim to a 
cutthroat, hired by Turkish Jews, who inflicted some 
wounds on his head and chest. At long last, on Decem¬ 
ber 5, 1755, he crossed the border. In the distance, on 
the other side of the river, one could see the Polish 
guards, who did not let anybody pass. “There appeared 
to me,” Frank reminisces, “the prophet Elia, exactly the 
way I had seen him in my dreams, gray beard and white 
coat, saying, ‘Go on and fear not!’ The coachman had 
not noticed anything and hesitated as we approached 
the guards, so I told him, ‘Go on and fear not!’ And we 
passed unmolested; and when we arrived at the village, 
the innkeeper could not stop wondering how we could 
have made it.” 

Thus Frank arrived at his birthplace, Korolowka, 
and put up at his uncle’s. His uncle’s wife took offense 
at his strange ways, his un-Jewish way of praying, his 
eating “Christian” food, and the like. But she changed 
her mind when she heard him telling of the purpose 
of his coming: “If you knew why I came to Poland, 
you would wet the earth with your tears. I say to 
you, there will be lords and princes coming and wait¬ 
ing for days at my door to see me. What will happen 
afterwards, however, I cannot tell you yet.” 

A number of people joined him immediately. He 


34 


End of the Law 

tliought he saw an aura around their heads and real¬ 
ized this was the promised sign. A group of wealthy 
.lews from Leimberg was refused admission because they 
did not have it. The news of his coming spread rapidly 
and he was greeted everywhere with open arms, even 
by rabbis and notables. His main followers, however, 
were the poor and destitute, who recognized in him one 
of their own who, far from hiding his origins, took 
pride in calling himself a “prostak,” or rude fellow: “If 
a learned man were needed, God would have sent one.” 

Actually a number of Polish gentlemen showed up 
with their ladies, curious to see the Jewish Messiah, 
lie did not disappoint them and performed some “mira¬ 
cles,” like catching a pickpocket who put his hand into 
1-rank’s coat and could no longer withdraw it. Or re¬ 
moving the huge pillory to which thieves and harlots 
were tied for a lashing; three men could not move it 
from place, yet he did it all by himself and crossed the 
river on it (a miracle which is also reported to have 
been performed by the Balshem and other tsaddiks on 
I heir coats, scarves, and similar “means of transporta¬ 
tion,” later a favored theme for satirical folk songs). 



End of the Law 

Frank has been called a false Messiah a la Sabbatai 
Zevi, and Frankism—pseudo-messianism. Vulgar mes- 
sianism would be more to the point. In Hassidism the 
messianic idea is pushed into the background by the 


35 





THE MILITANT MESSIAH 

mystical longing for individual salvation to such an 
extent that in 1860 for instance, when the waves of 
messianism were rising once more, the tsaddik Eliezer 
Dzikever could publicly declare that, notwithstanding 
his daily expectation of the Messiah, he could take an 
oath on it that he would not come this year. Frankism, 
on the other hand, diverted the messianic idea into a 
new path, and with Frank a new kind of Messiah 
entered upon the stage. No more talk of a return to 
Palestine, not a word of rebuilding the temple in Jeru¬ 
salem. Instead, a materialistic religion; in Frank’s own 
words, “not to the sage and the learned was it given, 
but to me, an ignorant fellow; for the sage look up to 
heaven where there is nothing to see, while I look down 
to earth and see what God does on it.” 

He likened himself to the unskilled apprentice who 
drills a hole through the perfect pearl which no master 
dared to pierce: “So I will with God’s help pierce all 
and bring life to you.” And by life he understood well¬ 
being and freedom in the fair country of Poland, whose 
napie in popular belief comes from the Hebrew po lin 
(here shall you pass the night) and which he would not 
trade for all the countries in the world filled with dia¬ 
monds to the rim. 

Hassidism never transgressed the legal framework of 
traditional Judaism. Even the heresies of which it was 
accused amounted to no more than a lax and noisy 
prayer service and the substitution of a corrupted Seph¬ 
ardic (Spanish-Jewish) liturgy for the Ashkenasic (Ger¬ 
man-Jewish). Frankism, however, is sheer antinomian- 
isjn. 

Like so many since St. Paul, yet surpassing them all, 
the new Messiah proclaimed the end of all law, not 
just the Jewish one: “I have come to abolish all laws 


36 


End of the Law 

and religions and bring life to the world. . . . Do not 
believe that only the Jews have to be saved, God forbid, 
all mankind has to.” And for that purpose all social 
institutions have to be destroyed because they stand in 
the way of salvation. 

It is here that the philosophical structure of Frankism 
breaks down. The place of the old myths which are to 
be destroyed is taken up by a new one: The work of 
destruction has to be accomplished by man’s descent to 
the lowest depths of abomination. 

Old Jewish ideas meet here with Christian and Gnostic 
ones. It was common belief that the coming of the Mes¬ 
siah would signal the end of evil and sin. That could 
mean two things: either that no more sins would be 
committed or that they no longer would be considered 
sins. In any case, according to the Talmud, first the 
world will have to be filled with heresy, the same answer 
(with opposite value signs, of course) Christianity gives 
about the second coming of Christ. For, in the Talmud, 
the Hebrew word for heresy, minuth, usually stands for 
Christianity. The Frankist propaganda referred copiously 
to this and other talmudic quotations which picture “the 
end of the days” as an era of general depravity, when all 
houses of worship will be houses of whoredom, when the 
wisdom of the scholars will stink to heaven and virtue be 
scoffed at; in short, the world will be turned upside 
down. Frank saw his calling in achieving this goal and 
leading humanity through this time: 

I have not come to uplift, I have come to destroy 
and debase everything until it has sunk so low that 
it cannot sink any lower. 

The road into the abyss is terrifying and fear¬ 
some. Even our father Jacob was afraid of it and 
did not dare to step on the heavenly ladder. It con- 


37 





THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


sists of two converging parts that meet at the 
bottom, one part leading downwards, the other up¬ 
wards, and there is no ascending without descend¬ 
ing first. So the world was to wait for another 
Jacob. 

The idea of no ascent without descent is drawn from 
the Talmud and was very popular with Cabbalists. 
Hassidism, too, knows of a state of lawlessness, not in 
the abyss of abomination, but on the heights of ecstasy 
where “the distinction between sacred and profane no 
longer exists because all has become holy” and—to 
quote Buber once more—“laws and commandments are 
folding their wings because annihilated is the evil urge 
that hovers over them,” in other words, not suppressing 
sin, but conquering it by hallowing the profane. Frank’s 
only concern, however, was the descent into the abyss: 

Down the abyss leads the way and everybody 
must have a lion’s heart and no fear, for I shall go 
ahead. 

And as I stand before you, ignorant and crude 
—I have been chosen, for I am the darkness out of 
which the light emerges! 

It has been said: “A star came forward out of 
Jacob.” This star has existed from the earliest be¬ 
ginning and has been falling lower and lower ever 
since. All vile and heinous things are in its power, 
and it is the gate through which I shall lead you. 


38 


Ritual Sex 


This is nothing but the old Pauline-Gnostic idea of 
the felix culpa, the holy sin, of the road to God leading 
through sin, the perverse desire of fighting evil with 
evil, of doing away with sin by sinning. One is reminded 
of, the Khlyste and their call: “Go down into yourself 
like into a grave and be as Christ who became flesh to 
destroy sin with sin!” This, of course, was not a call to 
theft and murder, but meant, as with St. Paul, “the sin 
of the flesh.” Besides public meals on fastdays (also 
practiced by the young Jewish revolutionaries of eastern 
Europe as part of the “class war”) it took, with the 
Frankists, the form of a ritualistic libertinism. Under 
the guise of the (misread?) Bible verse “Praise the 
Lord who permits the forbidden” (Psalm 146) and such 
bewildering sayings of the Talmud as “Great is the sin 
committed for its own sake, greater than the good deed 
not committed for its own sake” or “The subversion of 
the Law is its fulfillment,” a complete reversal of values 
is attained. Everything is permitted, lies, deceit, adultery 
(“there is no such thing in heaven”), all moral concepts 
reversed, and truth turned into absurdity. Interrogated 
by a rabbinical court, some Frankists admitted to having 
had sexual intercourse with married women in the 
presence and with permission of their husbands, while 
\)thers confessed to incestuous intercourse. Championing 
this, even before Frank’s arrival in Poland, was the 


39 





THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


family of the rabbi of Rohatyn, Elisha Schorr, whose 
daughter Hanna, a kind of Frankist priestess, uttered 
in sexual rapture whole passages of the Zohar, the Cab¬ 
balistic bible. 

This was something unheard of in the ghetto. The 
Cabbala contains a host of paradoxes and the Zohar is 
overflowing with sexual symbolism, albeit transposed 
to the divine and accessible only to the few. The po¬ 
pulace swallowed it eagerly. Their walled-up hatred of 
the clergy found an outlet at last and turned into a 
destructive mania, the morbid lust for tearing down 
and trampling under foot all that is holy. This passionate 
nihilism was the motive power of Frankism. It found 
expression in numerous sayings of Frank which often 
sound like the sexual freedom and antiestablishment 
slogans of nowadays. So does Sabbatai Zevi’s call for 
woman liberation from under the yoke of male domina¬ 
tion. Here follow some of Frank’s characteristic pro¬ 
nouncements: 

Throw away what you have learned! Trample on 
all the laws you have obeyed and obey only me! 

How many times have I told you: We have to 
trample under foot everything we know! All the 
prayers that have been sent up during the five 
thousand years the world has existed are nothing but 
empty words! 

Whatever I step on, will perish. I have come to 
destroy everything! 

Or such Manichean and openly cynical remarks as: 

How could God allow a world to exist full of 
death and misery? This would contradict his om¬ 
nipotence. No, he who created this world cannot 
be the true God. 

Even God cannot be approached without money. 


40 


Ritual Sex 
But then again: 

A hero is not he who subdues his enemy by force, 
but he who can suffer distress and grief. 

Do not let an ugly word pass your lips and do 
not say bad things about other people, for it was 
not given to you to examine the heart of man and 
to judge between good and bad. 

Whosoever doe's not love his neighbor and takes 
joy in hurting him, whosoever swears and slanders 
is not a true human being and cannot stay with me 
under one roof. 

And what possibly were the most beautiful words Frank 
was ever to utter and which can almost serve as a coun¬ 
terpart to Jesus’ cursing the figtree (Matt. 21:19). 

I was on the road once. The sun was very hot 
and I was tired and had no place to rest. Then I saw 
a tree with cool shade. The fragrance of its fruit 
filled the air and a brook of fresh water rushed past 
it. I lay down under the tree, ate some of the fruit 
and drank the sweet water. When I awoke, I asked 
the tree, how shall I thank you? By wishing you 
many branches? You have them. By wishing you 
sweet and fragrant fruit? You have them. A brook 
joTTresh water? You have it. All I can wish you is 
this: May many more people come and find rest in 
your shade and give thanks to God for having 
created you. 

The religious rites of the Frankists consisted of 
ecstatic songs and dances accompanied by wild clapping 
of hands, similar to the Hassidic dances, but with female 
participation and ending in an orgiastic ritual. The 
service usually began with Frank kneeling down and 
fastening two burning candles to a wooden bench, 
driving a nail into the wood between them and pointing 


41 



THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


a cross in all directions, exclaiming: “Forsa damus para 
verti, seibul grandi asserverti!” (in Ladino, the Spanish 
dialect of the Sephardic Jews: “Give us the strength to 
see you, the great bliss to serve you!”) Then the lights 
were extinguished and pandemonium broke loose. Men 
and women undressed completely “to get at the truth 
in its nakedness” and took to copulating pell-mell, with 
only the leader keeping aloof in the midst of it all. 

The Khlyste had similar rites, with dervish-like dances, 
ceremonial extinguishing of the lights, and “common 
sin” or “love of Christ,” so called because the Holy 
Ghost was supposed to bring the couples together. Ritual 
nakedness symbolizing the sinlessness of Adam before 
the Fall, was also practiced by the “Brethren and Sisters 
of the Free Spirit.” Their mass was conducted by a nude 
priest and accompanied with much singing and rejoicing 
by an equally nude congregation. They engaged in free 
sexual intercourse, even incest, because, referring to 
the saying of St. Paul “To the clean everything is clean,” 
they did not consider sinning whatever they did—exactly 
as the tsaddiks who often speak as though they had been 
disciples of Master Eckhart! 

A weekly high point of the Frankist ritual was the 
Friday evening reception of “Queen Sabbath” where the 
men, singing the prayer “Lekhu doidi likrass kallo!” 
(Hebrew for “Come, my lover, meet the bride!”) danced 
around a “topless” young woman who was crowned 
with the sacred paraphernalia of the synagogue and then 
hurled themselves upon her. 

The sexual element also played a distinct role in 
Hassidism, but was by far not as important. It arose 
from two sources, joy of life and mystic symbolism. 
Contrary to Christianity, Judaism takes an affirmative 
view of sex and does not regard it as sinful, even if it 


42 


Ritual Sex 

does not serve procreation. (Compare this to St. Paul 
who called it whoredom, or St. Jerome who called it 
filth.) Any abstinence, be it temporary or permanent 
(celibacy), is therefore forbidden and any vows pertain¬ 
ing to it are valid only for one or two weeks at most 
and only with the partner’s consent. The use of contra¬ 
ceptives is not forbidden whereas the only way to preg¬ 
nancy control tolerated by the Church, the so-called 
rhythm or cyclical method, is frowned upon as equal 
to temporary abstinence. Whereas the Christian Sunday 
is a day of contemplation and sexual abstention, the 
Jewish Sabbath is a day of rest and enjoyment, sex 
not jiist included, but expressly recommended. Religious 
Jews are therefore not as biased in sexual matters as 
Christians are. What would sound obscene from the 
mouth of a teacher of the Church or a Christian mystic, 
sounds perfectly innocent from the mouth of the 
Balshem and offensive only to prudish ears. This ex¬ 
plains, by the way, the inclusion of the erotic Song of 
Songs among the Holy Scriptures (although interpreted 
symbolically as the love of God for his chosen people 
and the two “fawn-like breasts of Shulamite” allegorized 
as the lawgiver Moses and his brother Aaron)—the Song 
is usually recited on Friday evenings, announcing the 
customary night of copulation. 

The Talmud provides the second source of the Jew¬ 
ish attitude, the mystical one. The Shekhina or divine 
presence, a synonym for God, is present when man and 
woman join in love and she rejoices over it. The 
Shekhina (perhaps because the word is of the feminine 
gender) appears in the Cabbala as the female counter¬ 
part of God, the incarnate form of divine splendor; and 
the relation of Moses to God, as the sexual intercourse 
of Moses with the Shekhina. 


43 




THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


Thus the Balshem regarded the prayer as the pair¬ 
ing of man with the Shekhina, and “just as the joining 
of man and woman begins with a vigorous movement 
back and forth, one should begin one’s prayers moving 
back and forth, but then stand motionless and em¬ 
brace the Shekhina tenderly.” This was for the tsad- 
dik Shneyer Salmen of Ladi the best way to get rid of 
the “unclean thoughts” arising during prayer or study, 
and to reduce them to their divine roots (“sublimation 
of the libido,” Freud might have said). The tsaddik Levi 
Isaac of Berditchev dared to compare Israel to a woman 
receiving from God’s overflow, always longing for her 
lover and trying to seduce him. Divine love turns into 
“divine concupiscence” and the tsaddik becomes the 
“hose” through which God’s blessing flows down from 
heaven to earth. The closest pupil of the Balshem, Jacob 
Joseph of Polnoy, demanded of his disciples to let the 
“sinful thoughts” rise to the surface in order to smash 
them and “uplift the divine spark they imprison.” In 
vulgar Hassidism this led to such advice as “Imagine 
during the prayer a naked woman and let it come to an 
ejaculation in order to cleanse yourself and ascend to 
a higher level.” Whatever one may think of this kind 
of “cleansing oneself,” it was a far cry from the prac¬ 
tices of the Frankists. 



A Puzzle to Jews 
and non-Jews 

Frankism has remained a puzzle to Jews and Poles 
alike. With the exception of Gershom Scholem who at 


44 


A Puzzle to Jews and Non-Jews 

least credited Frank’s followers with a “pure heart,” 
and Salman Rubashov-Shazar, the former president of 
the State of Israel, who called them “brothers never¬ 
theless,” no historian, whether Jewish or non-Jewish, 
tried to do justice to Frank. If they did not shun him 
altogether, they heaped deprecation and disdain on him 
and did not care to collect Frankist documents. The 
late president of the Zionist World Organization, Nahum 
Sokolow, discontinued his Hebrew translation of Alex¬ 
ander Kraushaar’s work on Frankism upon learning of 
the author’s conversion to Catholicism. The booklet 
Frank und die Frankisten by Heinrich Graetz, the noted 
Jewish historian, abounds in such terms as liar, im¬ 
postor, arch-liar, charlatan (Liigner, Betriiger, Erzliigner, 
AufSchneider), and the Great Polish Encyclopedia of 
1964 begins the article on Frank with the words “no¬ 
torious charlatan.” To the Poles the Frankists were first 
a repentant flock returning to the fold of Mother Church, 
then a gang of heretics; to the Jews, an abomination of 
the foulest kind, a bunch of renegades one could not 
get rid of fast enough. Both were wrong. The sublime 
and the abject, the angelic and the diabolic are so 
intimately intertwined in Frank’s character that it is im¬ 
possible to separate the prophet and visionary from the 
rogue and chartalan, and to call him the one or the other. 
Yet, impostor or not, the man had a power-nourished 
vision of leading his brothers, the Polish Jews, out of 
their miserable wretchedness. And to this end all means 
seemed fit to him. He had charisma, impossible to deny, 
and an almost hypnotic power over his people, who 
followed him blindly. 

The similarity of the Frankists rites to those of the 
Khlyste and their Living Christs (each village had its 
own) on the one hand, and to those of the Barbelo- 


45 





THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


Gnostics, Carpocratians, and other sects of early Chris¬ 
tianity on the other, is striking. Elasar Flekeles, a Prague 
rabbi, accused the Frankists in 1799 of “all sorts of 
evil, godless and infamous deeds unheard of even among 
the wildest barbarians. These people are worse than all 
the villains and criminals who ever lived since the begin¬ 
ning of the world. . . . They have a secret according to 
which it is good to masturbate and smear the body with 
the outflow. . . . They consider it pious and highly rec- 
ommendable to sleep with your neighbor’s wife, in the 
presence of ten men-folk [probably a religious per¬ 
formance because ten is the minimum number of adult 
men required for the Jewish community prayers, the 
so-called minyari], and in addition recommend other 
abominations and horrors such as fornication with male 
persons and even with animals. They worship idols, 
practice witchcraft, live in debauchery and whore¬ 
dom. . .” These could be literal quotations from the 
Panarion of St. Epiphan or other anti-Gnostic writings 
of the Church Fathers. 

All these various sects had one thing in common: 
the female element, which was missing in both the 
strict monotheism of the Jews and the Christian Trinity 
and which re-emerged during the Middle Ages with 
the Cabbala and the cult of Mary. Jacob Frank found 
the concept of the mystic trinity in the Cabbala and the 
Doenme teachings and shaped it into the union of the 
Holy Primeval One (Attika Kadisha, the cause of all 
causes), the Holy King (Malka Kadisha, the Messiah 
or Santo Sehor himself) and the Great Mother {Ma- 
tronita Elyona, Frank’s wife, and after her death his 
daughter Eve). The female counterpart of the Messiah 
already existed for Sabbatai Zevi in the person of the 
Polish-Jewish girl Sara, a fugitive from the slaughter of 


46 


Ritual Sex 

the Jews by the Cossaks, who had landed in a Leghorn 
bordello. There Sabbatai Zevi appeared to her in a 
dream to make her his bride and eventually wife, exactly 
as Simon Magus, the grandfather of all heretics, who 
also found his heavenly bride Helena in a brothel. Frank 
reserved the part of the female Messiah for his daughter 
who, after his death,^ stepped to the head of the sect. 

And as late as 1823 a Saint-Simonist delegation made 
the rounds of the Jewish communities of Turkey in 
search of the female Messiah and virgin-mother to take 
her t6 Paris where, together with the male Messiah, 
Pere Enfantin, she was to bring salvation to mankind. 

Saint-Simonism has other affinities with Frankism, 
e.g. the messianic concept of the abolition of sin and 
the anti-Paulinist “rehabilitation of the flesh” (rehabi¬ 
litation de la chair.) Perhaps this was due to the in¬ 
fluence of some Saint-Simonists of Frankist descent. 
The most prominent among them was Jean Czynski who 
had fled to Paris after the Polish insurrection of 1830 
and tied the liberation of Poland to that of the Jews. 



In the Crossfire of 
Church and 
Synagogue 

The Frankists did not make any bones about their 
orgiastic rites and soon became a public outrage. In 
the summer of 1756 they were excommunicated by the 
Synod of the Jewish Communities: all contact with them 
was forbidden, their women were branded as harlots, 


47 






THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


their children as bastards, and, in many cases, were 
forcibly removed from them. At the same time the study 
of the Cabbala was made anathema to anyone under 
the age of thirty, that of the Zohar to anyone under 
forty. Referring to the decree forbidding the establish¬ 
ment of sects, the Synod demanded the Catholic Church 
declare the Frankists heretics, which would have con¬ 
demned them to be burned at the stake. The rabbis 
were so sure of their case that they sent out invitations 
to the spectacle. (As can be seen the Jewish clergy 
was no less fanatic than their Christian peers. A char¬ 
acteristic example is the excommunication of Uriel 
Acosta by the rabbis of Amsterdam in 1632 which says: 
“We have induced the Government to confiscate all his 
books, burn them publicly, and put him into prison; we 
tried hard to expel him from the town. Since, in this 
Government, freedom of religion exists and there is no 
Inquisition, it was not in our hands to bring against 
him the death penalty, only to exile him. But may his 
sins ensnare this wretch to die like a dog in his place 
of exile.” These are the words of the very victims of the 
Spanish Inquisition.) 

Chased from house and home, brought to beggary, 
deprived of their children, the Frankists had sufficient 
cause to hate the rabbis. There is no doubt that the 
persecution by the Synagogue actually drove them into 
the arms of the Church (just as it drove Uriel Acosta 
to suicide). Even the Balshem is reported to have 
blamed the rabbis for the subsequent schism. Appre¬ 
hended at their services in the little town of Kopyczynce, 
a group of Frankists were dragged through town with 
ropes around their necks and handed over to the local 
authorities to be punished for flagrant violation of human 
decency, Jewish and Christian alike. They turned to the 


48 


Church and Synagogue 

Church for help, calling themselves anti-Talmudists. 
(The name Frankist is a much later usage). Bishop 
Dembowski of Kamenets-Podolsk, a notorious Jew- 
baiter, ordered them to be released, with a religious 
confrontation (or disputation) to follow between them 
and the rabbis. He thereby knowingly overstepped his 
legal competence because the Polish Jews had been 
granted religious freedom by the Statute of Kalisz (1264) 
which expressly exempted them from this kind of con¬ 
frontation. When, therefore, no Jew showed up for the 
disputation, the bishop set a new date, commanding the 
Jews to appear under threat of flogging. This time a 
Jewish delegation did appear to contest the legality of 
the proceedings, supporting their claim with the Statute 
of Kalisz which had been solemnly confirmed by several 
kings. The bishop rejected this plea, and the disputation 
began. It lasted for eight days, June 20 to 28, 1757, 
with Frank himself not taking part. The rabbis were 
asked to take a stand on the following Frankist theses: 

I. We believe in everything God has said in the Old 
Testament and has told us to believe. 

II. The Mosaic, the prophetic, and the other books 
of the Old Testament are like a richly clothed virgin 
who hides her face behind a veil so that her beauty 
cannot be seen; these books, full of divine wisdom 
and of mysterious things to come, cannot be understood 
without the help of God. 

III. The commentaries to the Old Testament are- 
called Talmud and contain many fairy-tales, lies, and 
assertions that contradict God and God’s teachings. 

IV. We believe, according to the Holy Scriptures, that 
God is one, with no beginning and no end, creator of 
heaven and earth and of all visible and invisible things. 


49 








THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


V. We believe that God consists of three persons who 
are alike and indivisible. 

VI. We believe that God adopted human form and ate, 
slept, and satisfied all other human needs without defil¬ 
ing himself. 

VII. We do not believe that Jerusalem will ever be 
rebuilt. 

VIII. The belief of the Jews that the Messiah will 
exalt them over and above anybody else and bring them 
happiness and respect is false. 

IX. God himself will appear in human form and re¬ 
deem the whole world from the sins of all past genera¬ 
tions. 

The rabbis accepted theses I, II and IV without re¬ 
serve, thesis III up to the words “and contain,” de¬ 
manding proofs for the second part. They refrained from 
disputing the remaining theses so as not to expose them¬ 
selves to an accusation of slander of the Church or 
blasphemy. Curiously enough, the theses do not mention 
Jesus Christ and refer only to the Messiah who will be 
God himself in human form. They come rather close to 
the Christian articles of faith, although some of them 
could also be taken from the Zohar and appear to rep¬ 
resent the Frankist creed except for one point which is 
prudently withheld: namely, that the Messiah or God in 
human form is supposed to be Frank himself. 

The bishop pronounced judgment: Brazenly disregard¬ 
ing the issues involved, he found the rabbis guilty of 
having wronged the Frankists and sentenced them to 
flogging and to the paying of heavy fines and the cost of 
repairs to the cathedral tower of Kamenets. The Tal¬ 
mud was denounced as blasphemous and ordered to be 
burned in public. As was customary, the execution of 


50 


Church and Synagogue 

these orders was left to the lay authorities. Surprisingly 
enough, but characteristic of Poland at that time, they 
were satisfied with the burning of the Talmud and simply 
disregarded the rest of the sentence. During the search 
for the books many Jewish homes were pillaged, and 
thousands of Talmud folios were burned in a great auto- 
da-fe in the cathedral town and elsewhere. While the 
rabbis proclaimed a day of fasting and mourning and 
appealed to the Pope for help, the bishop died suddenly 
in the midst of it all. A sigh of relief went through the 
Jewish communities. The tables were turned and the 
rabbis resumed their offensive, assisted by the non-Jew- 
ish t)opulace who only yesterday had ransacked Jewish 
homes, but now saw in the bishop’s death an act of God 
or the work of Jewish sorcery. 

Deprived of their protector and made outlaws, the 
Frankists found themselves caught in the crossfire of 
Church and Synagogue. They tried to escape to Turkey, 
but were not admitted, probably because of rabbinical 
intervention, and were left wandering aimlessly with no 
shelter, hungry and cold in the no-man’s-land at the 
Turkish-Polish border, with some of them smuggling 
themselves across. Frank himself, being a Turkish sub¬ 
ject, was allowed to pass, and joined his wife who, a 
year later, gave birth to a boy (who died at the age of 
three). Fearing an attempt by Turkish Jews on his life, 
Frank decided to follow the example of Sabbatai Zevi 
and to become a Moslem, together with a number of 
his followers. Years later, before the tribunal of the' 
Warsaw Inquisition, he defended this step as having 
been taken under duress and only for appearance’s sake. 

The ease with which he could make this change did 
not disillusion his followers. It strenghtened their belief 
that he was the successor of Sabbatai Zevi. This was 


51 








THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


all the easier for them, as the idea of the Messiah’s 
necessary apostasy and death had by now become an 
essential part of Jewish messianology. (As Rabbi Is- 
sakhar of Smyrna had said, the Messiah had to taste 
everything, even death.) Frank, for his part, now took 
to introducing his people into his divine mission by some 
strange ceremonies. For example, he had four of them 
form a circle with him as the fifth, and stand there for 
an hour with heads pressed against each other, arms 
around shoulders and “breathing heavily.” Or he would 
proclaim himself lord and master in the following way: 
He would fix nine candles to the rim of a barrel, light 
them with a tenth candle and whisper: “Who is like 
you? No one is like you!” Then he would blow out the 
candles, light them again and repeat it once more; pro¬ 
nouncing the same words in a loud voice, everybody 
would step forward, first singly, then together, forming 
a “royal line” {kav hamlikho in Hebrew) and rendering 
him homage as “the Lord.” The three main books of 
the Frankist bible accordingly bear the titles The Book 
of the Lord’s Words (Ksiega slow panskich), The Book 
of the Lord’s Dreams (Ksiega snow panskich), and 
The Lord’s Chronicle (Kronika panska). Only the first 
one has been preserved in the library of the University 
of Cracow in a handwritten copy, which contains more 
than two thousand of Frank’s sayings. The other two 
are only known in fragments, from quotations. There 
also existed a fourth book. The Prophecies of the Prophet 
Isaiah, Member of the Holy Sanhedrion, as Revealed by 
the Great Shaddai, Lord of White Magic. This pseudo- 
Isaiah was like the other three books, written symboli¬ 
cally in red and green ink in somewhat clumsy Polish 
by the three elders who, after Frank’s death, became the 
spiritual leaders of the sect. It contains abstruse proph- 


52 


Back to Poland 

ecies about a coming world war in which the great 
powers of Europe will perish and the “new Jacob,” the 
man in the form of God (cf. Jesus, God in the form 
of man) will rise from the dead. He will gather Israel, 
“this little, despised, miserable, yearning, scarcely breath¬ 
ing people from all corners of the world and lead them 
to Jerusalem and the country God promised to Abra¬ 
ham. . . . All nations then will turn to the house of 
Jacob; the proud rulers of the world will be imprisoned 
and deprived of everything so as to make them taste the 
fate of the children of Israel. And Jacob will rule for¬ 
ever over his oppressors.” 

. The paucity of Frankist literature is mainly due to 
destruction. Later generations of Frankists, having risen 
to the highest levels of Polish society, were ashamed 
of their dubious, maybe incestuous, origins and destroyed 
any evidence they could find. An additional factor was 
the attitude of Jewish historians who did not care to 
collect Frankist writings for reasons we have mentioned 
already. 



Back to Poland 

The new adepts of Mohammed obtained a “firman”’ 
from the Sultan, which gave them safe conduct for 
their return to Poland and entitled them to claim dam¬ 
ages for the losses they had suffered there. Armed with 
this document, the group (or “Company” as Frank called 
them) returned to Poland, hardly two years after the 


53 






THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


“Lord’s” flight to Turkey. Putting themselves under the 
protection of the Polish king, they settled in the form 
of a commune of three camps in eastern Galicia. Frank 
ordered “all money to be delivered to the treasurer who 
will husband it and care for the needs of the brothers. 
Nobody is to regard anything as his own, but everything 
has to be shared with all others.” 

With royal permission, the Frankists demanded not 
only damages for property and goods, but also the return 
of the wives who had been taken from them. This was 
done, even if the women had remarried and had to be 
returned by force. People by the thousands flocked now 
to the miracle worker who healed the sick and the lame 
and exorcised evil spirits. For the first time there was 
also talk of a possible conversion to Catholicism. 

While the Company of Frank’s followers led a modest 
life, Frank surrounded himself with oriental splendor, 
armed bodyguards, and a harem of twelve odalisques. 
But he thought revenge against the rabbis. In this en¬ 
deavor an event came to his aid which turned the 
people’s wrath against the Jews: the libel of ritual 
murder raised its head once again. 

This slander was first used by the Romans against 
the early Christians and by the Fathers of the Church 
against the Gnostics. During the Middle Ages it was 
directed against the Jews, leading often to cruel per¬ 
secutions. Although branded as a vicious falsehood by 
several popes and Catholic theologians, it has been 
raised time and again. (The Khlyste were also accused 
of it). At no time, however, did accusations of this kind 
multiply as much as in 18th-century Poland. Under the 
influence of the Jesuits, Poland had changed from a 
country of religious tolerance to a hell for all non-Cath- 
olics. Not only Jews were persecuted, but also Protes- 


54 


Back to Poland 

tants and especially Arians, whose famous cultural 
center, the academy and printing press of Rakow, was 
burned to the ground. Yet, nobody had to suffer as 
much as the Jews. There was practically no town with¬ 
out a ritual murder trial. The Jews appealed to the king, 
referring to the royal prohibition against accusing them 
of the use of Christian blood, a decree that had been 
reaffirmed at the coro'nation of several kings. They also 
dispatched a delegation to Rome with a copy of the papal 
bull of 1247 exonerating them from this accusation and 
unequivocally declaring them “innocent of such things 
which contradict their laws.” Pope Clemens XIII in¬ 
structed his Warsaw Nuncio to intercede on behalf of 
the Jews, but not before a number of them had been put 
to the rack and quartered alive. 

Exploiting the heated mood of the day, Frank de¬ 
manded resumption of the disputation of Kamenets. The 
papal Nuncio and the Cardinal-Primate of Poland came 
out against it, but the disputation was already under 
way and they were faced with an accomplished fact. 
Frank had apparently hinted at conversion, and the 
Canon Mikulski of Lemberg already foresaw mass con¬ 
versions of Jews. Both Primate and Nuncio had good 
reasons for their opposition. They did not believe the 
sincerity of Frank’s possible conversion and reported to 
the Curia in Rome that they suspected him to be a 
dangerous sectarian who wanted to use the conversion as 
a cover-up for a new sect which practiced polygamy and 
other “abominations.” Besides, conversion would protect 
him against the rabbis and improve the living conditions 
of his followers. However, their objection to a renewal 
of the disputation was of no avail. 


55 








Zionism without Zion 

As a matter of fact, nothing was further from Frank’s 
mind than conversion. What he really wanted was to 
fulfill his mission, with himself as the resurrected “Lord” 
and twelve of his closest associates as his apostles or 
ministers of state. He petitioned the king to assign to 
him a territory in eastern Galicia where he could settle 
with his followers in a vassal state with himself at the 
head. The Jews of the whole world would flock then 
to Poland and enrich her. In other words, a Zionism 
without Zion, as it was advocated under the name of 
Territorialism in the first few decades of the present 
century, leading to various projects of settling the Jews 
of eastern Europe in Uganda, Biro-Bidjan and other 
places. The plan found favor with both king and mag¬ 
nates, but floundered on strategic considerations, that 
is, the risk of settling a group with close relations to 
Turkey on the Turkish border. 

In the meantime, the Canon of Lemberg had become 
impatient. Frank had promised the baptism of his ap¬ 
proximately 30,000 followers, but was delaying it with 
one excuse after another. First he pretended he had to 
prepare them for this important step and would need 
several months for it. Then he listed a set of conditions, 
under which the Frankists would be allowed to continue 
wearing beards and earlocks, to dress the Jewish way, 
to keep their Jewish name along with the Christian one, 


56 


Zionism without Zion 

to marry only among themselves, to keep both Saturday 
and Sunday as days of rest, to study the holy books of 
the Cabbala, especially the Zohar, and not to eat pork. 

Similar conditions were set some 300 years earlier by 
those Spanish Jews who agreed to be baptized. They 
implored the Inquisition not to force them to eat pork, 
at least. This, of course, was rejected, and any pseudo- 
Christian was now easily recognizable by his instinctive 
aversion to pork. Strangely enough, the descendants of 
these forced converts still living on the island of Majorca 
are contemptuously called by the common people 
“chuetas,” bacon eaters. 

Frank was in no hurry to be baptized but waited for 
the right moment to establish a Doenme-like sect (which 
had similar features: two names, two days of rest, etc.). 
Even his request that the disputation be resumed was 
a delaying maneuver because he still hoped to get per¬ 
mission for his settlement project. 

But why the hurry of the clergy? 

The biggest ritual murder trial of that time was the 
one in Zhitomir, in the wake of which 11 Jews were 
cruelly executed. The Jewish delegation which had gone 
to Rome prevailed upon the Vatican to have a new trial. 
The new inquiry established as the instigator of the plot 
Bishop Soltyk of Zhitomir who, leading a dissolute life, 
had confiscated the fortunes of the imprisoned Jews to 
pay his gambling debts. A new disputation, he thought, 
would not only help him escape papal censure, but 
possibly bring him praise if some Jews, the Frankists, 
would admit the blood libel. Upon his insistence the 
disputation was resumed posthaste. (This is the one 
in which the Balshem is supposed to have participated.) 
It was not a mere repetition of the Kamenets dispu¬ 
tation, but a well staged show on a big scale. The 


57 








THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


Lemberg cathedral was surrounded by a huge array of 
soldiers and the public, mainly nobles and patricians, 
were admitted for a high fee. The rabbis were made to 
enter the church under threat of heavy fines, and all holy 
pictures and statues were veiled from sight, in order to 
protect them from the rabbis’ “evil looks.” Again, rabbis 
and Frankists faced each other, but this time it was an 
open confrontation between Church and Synagogue, with 
Canon Mikulski as mediator, accuser, and judge all in 
one, and the Frankists just a tool in his hands. The 
rabbis were given a “Manifesto” of seven theses, each to 
be answered within several days. The first six of them 
were more or less identical with the theses of the first 
disputation and, likewise, do not mention Jesus Christ, 
but only the Messiah or the true Messiah. Thesis VII 
accuses the Jews of ritual murder. 

Although the Frankists had good reason to take 
revenge on the rabbis, thesis VII apparently was not 
of their doing. (This is also the assumption of the Jew¬ 
ish historians Mayer Balaban and Gershom Scholem, 
the latter emphasizing that in no Frankist writing is there 
any hint of ritual murder, let alone a possible belief 
in the truth of that accusation.) The original version of 
thesis VII was in all probability the same as that of thesis 
III of the Kamenets disputation, which merely declared 
the Talmud blasphemous, while here the Talmud is 
accused of commanding the use of Christian blood. This 
is a charge against Judaism that has nothing to do with 
Christian faith and goes beyond the scope of the Mani¬ 
festo which deals with Christian dogmas. Everything 
points to bishop Soltyk’s having altered the text at the 
very last moment. In any case, the Frankists were not 
consulted and the disputation was hastily called to order. 

The spectacle dragged on for almost two months. 


58 


Zionism without Zion 

The public began to show signs of boredom and the 
ladies, it is reported, yawned shamelessly. Mikulski was 
desperate. The Nuncio had urged him to stop the sorry 
show, so he simply skipped points V and VI to get at 
the main issue: Thesis VII and the blood libel. He had 
saved his trump for the very last, but lo and behold, 
the Jews out-trump^ him. Exactly as in the great 
disputation of Barcelona in 1263, the scales weighed in 
favor of them. (To be sure, this earned the Spanish 
Jews the accusation of blasphemy. No matter how you 
cut. it,'the Jew cannot win.) The climax of the disputa¬ 
tion was the plea of Haim Rappaport, the chief-rabbi 
of Lemberg, concluding with these words: 

^ It is against the laws of nature and of human 

reason that we, the sons of Abraham, would use hu¬ 
man blood. The Holy Scriptures state: He who spills 
human blood, his blood shall be spilled, for man is 
made in God’s image. Popes, emperors and kings as 
well as your own experts have given us their un¬ 
equivocal testimony, to wit that we behave accord¬ 
ing to the Holy Scriptures and God’s command¬ 
ments. Highly venerable Lord Canonicus, please 
bear in mind that the accusations against us are 
based on erroneous translations. We appeal to your 
conscience and put ourselves under the protection 
of your grace in the deep conviction that God Al¬ 
mighty who gave the Holy Scriptures to all of us, 
has chosen you because of your wisdom to acknowl¬ 
edge our innocence and free us mercifully from this 
accusation. 

Abounding as it was with quotations from the Fathers 
of the Church and Christian theologians, this speech was 
by no means the work of the rabbi, who did not know a 
word of Latin or Polish and certainly had never heard 
of Origen, Epiphanius, Jerome or Hugo Grotius, Roberto 


59 










THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


Bellarmini, and Gregory Leti, all mentioned in the re¬ 
buttal. It was composed in German by Dr. Abraham 
Usiel, a Jewish physician in Brody, and hurriedly 
translated into Polish by a German bookseller aided by 
the speaker of the rabbis, Baer Bolekhover, who read it 
in the last session of the disputation, with the white- 
haired rabbi at his side. 

The speech did not fail to make a deep impression. 
The Nuncio reported to Rome of the excellent defense 
of the Jews. Frank had watched the proceedings from 
a place nearby and hurried now to the aid of his cause. 
He did it by showing himself to the public, driving daily 
through town in a coach-and-six, escorted by twelve 
horsemen with drawn sabres, followed by another coach 
with his wife in the dress of a harem-lady, and an array 
of carriages with his entourage. The clergy angrily for¬ 
bade the display, and the disputation came to an incon¬ 
clusive end. The records were all sent for scrutiny to 
Rome where they gather dust up to this day. (Bishop 
Soltyk died in a state of madness.) 

Now, however, Mikulski insisted on his part of the 
deal. He had provided three months room and board 
for the Frankists at a cost of 7,500 florins. So he wanted 
to get it over as fast as possible and have them bap¬ 
tized. But Frank kept dallying and coming up with 
new demands: The ceremony should not take place in 
Lemberg, but the whole Company should travel at 
Church expense to Warsaw and be baptized there in 
the presence of the king and the royal court. Besides, 
he claimed to need more instruction in the New 
Testament, since he knew only the Lord’s Prayer and 
a part of the Gospel according to St. Luke, and that 
in Hebrew. However, he realized that he was cornered 
this time and knew that he would encounter the subborn 


60 


Zionism without Zion 

resistance of his own people. They could stand his con¬ 
version to Islam, remembering Sabbatai Zevi, but Chris¬ 
tian baptism—that they could not stomach. So he tried 
to make it palatable to them by flavoring it with all kinds 
of ingredients. Baptism was a necessary evil, the lowest 
point of the descent into the abyss after which the ascent 
would start. The shell was to be changed, not the core; 
the jug, not the wine. Like Sabbatai Zevi before them, 
they would have to adopt, if in appearance only, a loath¬ 
some creed in order to continue their work unmolested 
by anyone. Baptism would be the beginning of the end 
of Church and society, and they,. the Frankists, were 
chosen to accomplish the destruction from inside “like 
soldiers storming a city through the sewers.” Absolute 
secrecy and strictest discipline were now required, 
together with a meticulous conformism to the commands 
and practices of the Church so as not to arouse sus¬ 
picion. While paying lip service to the Catholic Church, 
they should never lose sight of their true goal or forget 
that they belong together. In his petition to Empress 
Maria Theresa, Galinski, a defector from Frank and 
former rabbi who sued him in 1776 for return of money 
he had given him, quoted Frank as saying: 

Our Lord and King Sabbatai Zevi had to pass 
through the faith of the Ismaelites. . . but I, Jaeob, 
the most perfeet one, have to pass through the 
Nazarene faith because Jesus of Nazareth was the 
skin or rind of the fruit and his coming only per¬ 
mitted in order to open a path for the true Mes¬ 
siah. We have, therefore, to accept pro forma this 
Nazarene religion and observe it meticulously so as 
to appear as better Christians than the Christians 
themselves. . . Still, we must not marry any of them 
nor enjoy any of their whores. . . and in no way mix 
with other nations. And although we profess Chris- 


61 







THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


tianity and attend dutifully to all their command¬ 
ments, we must never forget in our hearts the three 
heads of our faith, the Lord-Kings Sabbatai Zevi, 
Berakhya [his successor, died 1720] and Jacob 
Frank, the most perfect of them all. 

It is amazing what heights of persuasion and vigor, 
even beauty of expression, Frank reached. Running the 
full gamut of emotions from black despair to rosy vistas 
of future wealth and happiness, he bewailed the faint¬ 
heartedness of his people who were unable to follow 
the eagle-flight of his thoughts: 

You do not understand me, and my words bounce 
oflF you like marbles oflF the wall. My cat here knows 
more than all of you together. Something divine 
grows in me like a pearl, and I have nobody to 
show it. 

People say my way is crooked, and even I have 
often asked myself whether it could not be simpler. 

But when I consider the goal, how plain and clear 
it is, I keep going step by step, no matter how. 

At other times, he promised them pie in the sky and 
flattered their vanity. The world will stand on its head, 
the lowest will be at top, the highest at the bottom. The 
great Polish lords will have to earn their living as poor 
cobblers and tailors “with little red goatees, while the 
Frankists will have princely titles, wear swords, and 
parade through town in ornate clothing. ''Ad kan!” he 
exclaimed, swinging himself into the saddle of his horse, 
*'Baderekh hamelekh nelekhr (Hebrew for Up to here! 
Let us travel the king’s road!) He told them exciting 
parables of his superhuman powers and their divine 
mission with cryptic hints about a forthcoming war 
which would topple state and church and in which the 
Jews would take up arms to save the world: 


62 


Zionism without Zion 

Far away, out in the ocean, there is an island and 
a big ship anchored nearby with many arms and 
cannon. The island is inhabited by God-fearing Cab- 
balists who once a month row out to the ship and 
ask whether the time has come yet. One day a 
stranger will appear and knock on the hull of the 
ship to signal the beginning of the big war. 

All wars, all bloodshed, even the atrocities of a 
Chmielnitsky, have not changed a thing on earth. 
But when the big war comes, God will show him¬ 
self and bring something new to the world. 

When the dogs fight and somebody tries to sepa¬ 
rate them with a stick, they do not care and keep 
on biting each other. So we will take what is ours 
While the world drowns in blood. For it pays to fish 
in troubled waters. . . If you will harken then to 
me and obey my orders, you will get rich like your 
fathers and forefathers never dreamed of. Then you 
will count my steps and search for my footprints in 
order to kiss them. 

This kind of talk rose to the heads of the simple 
folk from the Polish ghettos. They saw themselves 
already as shining knights with fiery swords, saviors of 
mankind. Yet, baptism had to come first. True, it was 
only the gate, and Christianity a way station to what 
Frank called his dass (Hebrew for religion). But only 
he who passed through the gate and entered the station 
could become a true believer, according to Frank: “If 
you knew what my dass is all about, you would come 
running to me.” 

Here follow some more of his sayings from the time 
preceding baptism: 

When one drills a well, one hits the dirty, muddy 
water first; then only the clean and sweet water 
comes up. 

I have told you of things which sounded empty to 


63 








THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


you. But when one cracks walnuts, the outer shell 
is, as everyone knows, green and bitter and blackens 
the hands, while the meat is sweet (a favored Has- 
sidic saying as was also the preceding one about 
drilling wells). 

There is an invisible tree with three branches, one 
of lead, one of copper, one of gold. Everybody clings 
to one of them. One day the tree will become 
visible and then it will be seen who holds on to the 
golden branch. 

I will shed my clothes and put on new ones. First 
the world will prick up its ears, but then—ho-ho! 
(The unnamed disciple who recorded these words 
adds: Here the Lord raised his holy finger.) 

It is one thing to serve God, another to serve me. 
For I walk ahead of God. (This too is a favored 
Hassidic image: The tsaddik stands higher than 
the angels; they rest in God, he walks ahead of 
him.) 

No man has ever seen God or known his name 
and dwelling place. But I will show you God, for 
mine is the power and the glory. And when you will 
see God, you will bow your head and say nothing 
but “God, my God!” 



The Big Step 

Thus, at long last, the day of reckoning arrived. But 
in spite of Frank’s untiring efforts and to his great 
disappointment, only a small fraction of his followers, 
hardly 1 in 10, showed up for the conversion ceremony. 
Frank never forgave them this betrayal and accused 
them of treason for the rest of his life. Of course, he 


64 


The Big Step 

could not foresee that most of their children and grand¬ 
children would follow his way, although for other reasons. 
Still, some 1,200 Frankists, men, women and children, 
stepped up to the baptismal font of the Lemberg Cathe¬ 
dral in the summer of 1759, hesitatingly and only in 
Frank’s presence. (According to the Nuncio he was 
standing by and nodding them on.) About as many did 
it in other places. Some sources put the total at 20,000. 
Following an old Polish custom, they were raised to the 
noble rank of Generosus or Nobilis (which earned the 
royal chest 500 florins a piece) and received swords and 
coats of arms, with members of the high nobility and 
clergy’ serving a godparents. 

The world has never seen anything like it. It was 
not altogether unusual to raise converts to the rank of 
nobility, especially when they had rendered good service 
to their masters, as had the many Jewish bankers and 
court physicians, with popes and kings their godfathers. 
Thus in 1492, the year the Jews were driven out of 
Spain, Queen Isabella and Cardinal Mendoza assisted 
as godparents at the baptism of the royal treasurer 
Abraham Senior, the head of the Jewish community in 
Spain. Somewhat later in Italy the Jewish musician and 
composer Juan of Florence was baptized and received 
from his godfather, Giovanni de Medici, later Pope Leo 
X, the name Juan de Medici and the castle Verrocchio 
with it. The Augsburg Chronica of New Things for the 
year 1515 tells the following about it: “There was Pope 
Leo X at Rome who had the best lutanist that there 
was at the time in the world. He was a German Jew 
and the Pope dubbed him a knight.’’ In 1583, Pope 
Gregor XIII baptized his physician Jekhiel of Pesaro, 
who was given the name of Vitale Medici by his god¬ 
father Cardinal Ferdinando de Medici; the Cardinal of 


65 















THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


Bologna and the Archduke of Ferrara were among the 
godparents of his seven children. In 1599, Pope Pius V 
baptized the head of the Jewish community of Rome, 
and in 1704, Pope Clemens XI a wealthy Leghorn Jew 
with his wife and daughter. These individual cases were 
celebrated with much pomp and circumstance, but could 
not match the described mass baptism of the Polish 
Frankists. 

Frank himself was baptized on November 18, 1759, 
in Warsaw with King August III as his godfather. (The 
officiating bishop lost his miter at this occasion; it fell 
off his head, and the Frankists saw it as an act of God.) 
Frank’s certificate of baptism is signed in Hebrew: Jacob 
Joseph Frank. The other converts received new names, 
usually according to the day or month of their baptism 
(their descendants can still be recognized by them), e.g. 
Niedzielski and Niedzialkowski (from the Polish niedziela 
for Sunday) or Lutoslawski (from luty, February), 
Kwiecinski (from kwiecien, April), Majewski, Junicz and 
the like; others after their birthplace, like Niemirowski; 
still others in an altered or translated form of their 
previous name, like the two adjutants of Frank, Leib 
Krysa, baptized Dominic Anthony Krysinski, and Shlomo 
Schorr, baptized Luke Francis Wolowski (shor, Hebrew 
for ox, Polish wol), both of them founders of two pro¬ 
minent Polish families. 

However, when Mayer Balaban, like Heinrich Graetz 
before him, concluded his History of the Frankist Move¬ 
ment with the words “Thus the sorry affair was closed 
as far as the Jews were concerned,” he was mistaken 
indeed. 

* * * 

The big step had been taken. Frank immediately 


66 


The Big Step 

petitioned the king once more for assignment of a 
territory, an idea he never was to give up, and started 
organizing his sect. Of course, he could not do it openly 
and therefore demanded strict obedience and deepest 
silence from his people: 

Do not talk, do not ask questions, do not look 
left or right, but follow me though thick and thin, 
through fire and water, step by step, without fear 
or doubt, until we reach our goal. 

Better let your eyes move than your lips. Keep 
your thoughts to yourself! 

Shut your mouth and when they ask you, say I 
know not. Put a lock on your lips! 

You have been given into my hand and I can do 
. with you as I wish. If I wish to have you with me, 
you will come, even from the farthest comers of the 
world, whether you like it or not. For all power is 
with me, and you are to me like clay in the hand of 
the potter. 

The “burden of silence” is a Cabbalistic concept and 
was also common among the Khlyste. They had to 
take an oath to keep their faith to themselves and not 
to divulge it to anyone, not even at confession or under 
torture, “even when they take to burning you alive or 
cutting you to pieces.” The believer’s strength shows 
itself not in revealing, but in concealing. Their Christs 
also demanded absolute obedience and selfdenial: 

If you want to follow me, you have to deny your¬ 
self, and this means: forget all earthly things, reason, 
memory, knowledge,, conscience, property and all 
virtuous exercises, practices and rules. 

Walk behind me and wherever I send you or 
whatever I order you to do, do it without reflection. 
Whatever I demand of your property, give it with¬ 
out hesitation and do not dare to have a will of 
your own. 


67 







THE MILITANT MESSIAH 

And this sounds like the call of the “Brethren of the 
Free Spirit”: “Give, give, give your home, your horse, 
your goods and chattels, do not consider anything your 
own, but belonging to everybody”—a call that has not 
been silenced from the days of the Jewish sects of the 
Essenes and Nazarens. 

Strange similarities surface here between Frank and 
the tsaddik Nahman of Bratslav and make them almost 
appear to be kindred souls. Les extremes se touchent. 
Many remarks of the tsaddik could be attributed to 
Frank, and he was actually accused of being a Frankist. 
He, too, demanded absolute obedience from his follow¬ 
ers. They had to deliver themselves into his hand for 
better or worse, without looking left or right, leave aside 
any doubts and rely on the wisdom of the tsaddik rather 
than their own. He ordered them to appear “like one 
man” three times a year before him, for just to look at 
him pleased God. He imposed upon them regular taxes 
and made long journeys to collect them. It was their 
holy duty to buy his writings “even if they had to 
pawn their last shirt.” Just to own the books without 
reading them was a blessing from God and a protection 
against loss of property and other misfortune. He called 
himself the only true tsaddik, the others were “Jewish 
devils” (shedim yehudim in Hebrew; Frank called the 
tsaddiks by the same name and the early Hassidim used 
it to refer to the rabbis.) He was the beginning of 
salvation, the harbinger of the Messiah: 

I do not know what will become of me. But this 
much I know, because I had God promise it to me: 
One of my descendants will be the Messiah (cf. 
Frank, the father of the female Messiah.) 

I am a nothing (cf. Frank, the “prostak”), but 
mankind needs me, for I have come to bring them 


68 


Messianic Miiitarism 

something new and wonderful. . . and if I were to 
reveal myself completely, the whole world would 
follow me. 

If you knew why I travel from place to place, you 
would kiss every inch of my footprints, for every 
single step of mine is one step closer to salvation. 

I am like the seed that has to putrefy in the soil 
in order to blossom and become a shadow-giving 
tree (a favored Hassidic parable, appearing also in 
the mythology of many people in this form or that 
of the sacrificed and risen God. Frank, too, compared 
himself to the grain of seeds which “looks mortal, 
but carries life within. The wheat can only grow 
after it has been rotting under ground.”) 

The tales and parables of Nahman of Bratslav also 
are like those of Frank, full of mighty kings, bewitched 
princes, kidnapped princesses, pirates, highwaymen and 
miraculous heroes. And Frank’s dream of an eternal 
Sabbath “when everybody will wear white clothes” 
comes to life in J. L. Perez’ drama The Golden Chain 
and the desperate outcry of the tsaddik: “Let there 
always be Sabbath!” 



Messianic Militarism 

Fr ank organized his following into a clandestine, 
highly disciplined, military “encampment,” with various 
ranks for men and women alike, battle training and 
regular maneuvers. He told them they would have to 
take up arms before long and ordered his “apostles” to 
spread the word: 


69 



THE MILITANT MESSIAH 

Go to the Jews and tell them: Be ready, a war 
is coming. Train yourselves in warfare, also the 
women and the girls and all children over six. As 
it has been said: Wejissroel osso hayil —and Israel 
formed an army. Then nobody will perish. 

He saw himself already at the head of an army of 
ten million Jews and one million gentiles, the officers 
acknowledging no religion, all dressed in red, the color 
of revenge. Years later, Frank’s “uhlans, hussars and 
cossaks” actually wore predominantly red uniforms. 

This mentality and education made many Frankists 
choose a military career and often rise to high ranks. 
Joseph Jakubowski and Ignace Majewski were generals 
in the Polish revolutionary army of 1794, so was Jacob 
Jasinski, a gifted poet and writer, who advocated a 
typical Frankist libertinism and wrote biting pamphlets 
against clergy and nobility. Designated dictator of Poland 
by the Polish Jacobins, he was killed during the Russian 
siege of Warsaw in 1794. (Also participating in the up¬ 
rising was a Jewish, non-Frankist brigade under the 
command of Colonel Berek Josselewicz.) 

Several Frankists distinguished themselves in the ser¬ 
vice of Napoleon Bonaparte: Jacob Lewinski, chief-of- 
staff of the Polish cavalry; Alexander Matuszewicz, 
general of artillery; General Jan Dembowski, later gov¬ 
ernor of Ferrara; and General Joseph Szymanowski. In 
the insurrection of 1830, General Jan Krysinski, son 
of Leib Krysa, the above mentioned adjutant of Frank, 
held out against the Russians longer than any other 
Polish commander; his brother Xavier was auditor-gen¬ 
eral of the Polish forces. Numerous Frankists fought 
also in the revolution of 1863, among them General 
Anthony Jezioranski; his cousin Jan belonged to the 
revolutionary government whose members were all 


70 


The Inquisition Tribunal 

hanged by the Russians. Adalbert (Wojciech) Jaku¬ 
bowski, aide-de-camp of Louis XV, was a Frankist, as 
was Count Maurice Hauke (probably, in any case a 
baptized Jew), who took part in the revolt of 1793, was 
chief-of-staff of the Polish legion which fought under 
Napoleon, and later, by appointment of Tsar Alexander 
I, minister of war in the short-lived Principality of 
Poland; he was killed by the Polish insurgents in 1830. 
His grandson married a daughter of Queen Victoria and 
became the founder of the English line of the house 
Battenberg-Mountbatten. The Doenme also developed 
some military talents; general Kemal Ataturk, father of 
modern Turkey, was one of them. 

, The army seems to have a peculiar attraction for 
Jews in general. When they are allowed to become 
officers or when they are on their own, like in present- 
day Israel, they display extraordinary military gifts. 
Many Jews were members of the general staffs of various 
nations during the past two centuries. 



Before the Tribunal 
of the Inquisition 

But back to Frank. The new splendor did not last ‘ 
long. His activities did not remain unnoticed, and three 
months after his baptism he found himself standing as 
a defendant before the tribunal of the Warsaw Inquisi¬ 
tion. Some Frankists had bragged about his being the 
resurrected Christ, and that was enough to have him 


71 





THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


accused of heresy. Frank defended himself well and 
caused the Inquisitor frequent embarrassement. When 
asked about his conversion from Islam to Christianity, 
he said: “Had I held the Mahometan religion to be true, 
I would not have accepted Christianity.” 

Addressing Frank in the third person, as was the 
custom with the Inquisition, the Inquisitor asked: 

“Why did he give apostolic names to twelve of his 
followers?” 

“First of all, they were fourteen, not twelve, but two 
died, so there were only twelve. Second, it was not I 
who gave them the names, but they themselves; and 
third, they were not apostolic names, because one was 
Franeis.” 

“Why did he stop preaching the holy word of the 
Church to his people after he was baptized?” 

“This was necessary before baptism, now it is up to 
the priests.” 

“Was he aware that his people believed him to be the 
Messiah and what does he think himself to be? Why 
did he allow them to bow before him and to sing pious 
hymns, while he was chewing tobacco and sipping 
coffee?” 

“It is not known to me that they believed me to be 
the Messiah. Had I known, I would have stopped it. 
As for me, nothing eould be further from my mind. I 
do not reeall them bowing to me and singing pious songs, 
while I was chewing tobacco and sipping coffee.” 

“Why did he let them wait on him from head to 
toe, even when he was relieving himself? Why did he let 
them prostrate themselves to receive his blessing?” 

“It may well have been that some brother helped 
me into my caftan and I let it happen because it was 
out of love. It is not true that they helped me when I 


72 


The Inquisition Tribunal 

was relieving myself. True it is, however, that they once 
asked me to bless them, which I did without pretending 
to be more than an ordinary human being.” 

“Why did he lie down on his bed with outstretched 
arms? Did he mean to imply by this that he was the 
crucified Savior?” 

“If I did it in my sleep, I knew nothing of it. I would 
have been crazy to dt) it awake.” 

Other questions drew from him evasive answers such 
as: “I am a little weak in my head.” 

The tribunal was at a loss. As a last resort, it sent 
a copy of the interrogation to Rome. In the meantime, 
Frank was confined to the fortified monastery of Czen- 
stokhova. He was taken there in his own coach under 
heavy military guard and given permission to bring along 
his cook. Rome had other worries; the papacy was at a 
low ebb in its power, and the case of Frank fell into 
oblivion. His honorary detention dragged on for thirteen 
years. 

Once again his power over people asserted itself. The 
bleak fortress turned residence. The garrison passed 
daily in review before him, presenting arms. His wife 
and daughter with a number of his followers were 
allowed to join him and like Sabbatai Zevi he held court 
in prison. Czenstokhova, the national shrine of Poland 
where every year thousands of pilgrims gather to adore 
the picture of the black madonna, Poland’s patron 
saint, became also a center of pilgrimage for the 
Frankists. Baptized or not, they floeked to their master, 
carrying lavish gifts, just like the Hassidim to their tsad- 
dik. Many moved there to be near him, and the town 
became an important Frankist center next to eastern 
Galicia and Warsaw. Frank’s wife bore him here three 
sons, Jacob, Rochus and Joseph. She died in 1770, one 


73 





THE MILITANT MESSIAH 

year after her son Jacob. Both were buried in a cave 
near Czenstokhova. 

Frank sent emissaries to the Jewish communities of 
eastern and central Europe to win them over for his 
sect, foretelling them, in 1767 and 1768, a dark future, 
unless they joined him: 

There is coming a time when you will be hated 
by rulers and kings, also by King Frederick (of 
Prussia), all lords and princes, they all, all will hate 
you, and whosoever will meet a Jew, will spit at 
him. . . Plagues such as the world has never seen 
will be visited upon you, in all parts of Poland, in 
Lithuania, Russia, Hungary, Walachia, Moldavia, 
Tartary, in all the provinces of Ismael (Turkey), 
in France, Germany, Prussia, in short everywhere 
there are Jews. Woe, woe onto you, your wives and 
your children! For there will be many dead and 
nobody to bury them and the dogs will drag their 
bones through the fields. If I wanted to describe 
everything that awaits you, the paper would not 
suffice. . . You could, however, escape this if the 
law of Moses is fulfilled and you enter the holy reli¬ 
gion of Edom (Christianity). Whoever is a descen¬ 
dant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will, therefore, 
have no other choice but to do just that. 

Frank foretold also the imminent partition of Poland 
which would (and actually did) bring him his freedom. 
Betting on Russian might, he sent a delegation to Mos¬ 
cow to sound out the Holy Synod about a possible con¬ 
version of the Frankists to the Russian-orthodox religion. 
When the delegation returned empty-handed, Frank ex¬ 
ploded in furious exasperation: “The day of revenge is 
near, hidden in my heart. Remove everything and make 
room for what is coming. Revenge for the agony, re¬ 
venge for all the spilled blood!” With the same words 


74 


The Female Messiah 

(“The day of revenge is near, hidden in my heart,” 
actually a saying of Isaiah) Sabbatai Zeyi comforted a 
delegation of Polish Jews for the atrocities suffered by 
the hordes of Chmielnitsky. 



The Female Messiah 

Assuming more and more liberties, Frank stopped 
going to mass and confession, allegedly because of a 
plot to poison him at communion, but actually because 
of failing health. According to the Chronicle of the Lord 
he started taking “various salts.” In order not to alarm 
his people, he discovered his messianic immortality, but 
started simultaneously to prepare the ground for his 
successor, his daughter Eve-Avatcha, immortal as he. So 
Eve Frank became a sort of counterpart to the black 
madonna of Czenstokhova, and next to the cult of Mary 
a cult of Eve established itself there, with Frank himself 
submitting to it: 

For she is the true Messiah! She will save the 
world! Where is it required of the Messiah to be 
a man or Jewish? The exodus from Egypt was 
imperfect because the leader was a man. Did not 
the prophet already say: Ki hu sera haba mimokom 
akher—loT he is the seed that comes from somewhere 
else? 

For she is life eternal, and he who is found 
worthy of seeing her will not suffer sin, disease, or 
death. In order to deserve this, one has to be clean- 
hearted, to deny all teachings, laws, religions, and 


75 




THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


customs, and stand one step higher than the others. 

I will lead you to her, provided you do all I say 
until she lets me bring you before her face. . . If 
you are called up, do the following: Take a bath, 
cut the nails of your fingers and toes, and dress all 
in white. Step up to her with a glad heart, for she 
is the queen of the world, and nothing can happen 
without her will. Keep your eyes closed, fall on your 
face and kiss the floor. She will ask you what you 
want, and you answer: ‘T have served God until 
now, but from now on be you my guide!” You will 
approach her, kiss her feet, and stand up; putting 
one hand on your heart, you will look at her, but 
with one eye only! She will call you brother and 
allow you to kiss her hands. Then she will stroke 
your eyes and cheeks and open all gates to you. 
"You have been blind,” she will say, "but now open 
your eyes and see!” And you will see what your 
fathers and forefathers never were given to see. But 
she will rejoice with you and lead you away all 
naked. . . The earth will then be saved from all 
curses and turn pure gold. There will be no more 
cold or heat, but only mild weather; the roses will 
bloom daily and this will last for a hundred and ten 
years. There will be eternal day and no night, for 
the night is the curse of the world. 

For the time being, however, he withdrew the apple 
of his eye from public sight, and Eva-Avatcha-Avat- 
chunia spent her days behind fortress walls in the com¬ 
pany of fourteen playmates under the care of her father. 
Only once in all those years did he make an exception 
when soime young noblemen, having heard of her beauty, 
asked permission to see her. He gave in to their flattery, 
whereupon the young gents tried to abduct the girl, but 
were foiled by the guards. 

In the years of his confinement, Frank’s theology 
changed. Next to the trinity there was now a foursome of 


76 


The Female Messiah 

gods: the god of life, the god of wealth, the god of 
death, and the god of gods or big brother above them. 
The supreme commandment was the love of all men, 
even the worst. Frank warned his followers against the 
church: 


Beware of the cross, it points here and there, and 
you might lose your way, like on a crossroad. 

I saw in a dream the Christ, surrounded by his 
priests, sitting next to a brook of fresh, clear water. 

But the brook moved away from him and came over 
to me. 

The soul has human form and is hidden in a 
secret place. Nobody has ever possessed or seen it, 
not even the patriarchs nor the kings of Israel. Man 
^ feels he is missing something and does not know 
what. We, however, will be full men and have a 
soul. 

The world is finite and God cannot enter it. All 
existing things have to turn into dust and ashes 
first. 

The keynote of Frank’s religion, however, continued 
to be lascivious sensualism. The orgiastic rituals con¬ 
tinued to be performed, and some new practices were 
added. Thus, one day, Frank ordered two of his men “to 
unite with sister Henrietta.” Another time, meeting a 
widow during his morning walk on the ramparts of the 
fortress, he told her: “Widow, widow, tonight you will 
be comforted”—by four of the brethren, as it turned out. 
One day the monks of the monastery came storming 
into Frank’s quarters, demanding “with loud cries” that 
boys and girls should be forbidden to spend the night 
there together. 

On March 12, 1771, sister Marianna came from War¬ 
saw “and the Lord [Frank] sucked at her breast six 


77 



THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


times, whereupon she left,” as laconically reported by 
the Chronicle of the Lord. The same happened to other 
women. As this took place “in front of everybody,” it is 
hard to tell whether it was a ritual ceremony or a po¬ 
pular remedy. Probably both. A Polish legend tells of a 
knight who was imprisoned with his daughter who kep't 
him alive with her breast milk. Similar tales are known 
among other people. 

This motif appears in world literature from Pliny the 
Elder to Dante, Boccacio, Byron, Maupassant, and be¬ 
yond and can also be found in painting and sculpture. 
It entered Christian mythology as Maria Lactans or 
Virgo Lactifera, the Holy Virgin nourishing a dying man 
with the milk of her breast (whose miraculous powers, 
incidentally, may also be imbibed with a brand of Rhine 
wine called Liebjrauenmilch, Holy Virgin milk). 

In the meantime, the military situation of Poland dete¬ 
riorated, and one day the Russians appeared at the gates 
of Czenstokhova. The fortress had received reinforce¬ 
ments and resisted the assault. Yet, some people fled the 
beleaguered town, many Frankists among them. Frank 
felt deserted and through a messenger, who managed 
to smuggle himself out of the fortress and reach War¬ 
saw, he sentenced them to a mutual flogging. So strong 
was his power over them tbat they submitted to his 
order without resistance or exception, men and women 
alike. 

At long last, the fortress capitulated. Presenting him¬ 
self to the Russian commander as a prisoner of the 
Poles, Frank was set free. The news of his liberation 
reached Warsaw ahead of him. He was greeted there 
jubilantly and immediately resumed his old activities. 
Deepest secrecy was required now in order not to spoil 
everything again: 


78 


The Female Messiah 

When you meet me in town, keep walking as if 
you do not know or see me. Not a word about our 
plans to your wives or children, let alone to strangers. 

Be careful and hide our aim behind pretty words 
and meaningless phrases. Be cunning and sly like 
the snakes so that we may get everything we are 
after. 

When you see me doing childish things, foolish 
tricks, or other follies, do not turn away from me, 
but hold on and stay firm and strong, because every¬ 
thing happens out of love for you, for your benefit 
and happiness. 

He received letters from abroad with invitations by 
the followers of Sabbatai Zevi to join them. His own 
rnessengers were held up at the border and sent back. 
With Poland partitioned and the occupying powers in¬ 
troducing harsh measures of surveillance and oppression, 
he finally decided, although with a heavy heart, to leave 
Poland and move to Bruenn, the capital of the Austrian 
province of Moravia, which, for the next thirteen years, 
was to become the center of Frankism. 



Why Bruenn? 

With this move to Austria a new chapter begins in the 
history of Frankism. Frank had chosen Moravia because 
of the many followers of Sabbatai Zevi who lived there. 
They were headed by the notorious Loebel Prossnitzer 
who used to smear the four letters of the divine name 
JHVH in a phosphorous substance on his chest and let 
them light up in the dark before the baffled eyes of his 


79 




THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


congregation. He had been in touch with Frank and 
arranged for two of his emissaries to preach in the Pross- 
nitz synagogue, which led to a riot in the local ghetto. 
Frank picked Bruenn for his residence because it was the 
home of his cousin Sheindel Hirschel. Her father, a 
brother of Frank’s mother, had moved from Rzeszow in 
western Galicia to Breslau and on to Prossnitz. Bom in 
Breslau and known for her beauty, Sheindel was married 
to the wealthy tobacco merchant Salomon Dobrushka 
and was the mother of six boys and six girls. An ex¬ 
cellent businesswoman in her own right, she took over 
her husband’s business after his death and in addition 
managed to become the sole tenant of the Austrian 
potash monopoly and collector of the head-tax paid 
by traveling Jews. She was a great admirer of Frank and 
supported him with substantial amounts of money. (In 
the writings of the rabid anti-Frankist Jacob Emden she 
is called “that big whore from Bmenn.”) In her house 
any Frankist was welcome. Jonas Wolf Eibenschuetz, 
the son of the Hamburg rabbi mentioned earlier in this 
book, found a refuge there from his many creditors and 
enjoyed the special favors of the lady of the house. Later, 
under the name of Baron Adlersthal, he established a 
Frankist community in Dresden which was a way station 
for Frankist pilgrims. 

Salomon Dobrushka was the first Jew to be author¬ 
ized to live in Bruenn. He removed the image of the 
Virgin Mary from above the entrance of the house he 
had bought, which led to a riot that had to be quelled 
by military force. At the same time, the Creditbank of 
Bruenn and the newspaper it owned were taken over by 
Israel Hoenig von Hoenigsberg who, following Dob- 
rushka’s example, removed the words “of our beloved 


80 


THE FAMILY DOBRUSHKA 

Salomon Dobrushka, 1715-1774, married to Sheindel 

Catharina Hirschel, 1735-1791. 

Children: 

1. Carl, 1751-1781, baptized 1764 Carl Joseph Schoen- 
feld 

2. Moses, 1753-1794, baptized 1775 Franz Thomas 
Schoenfeld, married to Elke Joss, 1757-1801, bap¬ 
tized Wilhelmine 

3. Gerson, 1757-1833, baptized 1775 Joseph Carl 
Schoenfeld 

4. Bluemele, 1758-1808, baptized 1775 Theresa Maria 
Josepha Eleanora Schoenfeld 

5. Sara Rosalie, 1760-1833, baptized 1791 Maria 
Louisa Schoenfeld 

6. Rebecca Regina, 1761-1815 

7. Gitl, 1762-1793, baptized 1791 Marianna Schoenfeld 

8. Joseph Naftali, 1763-1839, baptized 1775 Maximi¬ 
lian Schoenfeld 

9. Joseph, 1764-1800, baptized 1775 Leopold Prokop 
Schoenfeld 

10. David, 1765-1794, baptized 1775 Emanuel Nepo- 
muk Schoenfeld 

IL Fradl Franziska, 1770-1795, married to Wolf Lud¬ 
wig von Hoenigsberg, 1764-1833 

12. Ester Leopoldine, 1771-1795, baptized 1791, mar¬ 
ried to Francois Chabot, 1756-1794. 


Lady” from both the signboard of the bank and the 
front page of the paper. Dobrushka’s firstborn, Carl, 
had run away from home at the age of thirteen to join 
the Catholic church. In 1775, one year after their father’s 


81 





THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


death, the remaining five sons and the oldest daughter, 
Bluemele, also converted to Catholicism; they were 
raised to nobility in 1778 under the name of von Schoen- 
feld. It may be assumed that their conversion came 
about upon the instigation of Frank, because the district 
commander of Bruenn reported to the chancellery in 
Vienna that Frank had succeeded “in converting one 
or the other Jewish family to the true faith.” Four of 
the brothers became subalterns in the Austrian army; 
we have met the other two, the second-born and the 
youngest, Moses and David, baptized Franz Thomas and 
Emanuel Schoenfeld, under yet other names—Junius 
and Emanuel Frey—in Paris on their way to the guil¬ 
lotine. Their sister Bluemele, baptized Theresa Maria 
Josepha Eleonora, became the mistress of the lion of 
Vienna’s high society. Count Wenzel von Paar. She took 
care of her younger sisters and led three of them, Sara, 
Gitl, and Ester, to the baptismal font shortly before the 
death of their mother in 1791. Only two of the twelve 
Dobrushka children remained Jewish, the sisters Rebecca 
and Fradl. 

The ties of the Dobrushka family to Jacob Frank 
seem to have aroused the suspicion of the authorities. 
Their first petition for the elevation to nobility remained 
unanswered, and in the second one they protested their 
sincerity and presented themselves as veritable Christian 
martyrs, denying any intent “to remain what we are.” 
The petition was addressed to’ Empress Maria Theresa 
by the oldest of the brothers, Carl; to promote the case, 
he said: 

With regard to myself, it is a well-known fact 
that, already in my early youth and out of a true 
inner impulse, I went over to the holy Christian- 
catholic church, abandoned my father’s house where 


82 


Why Bruenn? 

I had all possible conveniences, and enlisted in the 
famous infantry regiment of Count Siskowitz. After 
nine years of service during which I willingly en¬ 
dured all the hardships of this career, I advanced to 
first lieutenant, having used up the little money my 
father had given me—which circumstance in no way 
makes me unworthy of the sought-for honor. . . . 
Concerning my brother Franz (at present adjoint to 
Father Denis at the Garelh Library of the Imperial 
Theresianum School), it speaks in his favor and is 
the undeniable truth that he, too, adopted the holy 
^ Roman Catholic religion out of a pure inner impulse. 
This step made him forfeit his share in the family 
^ fortune of 12,000 to 16,000 florins and also the in¬ 
heritance of several hundred thousand florins of his 
wife, the adopted daughter and sole heiress of the 
well-known Joachim Popper. Furthermore, in addi¬ 
tion to his wife and three children, he took with him 
into the holy Christian community his younger 
brothers and several servants, after having refused 
an offer of 150,000 florins to desist from doing so. 
Thus he sacrificed wealth, family, and everything 
else in order to embrace the holy Christian religion 
and has been a Christian for the past 14 months 
without demanding anything. On the contrary, in 
order to convert his mother, he stayed for some time 
in Bruenn and spent 1,500 florins for that purpose. 
Concerning my little brothers, it is true that they 
showed much firmness against their mother and 
other relatives, so much so that anybody learning of 
their sufferings practically came to admire them as 
martyrs. This heroic behavior refutes in advance the 
presumption that we changed our faith for the sake 
of private gains or that we would remain what we 
are. . . Hence, a whole family renouncing all wealth 
out of truly holy motives and having no desire but 
to be honored by the raising of their social status— 
the more so because there still persist many pre¬ 
judices which only the granting of this honor can 
disperse. Should, however, the granting of same be 


83 



THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


delayed or even denied, it would cause us great an¬ 
guish and make us the laughing stock of Jews, Chris¬ 
tians, and my regiment. 

The patent of nobility does not go into these details 
and speaks instead of the merits of the late Salomon 
Dobrushka as supplier of the army and tenant of the 
Moravian tobacco monopoly. It also makes laudable 
mention of a recent translation by Moses Dobrushka 
(Franz Schoenfeld) of a French book “which proved to 
be very useful for the dissemination of our Catholic 
religion” (without giving the title of this otherwise un¬ 
known book). As for the devotion and missionary zeal 
of Franz Schoenfeld and the martyrdom of his little 
brothers who, in the words of the first petition, “so to 
say tore themselves out of their mother’s womb,” they 
all continued to live on good terms with their mother. 
Being a Frankist, she would have had no objection to 
their baptism, although she herself remained Jewish. 
The fact that she changed her name to Catharina does 
not prove the contrary. Her five younger daughters also 
changed theirs, with two of them remaining Jewish for 
life, the other three for the next four years. They all 
did it in compliance with the Imperial Patent of July 23, 
1787, which made the Austrian Jews adopt German 
names. As for Sheindel herself, she was, according to 
some documents in the Austrian National Archives 
(Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv), in her last years very 
active in Jewish charity, such as furnishing a house for 
traveling Polish Jews and providing kosher food for 
Jewish prison inmates. Moreover, she was granted per¬ 
mission to purchase, and export for sale, the treasures 
of the monasteries and churches dissolved by Joseph II, 
a transaction inaccessible to a Christian and liable to 
lead to excommunication. 


84 


Why Bruenn? 

On the other hand, whatever the petition says about 
Moses Dobrushka’s matrimony is correct. He was married 
to Elke Joss, the adopted daughter of the Prague 
financier Joachim von Popper who, together with Israel 
Hoenig von Hoenigsberg, Dobrushka, and others, held 
the Austrian tobacco monopoly in tenancy, at a joint 
fee of 1.8 million florins. Being childless. Popper adopted 
Elke Joss, a niece of his wife, as his daughter and sole 
heiress. When however she turned Catholic, together with 
her husband and children, and was baptized Wilhelmine 
Schoenfeld, he disinherited her against an indemnity of 
3,000 florins and put his nephew Abraham Duschenes- 
Dusensy in her stead. After Popper’s death in 1795, she 
/tried unsuccesfully to contest his will. Dusensy became 
Catholic in 1803 and in the end the huge Popper fortune 
fell to the Church. 



Dobrushka-Schoenfeld- 

Frey 

De Luca’s Das Gelehrte Oesterreich (Vienna 1778) and 
others afterwards tell the following about Moses Dob¬ 
rushka, evidently according to his own account: “The first 
kind of education Salomon Dobrushka let his son have 
consisted of talmudic studies, and as he wanted him to be¬ 
come a great rabbi, he removed from his schooling any¬ 
thing standing in the way of this goal. ... However, he 
also studied Hebrew and Chaldean [i.e. Aramaic] poetry 
and rhetoric, as well as German and Latin. A lucky genie 


85 




THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


procured him the works of [the German-Swiss pastoral 
poet] Gessner, the first reading of which caused him diffi¬ 
culties, but did not make him abandon these excellent 
writings. He read them until he understood everything, 
and they inspired him to acquaint himself with the best 
poets. He persuaded his father to give him 1,500 florins 
for the purchase of some good books. Acquiring knowl¬ 
edge of English, French, and Italian, he devoted himself 
entirely to the art of poetry.” 

Moses Dobrushka earned his spurs as a writer in 
1774 with a book written in Hebrew and dedicated to 
his father-in-law: Sefer Hasha-ashua (Book of Enter¬ 
tainment), a linguistic commentary to the widely known 
and frequently translated Bekhinath Olam (World 
Scrutiny) by Yedaya Bedersi, a Jewish philosopher of 
the early fourteenth century. It is characteristic of young 
Dobrushka (or, as he called himself here, Dobrushki, 
the name Jacob Frank later added to his own) that he 
chose for his study the work of a pessimistic rationalist 
whose thoughts approach those of Duns Scotus, but who 
could also write such books as Ohev Nashim (The Lady- 
Lover) and an introduction to chess-playing. De Luca 
calls the work of Dobrushka, obviously according to his 
own inflated account, A Theory of the Beautiful 
Sciences: On the Poetry of the Ancient Hebrews. At 
about the same time Dobrushka published, in one vol¬ 
ume, three one-act pastoral plays in German, dedicated 
to the Duchess Maria Josepha zu Furstenberg. The 
dedication starts with these words: 

It is sheer audaeity on my part to dedicate my 
pastoral plays to Your Grace. Audacity in more than 
one sense for me, a twig on the withered branch of 
the tree of humanity, to bear fruit of common sense 


86 


Dobrushka-Schoenfeld-Frey 

and wit and to offer them to Your Grace. With the 
most timid mien I introduce the children of my 
rustic muse to ask Your Grace to protect them. 

In the preface he declares Gessner his favored poet, 
whose wit he wants to combine with the “aetheric” mind 
of Wieland. Maria Josepha was a member of the Star- 
Cross (Sternkreuz), ah order of noble Austrian ladies for 
the promotion of prayers to the Holy Cross, virtue and 
charity. The fact that Dobrushka dedicated his first Ger¬ 
man work to her sounds like an announcement of his 
intention to change his faith. He accompanied it, so to 
say, at the threshold of baptism, with A Hebrew Poetic 
Translation of the Golden Sayings of Pythagoras (Prague 
1775) and a Prayer or Christian Ode in Psalm Form 
(Vienna 177-), both of them impossible to locate. We 
have, however, his translation of King David’s war songs: 
Davids Kriegsgesdnge, deutsch aus dem Grundtexte, dem 
Heere Josephs, appeared in 1788 as an overture to the 
war against Turkey. Little David Dobrushka tried to 
emulate his big brother and also published some poems: 
a seemingly endless Fragment of a Poem called Time and 
a long-winded eulogy Upon the death of Frederick the 
Great. 

They were not exactly great poets, the brothers Franz 
Thomas and Emanuel von Schoenfeld. The elder espe¬ 
cially wallows in superlatives; his poems are either bom¬ 
bastic panegyrics or furious war songs, and even his lyrics 
or the “lyric monodrama” Thusnelda in Banden Roms 
(Thusnelda in the Chains of Rome) sound insipid and 
border on the ridiculous. As Heine may have said: “He 
felt the finest feelings.” 

Schoenfeld’s muses are Germania and Siona, and his 
inspiration comes from “song-mighty David, this holy 


87 
















THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


bard of old,” and Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock who, to 
him, is a David Klopstock. The 22 pages of the preface 
to David*s War Songs contain the following lines: 

I come from cedar-girded mount Lebanon, 

From tree-covered Bashan do I descend. 

Klopstock, a shining meteor, 

Kleist, Bodmer, Lavater—welcome! 

Mendelssohn, Herder— 

the last one being especially singled out because “in 
the garden of Engedi under the apple tree, the love- 
shudders of Shulamite, the bronze-tressed, await him.” 
But next comes: 

Germania! Gottes Blitz! 

des deutschen Liedes Geschiitz! 

Verderben um sein Haupt, 
wenn es Wut und Rache schnaubt. 

Germania! God’s lightning bolt, 
the gun of German song! 

Destruction rings her head, 
foaming fury and revenge. 

And in the battle song The Victory of Foksan (of 
Joseph II over the Turks) he is carried away: 

Wenn Deutsche bekriegen, 
miissen sie siegen. 

Es horchet der Tod 
der Deutschen Gebot. 

When Germans go to war 
they cannot but win. 

Death heeds 
German command. 


88 


Dobrushka-Schoenfeld-Frey 

What did the world see in this kind of rubbish? After 
all, it was the time of Sturm und Drang, oi young Schil¬ 
ler, Goethe was not court counselor yet. But the fledgling 
poetaster did not join the young generation; he turned 
instead to the Brahmins of the poetic establishment. Karl 
Friedrich Kretschmann, the bard from Zittau, became 
intoxicated with the poems of the Schoenfeld brothers 
and predicted that “they are destined to propagate and 
preserve the high dignity of German poetry.” Johann 
Wilhelm Gleim, the nestor of the Goettinger Dichterhain, 
enjoyed their songs “in a sleepless night” and greeted 
them as the second pair of brothers in the Goettingen 
circle: “two Stolbergs, two Schoenfelds.” Johann Hein¬ 
rich Voss, the renowned scholar of classics, and Karl 
Wilhelm Ramler, the director of the Royal Berlin Thea¬ 
ter, also befriended them (all of which caused the brothers 
to quietly drop their “aetheric” Wieland because he was 
not well viewed among the Goettingers). 

Franz Thomas von Schoenfeld was a busy man. In the 
preface to David*s War Songs he complains about the 
small amount of time he had for completing the transla¬ 
tion of the psalms which took him eleven years, the War 
Songs, thirty in all, being only a part of them. (Another 
part. The Seven Penitent Psalms, is preserved among 
his papers in the French National Archives in Paris.) 
Not a line is known to exist of the remaining ones, if 
he ever translated them. The same applies, as we have 
seen, to other works he claims to have written. He 
seems to have been bom in this respect under an un¬ 
favorable star. Even his first book, the Hebrew study 
mentioned earlier, is only one of fourteen chapters; the 
others, he says in the preface, had to remain unpub¬ 
lished because of the great expense. 

What robbed the future prince of poets of his precious 


89 


THE MILITANT MESSIAH 

time? Certainly not his employment in the Garelli Library. 
But he was also one of the founders of the freemasonic 
order of the “Knights of the True Light” or “Brethren 
of St. John the Evangelist of Asia in Europe” (“Asiatic 
Brothers,” for short), whose lodges were scattered all 
over central Europe, with the impoverished barons Hans 
Carl and Hans Heinrich of Eckhoffen at the head. These 
two brothers tried it first with the Rosicrucians and 
alchemists, but since these did not yield any gold, they hit 
upon a better idea and founded the order of the “Asiatic 
Brothers,” claiming to be in possession of all the secrets 
of the Cabbala. But here they needed a “Cabbalist,” and 
they found him in the person of Schoenfeld-Dobrushka. 
He managed to sell them a bill of goods, a hodgepodge 
of Jewish-Christian symbols which turned the Cabbala 
into a secret science for the forecasting of eclipses of the 
sun or moon and other natural phenomena. Some gullible 
persons, fascinated by the mysterious spell of the Cabbala, 
actually fell for it and joined the order, among them the 
future king of Prussia, Frederick Wilhelm II. However, 
the “Asiatic Brothers” also had some less esoteric aims. 
As the only German freemasonic order to accept Jews, 
they eyed the money of Jewish nouveaux riches who 
wanted to buy their way into society. Failing in this, the 
latter stopped their contributions and the order went 
out of existence. 

In addition to the mystically tainted “Asiatic Broth¬ 
ers,” Schoenfeld also belonged to the Illuminates, a 
rationalistic sort of higher degree of freemasonry. How 
he managed to reconcile these different philosophies with 
each other is his business. In any case, they did not 
prevent him from making money as a purveyor of the 
Austrian army in the war against Turkey. He could 
ignore any scruples he may have had, because the 


90 


Dobrushka-Schoenfeld-Frey 

Illuminates, although antimonarchists, made an exception 
of the liberal, anticlerical Joseph II and actually sup¬ 
ported him. And the fact that Schoenfeld enriched him¬ 
self in his dealings with the army was a part of the 
game. Leopold II, the brother and successor of Joseph 
II, also made use of Schoenfeld’s services as his banker 
and counselor; Schoerffeld accompanied him in August 
1791 on his infamous journey to Pillnitz where the Austro- 
Prussian intervention against France was decided. From 
this time stem Schoenfeld’s odes Upon the Death of 
Maria Theresa and Royal Entry of Leopold II into 
Vienna. (At Leopold IPs coronation in Frankfurt, Jacob 
Frank, now Baron Jacob Joseph Frank-Dobrushki, was 
seated among the notables and caused a big sensation 
with his oriental splendor.) From Pillnitz, Schoenfeld 
traveled via Berlin and Hamburg to Strasbourg, sup¬ 
posedly as a secret agent of the Emperor, with orders 
to report about the situation in France. The Paris police 
accused him of espionage, and it was rumored among 
the “Asiatic Brothers” that “he had secret instructions 
from Vienna for Paris.” In his eulogy for the brothers 
Schoenfeld, their friend, the above-mentioned Kretsch- 
mann, claims to know that they went to Paris “either 
with instructions or on their own” to rescue Marie An¬ 
toinette. A similar assumption is made by G. Lenotre 
in his book Le Baron de Batz, in which they are pre¬ 
sented as accomplices in the baron’s unsuccessful attempt 
to abduct the queen. However, in their trial in Paris 
there was no talk of that sort. Leopold II died shortly 
after Schoenfeld’s arrival in France and the conservative 
Franz II did away with the liberal reforms of his two 
predecessors, also refusing to pay their debts. Yet 
Schoenfeld was not only a confidant of Leopold, but also 
his creditor. In his deposition at the Paris trial he claim- 


91 















THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


ed that the Emperor owed him 500,000 florins. And 
so Saul turned Paul and the zealous courtier Franz 
Thomas von Schoenfeld became Junius Brutus Frey, 
sworn enemy of all tyrants. There is more to it, as will 
be seen later. 



The Messiah in Bruenn 

In the month of March, 1773, “the neophyte and 
merchant” Jacob Joseph Frank and his daughter crossed 
the Prusso-Austrian border near Troppau on their way 
to Bruenn accompanied by 18 domestics; 2 chamber¬ 
maids, 2 washerwomen, 1 secretary, 2 cooks, 1 boy in 
the kitchen, 1 horseman, 1 haiduk, 1 footman, 1 wood¬ 
cutter and 4 coachmen, as they are faithfully listed by 
name and occupation in the “consignation” of the district 
commander. Frank’s two sons remained in the care of 
the Warsaw Frankists. The Bruenn museum preserves 
the Russian, Austrian and Prussian travel permits, the 
latter reassuring whomever it may concern that “there is 
here [in Warsaw] a clean and invigorating air and, thank 
God, not a trace of contagious disease.” 

Frank bought a mansion in Bruenn and furnished it 
luxuriously from the lavish contributions of his follow¬ 
ers. “Barrels of gold” were brought into town under the 
heavy military escort of his own men. There was also 
a splendid coach-and-six for himself, another for his 
daughter. He organized the growing number of his young 
adherents into a military force on horseback, ordering 


92 


The Messiah in Bruenn 

them “to learn how to shoot from the saddle and fight 
with sabre and lance.” He probably intended to offer 
this force of several hundred men to the Habsburgs in 
their war against Turkey, in return for permission to 
establish the vassal state he did not obtain in Poland. 
He ruled his army with an iron fist, and Moses Dob- 
rushka alias Franz Thomas von Schoenfeld apparently 
knew it firsthand, as the following will show. 

Frank seemed to have taken a special liking to his 
second cousin. His high-sounding title and his reputa¬ 
tion as a confidant of the Emperor must have made 
a deep impression on the “prostak”—so much so that 
hQ is' supposed to have envisioned him as his suc¬ 
cessor alongside his daughter, in place of his not so 
promising sons. However, nothing came of it. The 
Chronicle of the Lord reports that on October 20, 1782, 
“Peter Jakubowski and Paul Pawlikowski were punished, 
and the protest raised by a certain Schoenfeld caused the 
one-year imprisonment of the obstinate [fellow].” This 
is the only time the name Schoenfeld appears in Frankist 
writings and it can only refer to Franz Thomas, because 
the older Carl was no longer alive and the younger 
ones were serving in the Austrian army at the time 
away from Bruenn. It is not clear from the brief report 
whether the two events hang together: whether Schoen¬ 
feld was imprisoned in retribution of his protest against 
the jailing of the two. The Catholic freemason and theos- 
ophist Joseph Franz Molitor, in a memorandum of 1829, 
refers to an imprisonment of Schoenfeld in Bruenn in 
1784. It is, however, improbable that as important a 
person as Schoenfeld would really have been jailed, 
and for a year at that. Perhaps the obstinate fellow of 
the Chronicle was not Schoenfeld, but somebody else, 
and Schoenfeld’s protest caused the other person’s arrest. 


93 




THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


This would make Schoenfeld an informer. Molitor calls 
him “a highly gifted, but dissolute man” who “behaved 
in a most indecent manner” and therefore had to be 
removed from the order of the “Asiatic Brothers” after 
they had paid off all his debts. Be that as it may, a 
brilliant career had opened up before him, he was rich 
and respected, and had free access to the Emperor. So 
why should he submit to Frank’s dictates and follow in 
his footsteps? He was playing for higher stakes. 

So was Frank. He gained access to the Viennese court 
and on March 19, 1775, he and his daughter were 
received in audience by Joseph II, the next day by 
Empress Maria Theresa who, on that occassion, let 
him kiss her hand and introduced the members of her 
family to him, as The Chronicle of the Lord con¬ 
descendingly acknowledged. The monarchs saw in Frank 
a willing helper in their attempts to solve the Jewish 
question—the Empress by way of baptism, her son and 
coregent by means of liberal reforms (such as his Edict 
of Tolerance). The young, already twice widowed Em¬ 
peror, however, was much more impressed by sultry 
Eva’s dark eyes, and her father knew how to take 
advantage of it. He rented a luxurious flat on the Graben 
in Vienna and showed himself frequently with his exotic 
entourage to the astonished Viennese who admired the 
mysterious man in Turkish dress, the apparent favorite 
of the Emperor. Frank felt so strong in the saddle that 
he applied for the title of count, but even Eva’s pas¬ 
sionate eyes could not secure it for him. So, on his 
own authority, he called himself Baron Jacob Joseph 
von Frank-Dobrushki, not entirely without justification, 
having been raised to the peerage at his baptism. 

After a four-month stay in Vienna, father and daugh¬ 
ter returned to Bruenn, without giving up the contact 


94 


The Messiah in Bruenn 

with the imperial court. Frank had his daughter take 
French and piano lessons, and accompanied her on her 
frequent trips to Vienna and Laxenburg Castle, the 
Emperor’s summer resort. He must indeed have been 
standing in high esteem, because accusations against him 
(like the one by the mentioned former rabbi Galinski) 
either remained unanswered or were rejected. When the 
Russian archduke, later Tsar Paul I, visited Vienna in 
1783, the Ejmperor insisted upon taking his guest to 
Bruenn to be introduced to Eva Frank. Thirty years 
later^ in 1813, Alexander I also paid a visit to Eva 
Frank, probably because of his mystical bent and his 
attempts at christianizing the Russian Jews and settling 
them as Judeo-Christians in the Crimea. When he de¬ 
parted, he left behind a generous amount of money. Eva 
was, at the time, in her late fifties, and it was her small¬ 
est sin that she passed herself off as being five years 
younger. From this time on, she signed her name “Eva 
Frank, E.R.” or simply “Eva Romanovna,” and had her 
tableware engraved with a crown and the monogram E.R. 

Frank’s health kept deteriorating. The earlier trou¬ 
bles were aggravated by a hernia and he complained 
about spells of weakness. He showed himself less fre¬ 
quently to the numerous pilgrims who came to see him 
and had to approach him on their knees and kiss his 
feet. While regularly attending church, he used to hold 
his own services outside of town in an open field. There 
he would throw himself on the ground, face down with 
arms outstretched, whispering ‘ a prayer or remaining 
silent. In his book about the Jewish sects, published in 
1823, Peter Beer describes this service: 

When he drove to his service, his carriage was 
drawn by magnificent horses and surrounded by 
some 10 to 12 horsemen, dressed the uhlan-way in 


95 








THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


gold, green and red, their pikes surmounted by 
gilded eagles, stags or suns and moons. The coach 
was followed by a rider on a splendid horse, decor¬ 
ated wth many tiny bells, who carried a kind of 
watering pot with which he sprinkled the ground 
where Frank had prayed. The purpose of this cere¬ 
mony is unknown, as it does not exist in the Jewish, 
Christian or Mahometan religions. 

(The purpose of this ceremony was much more prosaic 
than the puzzled reporter imagined. In another report 
the rider on the splendid horse is simply called “the 
waterman” who had to spray the dusty road.) 



The Messiah — 
a Capitalist 

Frank s extravagant life and the maintenance of some 
thousand people absorbed enormous amounts of money, 
and as the barrels of gold” did not always arrive in 
time, he was on the lookout for a steady income. And 
indeed, Frank was, with Hoenigsberg, Popper, Do- 
brushka et al., a tenant of the Austrian tobacco mono¬ 
poly, to the tune of 100,000 florins, which yielded him 
a yearly dividend of some 80,000 florins. He invested 
also in the fez manufacture of his Bruenn neighbors, the 
brothers Koffiler, which had, thanks to his connections, 
a huge market in Turkey. But when the lucrative tobacco 
monopoly was taken over by the government in 1783 and 
the fez factory folded during the war against the Turks, 


96 


The Messiah — a Capitalist 

Frank was left high and dry. He installed in his house an 
alchemist laboratory which did not produce gold, but a 
health elixir, the so-called Gold Drops, for which he 
charged exorbitant prices. But even this was not enough, 
and the Messiah had to ask for credit from the local 
butchers, bakers, and candlestickmakers, which was 
granted readily. Then a new shipment of money would 
arrive and keep him'going a little longer. Only once, 
when he was at the end of the rope, did he decide on the 
spur of the moment to go with his daughter to Laxenburg 
Castle and ask the Emperor for help. Joseph II, in the 
meantime, had become tired of the oriental beauty, after 
all it'was eleven years since he had seen her first; he no 
longer was the “cold fish” the court ladies used to smirk 
about, and Eva had passed her prime. They found the 
Emperor in excellent humor in the midst of his ladies. 
In response to Frank’s plea he advised him to dissolve 
his household, sell everything, and pay his debts with the 
proceeds; any balance the Emperor would be ready to 
pay. 

Deeply disappointed, the Franks returned home. Frank 
dismissed the governess who had taught his daughter 
good manners. The time had passed when the “holy 
virgin” used to ride at the head of her dashing uhlans 
and hussars. Frank longed for his sons in Warsaw, and 
childhood memories moved him to tears, especially on 
the Jewish holidays: 

Today is Yom Kippur. Let us sing the old songs 
and honor the memory of our fathers, grandmothers 
and ancestors! 

Hanukkah is eoming. We will light the candles, 
every day one more, and look forward gladly to the 
coming of the Messiah! [He must have forgotten 
that he was the one.] 


97 










THE MILITANT MESSIAH 

The gloomy mood had bad effects on the health of 
“the Lord.” The Chronicle reports “bleedings,” and sev¬ 
eral sisters were summoned from Warsaw “for his 
nourishment.” But this did not improve his financial 
status. Frank sent distress signals in all directions, 
pawned his table silver and the equipment of his army 
—all that was not enough to still the creditors who 
beleaguered his house, demanding cash. In response, he 
ordered his secretary to tell them that he was going to 
leave town for good: 

For several years my master has been living in 
this town. With your own eyes you saw how the 
town grew in population and buildings. . . Now, 
when my master goes away, this street where we 
live will become a desert, with no houses or people, 
no gardens or sidewalks. Grass will grow in the 
streets. . . nobody will live here and whoever drives 
by will spit and laugh at this place. 

At the last minute, however, help arrived. The Pross- 
nitz community came to the rescue with a considerable 
amount of money, with more to follow soon from War¬ 
saw and Istambul. Frank was jubilant: “Rejoice, broth¬ 
ers! King Messiah is here, let us light candles!” he ex¬ 
claimed, and barely standing on his feet, he tried a 
little dance, supported by two of his disciples. 

The next morning notices appeared on the street 
corners of Bruenn, calling all creditors of “the court” 
to come and receive with interest what was due to them. 
They came and saw to their horror the servants busy 
packing: Frank had made his threat come true. Before 
he left, he demanded and received from the city council 
a certificate to the effect that he had fully satisfied his 
creditors and that he left town with his daughter and 
domestics by his own will and to the great regret of the 


98 


In Prague and in America 

inhabitants whose benefactor he had been for the past 
thirteen years. As a farewell gift, he had a large sum 
distributed among the poor. He left town on February 
10, 1786, and arrived in Vienna two days later. There 
he was joined by his two sons who had journeyed to 
Vienna from Warsaw where they had been cared for 
by the Warsaw Frankists. The young gentlemen had been 
given an exquisite education with coach and horses and 
had been introduced to Warsaw society at balls and other 
functions. 

This time Frank stayed in Vienna for about two 
years. He was again wallowing in money and tried to gain 
access to the court, but he was no longer welcome 
there. So he looked for another place to live and found 
what he wanted in the town of Offenbach, near Frank¬ 
furt on the Main, Germany, where he purchased the 
castle of the impoverished Duke of Isemburg. He moved 
there in 1788, and here the last act of Frank’s life is 
played out, though not the last in the history of Frank- 
ism. 



Frankists in Prague 
and in America 

The amazing point about the ups and downs in 
Frank’s life, which have been only briefly sketched here, 
is not so much his desperate struggle to keep his head 
above water, as the unshakable loyalty of his followers; 
with few exceptions, they stood by him, even after his 
death, whether baptized or not. Frank complained time 
and again that those of his supporters who remained 


99 




THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


Jewish had deserted him and were responsible for his 
failures. “The work of my hands drowns into the sea, 
and it is your fault. Your heads ought to be tom off for 
it,” he once let fly at some of them who had come to 
see him. Yet, the Jewish Frankists let nobody outdo 
them, especially when it came to money. Just as Chris¬ 
tianity was a cloak for the baptized Frankists (and for 
the Marranos), so Judaism was for the Jewish followers 
of Frank. The former were practicing Catholics out¬ 
wardly; the latter obeyed all Jewish customs and com¬ 
mandments. But just as the Christian Frankists (and 
the Marranos) aroused the wrath of the Church, so the 
Jewish Frankists aroused that of the Synagogue. (The 
Marranos were not even safe on the Jewish side; so 
great was the number of Jewish informers in the ser¬ 
vice of the Inquisition that the Hebrew word for in¬ 
former, malshin, entered the Spanish language as malsin 
and malsinar.) While the baptized Frankists, like the 
Marranos, were pseudo-Christians, the non-baptized 
Frankists were pseudo-Jews. 

Characteristic of the latter were the Prague Frank¬ 
ists, to whom the wealthiest and most respected families 
of that town belonged. Their leaders were the important 
merchants Jonas and Aaron Baer Wehle, in whose house 
the sectarians met daily for the study of the Cabbala, 
their learned discussions being a far cry from the wild 
gatherings of the Polish Frankists. Their esoteric theo¬ 
logy is best presented in the last will of Gottlieb Wehle, 
Aaron Baer’s son, who died in New York in 1881. 
According to this document, the Prague Frankists 
believed 

that man, being image and masterpiece of God, 
will return to the perfect state, as he was when he 
left the Creator’s hand; that he will be free from all 


100 


In Prague and in America 

sickness of body, mind and soul; that he will be again 
innocent as before the Fall, free from vice and sin. . . 
Moreover, as God acts only indirectly, a chosen, 
consecrated Messiah is necessary as deputy of his 
highest Master. As now, according to the cabbalistic 
principles, man is only the tool of Providence 
through which it acts, therefore the smallest act of 
one chosen for thi§ highest charge may be of great¬ 
est importance. Thus these ill-reputed gentle-folk 
[a reference to the hostility of the rabbis towards 
die Frankists] endeavoured to prepare and qualify 
for this great aim and purpose by the highest moral 
standards. They welcomed the misinterpretation of 
fheir belief as an opportunity for bringing a sacrifice 
for their high aspirations, and indeed did so on 
/ the altar of their creed. 

Prominent among the Frankists of Bohemia and Mor¬ 
avia were the families Hoenigsberg, Dobrushka, Porges, 
Bondi, Brandeis, Mauthner, Goldmark, Dembitz, Schwa- 
bacher, and Licht^nberg. A number of them emigrated 
in 1848 to the United States, carrying the Frankist tradi¬ 
tion of intermarriage with them. Their most famous 
descendant was the late Justice and leading Zionist, Louis 
Dembitz Brandeis, married to Alice Goldmark of an¬ 
other Frankist family. His mother was a sister of Gottlieb 
Wehle. Like other Americans of Frankist descent, 
Brandeis considered Eva Frank a saint and had her 
picture on his desk. Another member of the U.S. Su¬ 
preme Court, Benjamin N. Cardozo, had among his 
ancestors one of the most prominent supporters of Sab- 
batai Zevi. One of the Schwabachers was the eminent 
New York lawyer who won the billion dollar suit before 
the U.S. Supreme Court for the railroads against the 
American government after World War 1. The atheist 
German philosopher Fritz Mauthner came from a Frank- 


101 








THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


ist family in Moravia; his grandfather was an officer of 
Eva Frank’s body guards. 

Contrary to the Polish Frankists, who mainly came 
from the poor and uneducated, those of Prague belonged 
to the rich and highly educated, with several physicians 
among them. Yet they went on frequent pilgrimages to 
Frank, as did their fellow-Frankists in Poland, or as the 
Hassidim went to their tsaddik. Jonas Wehle once took 
his son-in-law Loew Hoenig von Hoenigsberg on such a 
pilgrimage and the latter returned all bewildered by the 
rituals and ceremonies of “the court.” The pilgrims had 
to approach “divine Eva” on their knees and elbows 
(“like dogs did they crawl before her,” in the words of 
Eva’s lady-in-waiting, Paulina Pawlowska.) Sheddin]^ 
tears of joy, they deposited gifts and money at her feet, 
although the tears were not always pure joy, as the 
Franks, claiming divine command, did not hesitate to rob 
their visitors of their last pennies. Some Frankists testified 
before a rabbinical court at Fuerth, Germany, that one 
Mendel Yitshin had to give up “many thousands of 
florins.” The same happened to Rosl Eger, Jonas 
Wehle’s sister; although an admirer of Frank, she resisted 
at first, but then “was forced” to hand over her money. 
The Wehle family once was ordered to procure 3,000 
florins within three days; Aaron Baer Wehle actually 
delivered the money to Eva Frank and prostrated him¬ 
self before her, moved to tears for being blessed to see 
her with his own eyes. This elicited from her the affable 
words: “What does he cry about? I am a poor girl.” 
Salomon Zerkowitz had his beard forcibly shaved off 
on the Sabbath and had to pay for this “privilege” 660 
florins cash, a promissory note of 2,000 florins, and all 
the gold and silver he had with him. A student from 
Prague was relieved of his last twenty florins. And one 


102 


In Prague and in America 

day, it is reported, fifty Jewish-Christian families arrived 
in the Austrian province of Bukovina. They said they 
belonged to a sect of so-called Abrahamites and “had 
in their credulity given all their money to the chieftain 
of the sect, a fanatic and cheat by the name of Frankl 
[sic] in Offenbach, and now that they had lost every¬ 
thing had come to the^Bukovina to recover financially.” 
In Prague, like everywhere else, Frank found his most 
eager supporters among women, a cause of marital 
conflicts and fistfights in the women’s section of the 
Prague synagogue. On Yom Kippur, 1800, Frank’s son 
Roch retired with three young women to his room “for 
the ceremonies.” Three sentries, rifles cocked, guarded 
the door, while inside “all sort of lascivious and in¬ 
describably evil things went on.” Afterwards one of the 
three women wrote to her father in Prague how ex¬ 
tremely happy she was to have been chosen. The Prague 
Frankists also sent their sons to Offenbach, where they 
joined Frank’s army. We owe this information to two 
of these young men, the brothers Moses and Leopold 
Porges; they became suspicious that “an unheard-of 
swindle” was going on there and ran away (see Ap¬ 
pendix). The irate Prague rabbis set the ghetto mob 
against the Frankists, and the police had to quell the 
resulting riots. 



The New Jerusalem 

Frank’s entry into Offenbach was spectacular. First 
came two armed heralds on horseback, followed by a 


103 








THE MILITANT MESSIAH 
group of quick-stepping pages in green-gold livery. Two 
coaches and a convoy of vehicles carrying women and 
children followed. The rear was brought up by a detach¬ 
ment of Frank’s mounted soldiers. From the first coach 
stepped “the baron” himself, a commanding figure, 
flanked by his two sons and wearing a long, red coat, a 
high fur cap on his head, and a huge diamond-studded 
star on his chest. From the second coach emerged Eva 
Frank, in a sky-blue, pearl-embroidered silk dress, sur¬ 
rounded by her ladies-in-waiting. 

Frank had made his dream come true. He was a 
sovereign with a castle and army of his own. Some 
pint-size German rulers did not have much more. Yet, 
he was a king without a country. His empire extended 
over a bare two acres and consisted mainly of the army’s 
parade grounds and the adjacent area. Over this realm 
he ruled with absolute authority, an oriental potentate 
in the midst of great luxury. Sentries stood at every, 
door, barring all unauthorized persons. Frank received 
his special guests in an incense-filled room, seated cross- 
legged on an ottoman, smoking a hookah, surrounded by 
pages, and with an interpreter at his side. (Frank spoke 
only Ladino and Yiddish, with some Turkish and Ger¬ 
man.) 

The public had only an occasional glimpse of Frank 
when he drove out on his way to mass or to his own 
service “with a splendor comparable only to the mighty 
of the Orient.” In church “he did not bare his head and 
prayed neither kneeling nor standing nor sitting, but 
prostrate in the oriental way.” Outwardly, the Frankists 
behaved like good Catholics “leading a quiet and peace¬ 
ful life at the expense of their chief; they formed a small 
world of their own, none of them earning a livelihood. 
Sabbataian Jews bearing gifts came in great numbers on 


104 


The New Jerusalem 

pilgrimage to Offenbaeh, and the town profited from 
such visitors,” as reported by a contemporary chronicler. 
The people of Offenbach left the “Polack prinee” 
(“Polackenfuerst”) alone and granted him a kind of 
exterritoriality. Frank seemingly had “jurisdiction and 
police power over his subjects and enjoyed the complete 
independence of a sovereign.” (It should be noted, how¬ 
ever, in this connection that Offenbach was a traditional 
refuge for all sorts of dissidents and persecuted people. 
The tolerant dukes of Isemburg had granted asylum to 
Huguenots, Anabaptists, and Jews, and the reigning duke 
was a Freemason and Illuminate.) 

The German public was mystified by what was going 
on in their midst and wanted to know more about it. 
Contemporary newspapers occasionally published articles 
about the Offenbach court, but all they reported was 
what met the eye. What went on behind the walls of 
the castle, nobody knew. Thus in February, 1800, the 
Weimar Journal des Luxus und der Moden published 
two correspondences from Offenbach under the title “The 
continuous masquerade,” which said in part: 

Shortly after his arrival in Offenbach, Frank asked 
for permission to have some of his people join him. 
Before long, he had some 1,100 people with him, 
who hved together like a brotherhood and, it cannot 
be denied, distinguished themselves by their good 
and clean morals. .. . And now there started the most 
colorful and curious masquerade of Chinese, Turk¬ 
ish, Greek, Polish, Hungarian and who knows what 
other costumes with all the males participating, the 
females wearing ordinary German dress. Frank and 
his followers apparently belonged to the Catholic 
Church, but observed many other religious customs 
besides, such as men and women bathing daily in 
the river and attending prayer meetings after- 


105 






THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


wards. . . . These people were never short of money 
which arrived, nobody knew where from, not in bills 
of exchange, but in cash transported under military 
escort. After Frank’s death the shipments declined, 
causing some shortages to the extent that two hun¬ 
dred of his people had to be sent back to Poland at 
the expense of the Duke. Recently, however, Frau- 
lein Frank resumed the old ways, the present mas¬ 
querade being even more colorful and fantastic. In 
addition to the guards, she is always accompanied 
to Church by a beautihil little boy dressed as Amor 
in white silk with quiver and arrows, a man wearing 
a golden wolfs head, another with antlers and a 
third one with a golden crescent on his chest, as 
well as a group of young women dressed like 
Amazons with silver suns on their breasts. All of 
them, even her two so-called brothers, pay homage 
to her. Recently she ordered those employed in the 
local factories to quit work, which they dutifully 
did, preferring to suflEer want at her court. This must 
be a religious sect, because they have invited the 
Jews to adopt their creed and join them. With this 
kind of living and more and more money shipments 
failing to arrive, the situation of the commune, as 
could be expected, has gone from bad to worse. 
People who are in the know estimate the debts of 
Fraulein Frank at 800,000 florins. Several merchants 
have gone bankrupt on this account and now live at 
the court, eating at her table. . . . This is all I could 
find out about this strange matter. It can be seen 
here by thousands of people, but I have not been 
able to get to the bottom of it. 


A fantastic image of Frankist histrionics is mirrored 
in Bettina von Arnim’s Goethe*s Correspondence with 
a Child. Like most of this lady’s letters, it is a product 
of her vivid imagination, though it contains a grain of 
truth: 


106 


Goethe, Mickiewicz, Casanova 

Since you left, the life style of the town’s popula¬ 
tion has playfully changed over into the miraculous, 
which has to be seen in order to be believed. . . 
A mystic nation walks around among us in wonder¬ 
fully colored costumes. Long-bearded men, young 
and old, in purple, green and yellow gowns, hand¬ 
some youths in close-fitting, gold-trimmed clothes, 
one leg green, the other yellow or red, galloping on 
fiery steeds with silver bells around their necks or 
playing guitars and flutes as they stroll through the 
evening streets on their way to sweetheart’s window. 
Imagine this with the mild summer sky arching over 
all and flowing around the edges of a blooming, 
dancing, music-making world. Imagine the silver- 
, bearded prince of this people attired in white and 
seated in front of his palace on a pile of magnificent 
rugs and pillows, surrounded by his entourage. . . 
Little boys bringing golden bowls, while music re¬ 
sounds through the open windows of the palace. . . 
As children we used to stop in passing and listen to 
the singing and playing. 



Goethe, Mickiewicz, 
Casanova 

Goethe knew of Frank. Goethe’s papers include a 
notice about Frank with a postscript in Goethe’s hand: 
“How easily helpless people let themselves be fooled by 
clever cheats.” It never occurred to Goethe that he was 
listening to a Frankist when, in 1813, he attended a 
concert of the famous pianist Maria Szymanowska in 
Marienbad. She was the granddaughter of Frank’s adju¬ 
tant Shlomo Schorr, baptized Wolowski, and the wife of 


107 










THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


the Frankist Joseph Szymanowski. Goethe was moved to 
tears and felt “like a clenched hand that unfolds.” He 
had himself presented to the artist, went on walks with 
her and “fell in love with that person.” Maria’s sister, 
Kasimira Wolowska, also enchanted him (as well as 
Wilhelm von Humboldt) with her beauty, and Goethe 
wrote three short love poems in praise of the sisters. 

Maria’s daughter Celina was the wife of Poland’s great 
son, the poet Adam Mickiewicz, himself of Frankist 
parentage. In his Dziady (Forefathers' Eve), a mystical 
drama interwoven with Frankist motives, Mickiewicz 
makes veiled hints that he is the Messiah who, at the 
head of Poland and “her elder brother,” the Jewish 
people, would lead mankind to freedom, an idea vividly 
reminiscent of Frank. 

Frank was not an unusual phenomenon in his time. 
After all, the eighteenth century was not only the age 
of reason, but also of the mysticism of Saint-Martin 
and Swedenborg, the magnetism of Mesmer, the demonic 
occultism of the Marquis de Sade, and the blossoming 
of freemasonry; furthermore, adventurers like Cagliostro 
and Casanova had an easy field. Frank has been called 
“the Jewish Cagliostro.” Although Cagliostro spent some 
time with the Offenbach Illuminates, there is no indica¬ 
tion that the two ever met. But Casanova was in touch 
with Eva Frank and so perhaps with her father also. In 
the draft of a letter (which itself is not extant) he 
wrote on September 28, 1793, to the “divine virgin”: 

In your letters, dear lady, you talk of disclosing 
the mystery surrounding your existence. I feel duty- 
bound to inform you directly of the truth which will 
give you a better idea of myself than our old ac¬ 
quaintance so far has been able to do. I have for a 
long time been in the possession of the number Kab- 


108 


Goethe, Mickiewicz, Casanova 

EU which gives me, in arabic numerals, an answer 
to any question I put down in the same kind of 
numerals. I believe you know that the Kab-Eh 
(meaning divine secret) is not the Kab-Ala, which 
consists of more or less dark explanations. What I 
have, is a true oracle that always tells me the truth, 
although often in a veiled form. I would not dare 
give you a sample of it without having received per¬ 
mission to do so. r have asked my oracle for it in 
order to convince you that nothing concerning the 
deceased (your father) or yourself is unknown to 
me. This should not irritate you as it does not change 
my opinion about, nor my respect for you. Here are 
the answers I received several days after your 
second letter and the exact wording of the questions 
I asked the spirit, who is at my service and who an¬ 
swers only in numbers: Tell me when Eva Frank 
will be ready to divulge to me the secret she believes 
I do not know, and what are her intentions after 
having neglected me for so many years! Answer: I 
am well informed about her, but she will not admit 
it because divulging the secret would belie her 
dearest hopes. She also fools herself about the essen¬ 
tial. Second question: Tell me exactly what this 
essential is! Answer: The unequivocal aim of one of 
her two advisers. 

Here follows a vague explanation of Casanova’s num¬ 
ber-mysticism with the ambiguous assurance that Eva 
may safely challenge this person whose identity is not 
disclosed. The letter concludes: 

Independently thereof and out of pure amity, dear 
lady, kindly notify me at what bank to deposit to 
your order three hundred florins. Be advised that I 
am guided solely by the wish to be of some assis¬ 
tance to you and by the pleasure it gives me to 
oblige myself to you at so low a cost. (The modesty 
of the amount relieves you from worrying about its 
repayment.) 


109 





THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


The last sentence is crossed out, and whether Casa¬ 
nova ever made good on his promise is unknown. He 
seemed to have had the intention because, at about that 
time, he borrowed an equivalent amount from a Jewish 
moneylender in Prague, who later sued him for repay¬ 
ment. 

The secret Casanova spoke about refers to the rumors 
Frank had been spreading that he was the dethroned 
Tsar Peter III who had been declared dead, and Eva 
was the daughter of the Tsarina Elizabeth. 

Surrounded by a mysterious aura of fame, the Franks 
ruled unmolested and with relentless rigor over their 
realm. The brothers Porges testified during their inter¬ 
rogation in Fuerth about an incident that happened one 
day in Offenbach. For having dared to grumble, several 
people were chained and thrown into the dungeons of 
the castle, where they were beaten every day and given 
nothing to eat but bread and water. An eyewitness re¬ 
ports the following incident, typical of the despotic 
regime at the court of the “Polack prince”: “One of the 
women came running out of the Polish house, her hair 
wildly streaiming, the guards after her. Her desperate 
resistance in a public place almost caused a riot. The 
mob pushed towards the house where one could hear the 
unfortunate creature screaming, but kept a respectful 
distance as if glued to the ground.” The witness was told 
by the police that “no policeman or judicial person was 
permitted to enter the house under any circumstance.” 

On the whole, however, the “Offenbach Poles” lived 
a quiet and peaceful life, partly in the castle, partly in 
the town and its environs. “They enjoyed the most 
blameless reputation and never caused any trouble with 
their neighbors.” Frank’s court gained fame by the 
presence of one of Poland’s overlords, Martin Lubo- 


110 


Goethe, Mickiewicz, Casanova 

mirski, who married one of Eva’s ladies-in-waiting. Eva 
was “a true benefactor of the Catholic Church” and 
was popular because of her charity. 

Frank was making fewer and fewer public appear¬ 
ances. He suffered a stroke in December, 1788, and three 
months later a second, but recovered and pulled him¬ 
self together for new prophecies. The French Revolution 
had confirmed his predictions of the destruction of State 
and Church, and he saw a new chance for the conver¬ 
sion and settlement of the Jews. Yet, the end was near. 
One day he called his assistants to his bed and told 
them: 


I am very weak. My time has come to taste death. 
The old has to step aside and make room for the 
new. But my strength will renew itself and rise into 
the air like an eagle. 

Christ said he had come to free the world from 
the claws of Satan. But I say unto you, I have come 
to free the world from all laws and commandments. 
Everything has to be destroyed for the good God to 
show himself. 

This was to be his legacy; a few days later, on De¬ 
cember 10, 1791, a third stroke put an end to his stormy 
life. 

The funeral took place on December 12. First every¬ 
body approached the deceased and, in Jewish fashion, 
touched his feet, asking forgiveness. Then the proces¬ 
sion began. As he came, so he went—with pomp and 
circumstance: 

First there were two hundred women of all ages, 
dressed in white, their hair braided with white rib¬ 
bons, carrying burning candles. Next came the 
corpse dressed in an ermine-trimmed, red silk-gown. 


111 







THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


in a coffin upholstered with white silk and decorated 
with golden tassels, carried by white-clad servants. 
They were followed by his two sons on foot and the 
“divine Eva” in a densely veiled equipage drawn by 
four horses and surrounded by twenty young women 
of Eva’s Amazon guards. Finally seventy of Franks 
body-guards and all the other male members of the 
brotherhood, carrying flaming torches and wearing 
white ribbons around their heads and white crepe 
on their arms. Arriving at the burial place, the whole 
assembly broke out in loud lament and Anally every¬ 
body threw a handful of earth into the grave. All 
the bells of Offenbach were ringing that day, in¬ 
cluding the Lutherans, who also aecompanied the 
funeral train with music. 

No clergyman was in attendance. 

Among the mourners was Frank’s second cousin Franz 
Thomas von Schoenfeld. 



Decline 


With Frank’s death began the decline of Frankism. 
Neither Eva nor her brothers had the magnetic power 
of their father to command faith and obedience. Still, 
the Offenbach center continued for another twenty years. 
Outwardly everything went on as before. Eva, a beauti¬ 
ful greyhound at her feet, continued to receive her 
visitors, and the “army” went through its daily routine; 
but the splendor was gone and the uniforms became 
threadbare. The student David Hofsinger who, together 


112 


Decline 


with the Forges brothers, had escaped Eva’s court, 
testified in Fuerth that once, after the arrival of some 
money from Prague, all male personnel received new 
trousers. 

Poverty stalked the castle. The lady and her brothers 
still feasted on royal dishes, but ordinary people received 
a watery vegetable soup from the communal kitchen. 
In Poland, protests were raised against the great amounts 
of money shipped out of the country, and one day a 
shipment of 40,000 ducats was confiscated by the border 
guards. The “court” again took to living on credit. Con¬ 
vinced by the visit of Alexander I of Eva’s royal ex¬ 
traction, the Offenbach merchants and the Mainz and 
l^rankfurt bankers, among them old Rothschild, let 
themselves be put off and renewed the promissory notes 
time and again until the debt exceeded one million 
florins. 

In their distress, the Franks took refuge in an old 
idea and, as their father had done, sent an appeal to 
the Jewish communities of Austria, Prussia, and Poland. 
The “army” was relieved from drilling to copy these 
letters, which, in order to avoid undesired attention, 
were mailed not in Offenbach but in neighboring towns. 
Most of them failed to reach their destination. Intercepted 
by the censors, they highly alarmed the authorities. The 
letters talked about abolishing all existing laws and 
about a conspiracy by the monarchs of Europe to kill 
the Jews, whose only salvation was in joining “our sect, 
called Edom.” The letters were signed by the three elders 
of the sect: “Franz Wolowski, as Jew Shloime, son of 
Elisha Schorr of Rohatyn; Michael Wolowski, as Jew 
Nuta, son of Elisha Schorr of Rohatyn; and Andreas 
Dembowski, as Jew Yeruhem, son of Haim Lipman of 
Czarnokozienice.” These letters just contained the old 


113 












THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


Frankist slogans, but now they sounded like a call to 
revolution. Europe’s mighty were haunted by the Jacobin 
phantom and saw in the name “Sect of Edom” a cover 
for the French Jacobin club, the name of the founder, 
Jacob Frank, being sufficient proof. Their fears were 
heightened by the red ink in which the letters were 
written and by a denunciation addressed to the Prague 
city commander. Count Vratislav, by an anonymous 
informer, in all probability Rabbi Elasar Flekeles, who 
tried in the following manner to connect the Frankists 
with the French Revolution: 

At the outbreak of the pernicious French freedom 
when so many things fell apart and many detestable 
organizations and secret societies came to the sur¬ 
face, there appeared also to exist an understanding 
between the Frankist and some French societies. The 
name of Franc alone aroused suspicion as being a 
sign of their connection. . . . One of his strongest 
supporters, a Jewish native of Bruenn by the name 
of Moses Dobrushka, who was baptized twenty-two 
years ago under the name of Schoenfeld, went to 
Offenbach after the death of said Franc. He was 
supposed to take the place of the deceased among 
the followers he left behind, but went instead to 
France using the name of Moses Frei. He married 
his sister to a certain convent-secretary named Sabah 
\sic] and was along with his brother-in-law, guillo- 
teened |in the German original: gilgotiniert] during 
the regime of Robespierre. This should suffice to show 
the high probability of the notorious Francs con¬ 
nections with the French societies. . . . The overthrow 
of the papal throne . . . [and] the conquests of Gen¬ 
eral Bonaparte give fresh nourishment to the super¬ 
stitious beliefs of these people. His conquests in the 
Orient, particularly of Palestine and Jerusalem, in 
addition to his appeal to the Jews, pour oil on their 


114 


Decline 

fire, and it is this precisely that seems to be the tie- 
in between them and the French societies. 

Count Trautmannsdorf, the governor of Galicia, re¬ 
ported to Vienna that “these Red Letters frighten the 
local Jews with all sorts of superstitious prophecies 
and that the governors of the Russian and Prussian 
provinces had interc6pted similar mail. The chief of the 
Austrian police. Count von Pergen, deemed it neces¬ 
sary to inform the Emperor that “these appeals create 
distrust and dissatisfaction with the highest authorities 
and increase the possibility of active resistance and 
rebellion.” He received thereupon from “the highest 
authorities” an order to take speedy measures against 
this dangerous activity. The PRissian government, on 
its part, had its plenipotentiary in Frankfurt institute 
a thorough investigation: 

Whereas in present-day circumstances anything re¬ 
ferring to secret societies, organizations under un¬ 
known leaders and religious and political fanatic¬ 
ism deserves double attention; 
whereas according to several sources the agitators 
of the Jacobin abominations and outrages continue 
to operate in darkest secrecy, taking advantage 
of any means that may serve their goals; 
whereas they consider the dispersion of the Jews 
over so many countries a handy way of dissemi¬ 
nating their dangerous ideas; 
we order you herewith to investigate, in complete 
discretion and without causing the slightest sensa¬ 
tion, anything concerning in the least the exis¬ 
tence, principles and purposes of the so-called 
"Sect Edom” as well as the late Frank, his so- 
called daughter and sons; and immediately and 
fully report to our ministerial cabinet about the 
success of your efforts. 


115 









THE MILITANT MESSIAH 

The anxiety of the authorities was well founded. 
Frankists and Jews had fought in the anti-Russian Polish 
revolution of 1793/95; the Polish freedom fighters had 
put their hope in Napoleon; quite a few Frankists be¬ 
longed to the Polish Legion that fought under his ban¬ 
ner; and Napoleon’s promise to establish a Jewish state 
in Palestine had caused some excitement among the 
Jews. The Holy Alliance suspected the Frankist activities 
to be an outgrowth of the French Revolution or a 
continuation of the Polish one. The Prussian representa¬ 
tive in Frankfurt tried to put the fears of his superiors 
to rest. He assured them he could not find a trace of 
Frankist revolutionary connections; even the proximity 
of the theater of war and the presence of the French 
in Offenbach were not sufficient grounds for such ap¬ 
prehensions. His report, like many documents quoted 
in this book, is published here for the first time. It con¬ 
tains some interesting facts about the life of the Frankists 
in Offenbach: 

Shortly after Frank’s arrival in Offenbach the 
number of his subjects rose to between 800 and 
1,000. They lived together in form of a brother¬ 
hood, holding common prayer meetings and walking 
around in Polish clothes and partly armed, without 
however causing anger or complaints. The Frank 
family exhibited great wealth and showed off in 
gorgeous clothes and with magnificent parades.Their 
money arrived not via banks,- but secretly in escorted 
wagons. The Baron managed to get abundant credit, 
and this caused many people to go bankrupt; among 
them the wealthy Catholic merchant and Frankfurt 
court-counselor Hestermann with wife and five chil¬ 
dren, and the rich Jew Kohlmann who, having ad¬ 
vanced between them some 300,000 florins, were 
ruined and now have joined the sect, living at the 
court. Said Baron Frank passed away in 1792 leav- 


116 


Decline 


ing behind a debt burden of 800,000 florins. After 
his death the daughter stepped into his place, out¬ 
ranking her brothers. She increased the display and 
had herself addressed Princess. However, because 
of declining income and obtrusive creditors, the 
Offenbach authorities began to look into the finances 
of this family. In order to avoid the brewing storm, 
the three Franks took to all sorts of excuse and 
subterfuge and filially, on January 18, 1800, sub¬ 
mitted to the government a rather strange document. 
They declared therein that His Majesty, the Em¬ 
peror of Russia, would pay all their debts, for the 
reason of Eva Frank being his full sister, witness 
the mourning she wore at the death of Empress 
Catharina. Furthermore, that her brother Joseph, 
like Roch Frank a full son of the deceased Baron, 
would go to St. Petersburg and bring back the sol¬ 
emn recognition of the Princess and all the money 
to pay her debts. In the meantime, seemingly from 
some unexpected money shipments, the smallest and 
most urgent debts were paid off and some donations 
made to the Catholic Church and the poor in order 
to delude the public. The Isemburg lords had no 
idea of the royal lineage of this family, and their 
only incentive for the admission of this armed com¬ 
munity, which formed so to say a state within the 
state, was the wish to enrich their residence-town 
with well-to-do settlers. The origin of this family 
and their followers, their true aims and sources of 
maintenance are veiled in deep darkness. Equally 
unclear is whether the background is personal profit¬ 
eering or political aspirations. In any case, no con¬ 
nection with the Freemasons, Illuminates, Rosi- 
crucians or Jacobins could be established. ... As of 
late, the Franks appealed to a number of synagogues 
in Germany and abroad to band together in a sect 
called Edom which accepts Jews and Christians 
alike. They have, however, not been able to win 
over a single local Jew. It is also well known that, 
since their arrival, none of them got married, al- 


117 
















THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


though the newly-born are baptized by the reformed 
minister. The young receive no moral or religious 
instruction; they remain completely uneducated and 
do not learn any craft. Recently idleness became 
their ordered way of life. Still, some of them earn 
money by making music in the streets [the beautiful 
musicians of Bettina von Arnim?] so much so that 
they can pay for the purchase of their instru¬ 
ments. 

Had the Prussian representative gone back a few years 
in the scope of his investigation, he might have discovered 
some “connections.” On December 27, 1791, two weeks 
after Frank’s death, Johann G. Forster, the leader of 
the German Jacobins, in a letter from Mainz, gave his 
father-in-law some information about Frank and his 
people. In spite of his repeated efforts, he wrote, he 
was unable to find out anything definite, but knew of 
the great amounts of money Frank received and of his 
uhlan-corps in Polish uniforms. “He is said to have 
experimented as an alchemist and daily drank great 
portions of Hoffmann’s liquor, which his people be¬ 
lieved was to keep him immortal. But now that he is 
dead, his immortality is explained as a Tibetan soul- 
migration; after forty-nine days his spirit will descend 
on his second cousin who will become the head of 
the sect in his stead.” Considering the fact that the 
writer of these lines, several months later, proclaimed the 
republic in Mainz, the several hundred men of Frank’s 
well-trained cavalry corps would have been a welcome 
assistance in the defense of the young republic against 
Prussian aggression. 

The report of the Prussian representative apparently 
quieted his superiors, and the Prague Frankists succeeded 
in convincing the authorities of their loyalty by an in- 


118 


Decline 

telligent reply from Loew Hoenig von Hoenigsberg, 
Jonas Wehle’s son-in-law, to the anonymous denuncia¬ 
tion. He addressed a “Letter from an enlightened Prague 
Jew” to the city governor, followed by an extensive 
memorandum, in the wake of which the heads of the 
Prague Jewish community and the rabbis Flekeles and 
Landau were taken into custody for several days. 

After the failure of the Red Letters to bring in money, 
Eva took to other methods. Simultaneously with the 
“strange document” mentioned in the Prussian report, 
she had the following notice posted in the streets of 
Offenbach: 

Upon the most high order of his Russian Majesty, 
our beloved brother will go this coming July 1st 
to St. Petersburg and return six months later under 
military protection with an amount of money suf¬ 
ficient to satisfy all our creditors. Those, however, 
who have stained our name, will be publicly pun¬ 
ished after having received payment. 

Hence, a one-year grace. But when the beloved 
brother returned empty-handed, there was nothing left 
for Eva but to dismiss everyone, including the remnants 
of the “army” and to exchange the castle for a smaller 
house, keeping only a few servants. Frank’s son Joseph 
died in 1803, his brother Roch in 1813. Roch’s be¬ 
longings, consisting of “some clothing, linen, a writing- 
table, a chest of drawers and some small items,” were 
seized by the authorities. 

Eva held on for some time thanks to the windfall 
gift from Alexander I in 1813 and some small ship¬ 
ments, such as a sum of 600 florins from Warsaw in 
1816. She tried to put off her creditors by reminding 
them of how her father had paid off his debts, and by 


119 






THE MILITANT MESSIAH 

getting indignant when pressed for payment: “I can¬ 
not make money out of myself and have somehow to 
make ends meet until my capital arrives.” Finally she 
offered to settle the debt of one million florins by a 
payment of one hundred florins and monthly installments 
of three florins each. The bankrupcy was evident. On 
request of the creditors, she was put under house arrest 
and remained so until her death in 1816. 

The sect continued to exist for some time. In 1823 
the Frankist Kaplinski tried to call a Frankist congress 
at Karlsbad, but few people showed up. The Polish 
Frankists maintained their identity into the second half 
of the nineteenth century. Baptism had opened the doors 
of society to them and, like their brothers in the West, 
they rose to high positions in the military, industry, 
banking, law, medicine, and science. Many renowned 
Polish families are of Frankist descent. They were, on 
the whole, liberal patriots, who held leading positions 
among the Warsaw Freemasons and who distinguished 
themselves in the Polish uprisings of 1830 and 1863. 
Only after the failure of the latter did they loose their 
group character. This did not protect them from the ac¬ 
cusation of being pseudo-Christians, at a time when most 
of them already belonged to the conservative and even 
anti-Semitic classes of Polish society. 


120 



Moses Dobrushka, 
the Jacobin 

At Jacob Frank’s funeral we met again Franz Thomas 
von Schoenfeld. His attendance gave rise to rumors that 
he was taking over the leadership of the sect. Whether 
it had been offered to him and he declined, or whether 
he had claimed it and was refused, or whether he simply 
had come to pay homage to his deceased kin—we don’t 
know. Instead of starting a messianic career Schoenfeld 
went to France. And from here on, his story, including 
the tragic end, reads like a thriller, a web of fact and 
fiction, often impossible to disentangle. 

Schoenfeld made a theatrical entrance onto the stage 
of the French Revolution. The first act was played in 
Strasbourg; he arrived there in the midst of a political 
affair which kept the town in an uproar. Charles La- 
veaux, the editor of the Jacobin Counter de Strasbourg, 
had been jailed by the royalist mayor, and Schoenfeld 
came to his defense in an open letter to the Courrier in 
which he pledged 400 francs “as a sacrifice on the altar 
of freedom’’ in case of Laveaux’ vindication. He said: 

As to myself, it would be needless to tell you my 
name; may it suflSce to say that I belong to that 
numerous army which, on the other side of the 
Rhine, stands ready to fight for your constitution, 
your principles, your fre^om. The prevailing cir¬ 
cumstances did not allow us to take the Jacobin 


121 







THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


oath in your midst. It is, however, engraved in our 
hearts. Far away from you, in the majestic calm 
of the night, we stood up, eyes toward heaven, and 
vowed: LIBERTY OR DEATH. The heavens heard 
us, the tyrants trembled, mankind applauded. 

More donations followed, all given in a most con¬ 
spicuous way, such as a hundred francs to the family 
of the first French soldier “who will be lucky enough 
to give his blood for freedom’s sake” in the war against 
Austro-Prussian aggression. Laveaux was freed, and on 
that occasion Schoenfeld had 20 memorial medals cast, 
17 of silver, 3 of gold, at a value of 800 francs, as he 
did not forget to mention. The Jacobins admitted him 
into their ranks and at the reception ceremony he in¬ 
troduced himself as Sigismund Gottlob Junius Brutus 
Frey, presumably to hide his past. And here the first 
clouds gathered over the head of the new Jacobin. 
The teacher Chairoux, in the liberal-royalist Feuille de 
Strasbourg, raised the question of the identity of this 
foreigner, his country, fortune, occupation, and mission. 
Schoenfeld-Frey answered him in another open letter: 

My coimtry is the world, my occupation to do 
good, my mission that of all sensitive souls, and my 
fortune big enough to pay twenty sous (one franc) 
for every word of the stupidities Monsieur Chairoux 
has uttered about me witiiout repeating himself. . . 

I have counted them, they, are 131 in all; 1 deposit, 
however, not 131, but 200 francs on account of any 
further idiocy of Monsieur Chairoux, always at 
twenty sous die word, to be paid to the soldiers for 
a drink to the health of the Jacobins and the shame 
of Monsieur Chairoux. . . I live with Monsieur Caire, 
Under the Grand Arcades 30, and invite Monsieur 
Chairoux to come see me in order to show him, on 
the basis of many letters of recommendation, that I 


122 


Moses Dobrushka, the Jacobin 

am not unworthy of his hatred and that of all the 
aristocrats of the world. 

He took an active part in Jacobin propaganda and 
organized several branches of the Friends of the Con¬ 
stitution, as the Jacobins called themselves. Thus he 
explained to 200 wine growers what the natural condi¬ 
tion of man used to bt, what civilization and despotism 
have done, and what freedom will make of him. This 
sounds like Rousseau, but also like Gottlieb Wehle’s 
last will, and shows how close Frankist thinking had 
corne to western European thought. All the while, Frey 
took care to remain in the public eye by mentioning his 
financial contributions to the cause of France and free¬ 
dom. At the appointment ceremony of Prince Charles 
of Hesse to the rank of general of the French army, “le 
brave patriot Frey” presented him with a sword “worth 
twenty louis d’or,” as the Courrier prominently reported. 

If he had any secret instructions from Vienna, they 
were forgotten. As Balaam once came to curse and 
blessed instead, Schoenfeld-Frey became infatuated with 
the revolution and conveyed his feelings in a letter to 
Voss on April 8, 1792, “the 4th year of freedom”: 

Dearest, best brother Voss! It is now three weeks 
since I have been in Strasbourg, or better: in 
heaven; for to live in freedom is, I believe, a heav¬ 
enly life here in the country of freedom, heaven on 
earth. I refrain from telling you of all the blessings 
the Frankish freedom gives us; our correspondence 
might inconvenience you with the despot. 1 give you 
all 1 can, the rest you have to dream about, to quote 
Abelard. 

In another letter he tried to make Voss move to 
Strasbourg, telling hihi of a suitable house with garden 


123 















THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


he had found for him. He appointed himself umpire 
in a quarrel between two prominent Jacobins, the Alsa¬ 
tian H. Salzmann and the former Franciscan monk 
Eulogius Schneider who, after having been fired from 
his professorship in Bonn because of revolutionary ten¬ 
dencies, had gone to France and become public prose¬ 
cutor and “the terror of Alsace”; on April 1, 1794, 
several days before the brothers Frey, Schneider was be¬ 
headed “for misuse of power and unbelievable cruelty 
against peaceful citizens.” In an open letter, four pages 
long, Frey appealed to the two opponents to shake hands 
and give each other the brotherly kiss of peace; he con¬ 
tinued: 

The fatherland demands complete renunciation of 
all private wishes; all its children have to annihilate 
themselves as individuals and dissolve into one great 
new whole. Forget anything of no concern to the 
whole, forget yourselves for the sake of all, forget 
man for mankind’s sake. The war against Austria 
has begun. Her young monarch, having hardly 
ascended the throne, is about to begin his royal 
career in a stream of blood, to dip the hem of his 
purple coat in the heart-blood of his subjects in 
order to show them that he can roar like the lion 
and kill better than any animal. His altar is still 
steaming from the blood of the hundreds of thou¬ 
sands Joseph II sacrificed to his ambition when he 
made war on the princely Osman people who had 
lived with him in a holy peace alliance. . . He knew 
but the law of his whimsy; the voice of humanity 
did not reach his despotic ear, open only to his 
desires, his blustering passions. 

Is this the same man who had praised Joseph II, his 
patron and benefactor, to high heaven as the “person¬ 
ification of love and goodness combined with manly 


124 


Moses Dobrushka, the Jacobin 

strength”? The same who had enriched himself in the 
war against Turkey? Franz II becomes for him God’s 
scourge: 

Blood-covered youth, begin your gruesome call¬ 
ing, muster the hordes of your slaves; maybe you 
have been chosen to accomplish the holy job of 
mankind’s salvatioij, for the despots themselves have 
to fulfill the achievement of universal freedom. 

Of himself he says in this “outpouring of the heart”: 

I am a stranger in your lands, my maternal sky is 
far from here, but my heart beats fast at freedom’s 
call, the most beautiful of the 18th century. I fol- 
/ lowed the beloved of mankind, an infant at her 
bosom, and now wallow in her full breasts, greedily 
drinking her milk, eating of her honey and refreshing 
my soul in an abundance of delight. 

Here the enigma begins, because this is too beauti¬ 
ful to be true. Schoenfeld’s membership with the Illu¬ 
minates, together with Laveaux, Schneider, and Voss, 
and his correspondence with the latter show him already 
sympathizing with the revolution before coming to 
France. Therefore, the first act probably was preceded 
by a prologue. As a matter of fact, Georges Avenel 
begins the second volume of his biography of Anacharsis 
Cloots, the leader of the ultra-leftists and earliest advo¬ 
cate of a “permanent revolution,” with the following 
passage: 

At the same time that Frederick Wilhelm of God’s 
grace threatened to engulf the city of the revolution 
in blood, posters appeared behind his back in the 
streets of Berlin, carrying the date of the first year 
of hope and universal liberation. They called upon 


125 
















THE MILITANT MESSIAH 

the Prussians:^ “Awake! This is the war of nations 
against kings!” The best Berliners secretly named 
as the author of these calls to insurrection the young 
and wealthy Austrian Baron Eschine Portock who, 
having been banished from Vienna, had just re¬ 
turned from France and—what audacity!—was about 
to publish his impressions of this journey. In the 
very midst of Prussian monarchy he dared to decor¬ 
ate the frontispiece of his book with a beautiful 
laurel-covered bonnet and bravely sign the preface 
with his Jacobin name: Junius Frey—in other words, 
Brutus, a free man. 

It will be remembered that Junius Frey was unex- 
plainably named Eschine Portock in the executioner’s list 
in Paris, although the personal data leave no doubt about 
his identity. Jules Claretie, the biographer of Camille 
Desmoulins, believes that it should not be too difficult 
to identify this patriotic foreigner and learn something 
more about his sister Leopoldine, allegedly one of the 
74 “natural” children of Emperor Leopold II. Actually, 
Frey testified at his trial that he was chased out of 
Berlin as a Jacobin agitator, after having been hanged 
in effigy in Vienna and deprived of his fortune. 

As evidence of Frey’s revolutionary activity in Prussia, 
Avenel quotes a letter Frey wrote in Strasbourg on 
January 21, 1792, made public in the Intimate Letters 
about France, published the same year in Berlin (see the 
bibliographical note at end of the book). We quote from 
page 97: “The National Guards are mostly patriotic 
and democratic, which unfortunately means the same 
here. They really do not seem to fear the exterior enemy 
and do want war; they are only afraid of the aristocrats 
they will leave behind and speak of driving them all 
ahead of themselves.” 

Frey’s presence in Strasbourg in January contradicts 


126 


Moses Dobrushka, the Jacobin 

his letter to Voss, according to which he only arrived 
there about the middle of March. The fact, however, 
that Leopold II was still alive in January, may be the 
key to the puzzle. The letter of January 21 could then 
be considered as a report about the fighting spirit of the 
French forces; there are other pieces of this kind among 
the Intimate Letters. Frey followed the Emperor’s instruc¬ 
tions until the latter’s death on March 1, but then felt 
released from them. If he were now to prove his revolu¬ 
tionary zeal, nourished by his hatred for Franz II, he had 
better hide his previous stay in France. This was the first 
snare in which he got entrangled. 



Junius Frey, 
Grandseigneur 

For the time being, however, he felt safe, and in 
the company of his brother Emanuel, his sister Leo¬ 
poldine, his son Joseph Franz, and Laveaux he went 
to Paris. Here the second act took place. His wife and 
two daughters having been left behind in Vienna, he 
passed his 13-year-old son off as 16 and made him 
join the French army, while he himself, with brother 
and sister, became a few years younger. (We will soon 
see for what purpose.) The 21-year-old Leopoldine 
Schoenfeld thus became the 16-year-old Leopoldine Frey, 
and in order to make it more credible, his own age 
decreased from 40 to 35, that of his brother, from 28 
to 26. 

They arrived in Paris on June 10, 1792, and the 


127 










THE MILITANT MESSIAH 

same evening were introduced by Laveaux to the Jacobin 
club. Junius Frey immediately played the grandseigneur 
and acquired an elegant mansion in the rue d’Anjou. 
The police inventory lists as furnishings in the hall a 
bust of Brutus, an aquarium (with no fish), and a cage 
with eight canaries; on the walls, engravings of the 
oath in the Jeu de Paume and of the tombs of Marat 
and Lepeletier; on the clothes tree a Jacobin bonnet 
decorated with four golden acorns. A broad staircase 
led to the upper floor. In the drawing room, a mantel¬ 
piece with a marble clock and a cupid of Sevres por¬ 
celain, flanked by two chandeliers; a large mirror from 
floor to ceiling; a mahogany dressing table; a piano; a 
couch; eight chairs upholstered with green-and-white 
striped silk. In the bedroom, upholstered with golden 
damask, a fourposter bed with yellow and white pat¬ 
terned curtains; a huge cupboard with a relief portrait 
of Cicero on a blue marble plaque; two easy chairs, etc. 
In another bedroom was a fourposter bed and crimson- 
red curtains, lined with white taffeta. Two more rooms, 
one lined with green taffeta, the other with blue silk, 
and so on. “Here one may find our Junius, pen in hand, 
dreaming of the rights of man or immersed in the works 
of Plutarch or Rousseau. His severe exterior and revolu¬ 
tionary attire . . . the philosophical haircut and the red 
cap on his savant head are to vouch for the purity of 
his revolutionary sentiments.” Thus Robespierre de¬ 
scribed him sarcastically. 

The house of the brothers Frey became a Jacobin 
center. They fought in the storming of the Tuileries on 
August 10, 1792, in which Junius was slightly wounded; 
the solemn proclamation of the Republic took place “in 
the light of torches donated by the citizen Frey.” Armed 
with a letter of recommendation from the Strasbourg 


128 


Junius Frey, Grandseigneur 

Jacobins, the brothers applied for French citizenship. 
On August 26, 1792, the National Convention bestowed 
honorary citizenship on a number of foreigners, among 
them Schiller and Klopstock, and the deputy Boussac 
moved to extend it also to Wieland, Voss, and the 
brothers Frey: 

The famous Wieland of Weimar, Saxonia, the 
learned author of many German writings, has served 
mankind well, probably to the same extent for Ger¬ 
many as Voltaire for France. In his periodical Mer¬ 
cury he takes an energetic stand for the success of 
the Revolution, trying to spread this idea among his 
countrymen. The famous Voss of Eutin, Holstein, 
has likewise deserved well of both mankind and 
/ France. This important writer combines a thorough 
knowledge of the older literature with the purest 
philosophy; a friend of mankind, as well as of free¬ 
dom and equality, he does not miss an occasion to 
praise the French Revolution in his classic-poetic 
hymns, published in Strasbourg. No less deserving 
for the cause of mankind are the brothers Frey, 
Junius and Emanuel, renowned German writers. Out 
of pure love for the French Revolution and selfless 
patriotism, they left house and home seven months 
ago to settle in France in these stormy times in order 
to share the sufferings of the true patriots and, upon 
the success of the Revolution, to rejoice with them 
at the destruction of kings and kingdoms. They have 
voluntarily renounced their aristocratic titles in order 
to live in France as good citizens and sansculottes 
and have not ceased recommending to their country¬ 
men the advantages of our unforgettable Revolution. 
The two brothers, enjoying the reputation of eager 
patriots, have been gladly accepted as members by 
the Strasbourg Jacobin society. The older Frey estab¬ 
lished several patriotic clubs in the environs of Stras¬ 
bourg and instructed the population about the ad¬ 
vantages of the new constitution. The two gentlemen 


129 









THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


refrain from publicizing their truly patriotic deeds, 
but could easily point to many proofs of their noble 
minds. They could submit their patriotic writings to 
rigorous scrutiny; they could call the attention of 
the friends of France to the many benefits they 
rendered to the Confederates; they could recall the 
great dangers they exposed themselves to on August 
10 . 

The bill was drafted by Junius Frey; the draft is 
preserved among his papers in Paris and contains cor¬ 
rections by his hand. Compared with what he had to 
say about Wieland and Voss, his self-assessment is 
certainly not an exercise in understatement and modesty. 

Originally the bill was to be introduced by the Alsatian 
Ruehl, and not the Provencal Boussac. Ruehl knew the 
Freys personally, but his name does not even appear 
a^ong the supporters of the bill. Was there already 
something brewing against them? Whatever the reason, 
the bill did not come to a vote, and the brothers made 
another attempt. The day of the proclamation of the 
Republic, September 21, 1792, they adopted a war 
orphan and agreed to support a blind old woman whose 
husband had been killed in the storming of the Tuileries, 
and to pay her and several war veterans a pension of 
200 francs each. Any of these acts of charity would 
have entitled them to citizenship, but only after a year s 
residence, and for this it was too soon. 

In order to finance the War, the government sold the 
properties of the aristocratic refugees, and the brothers 
Frey acquired three of these “national estates for 210,- 
000 francs*, the palaces of the Count de Montfermail and 
of Madame de Cavagnac in Paris and the monastery 
of Chelles (near Meaux) with church and park. They 
did not fail to mention these “patriotic deeds” at their 


130 


Junius Frey, Grandseigiieur 

trial. Referring to his experience in supplying the Aus¬ 
trian army, Junius Frey offered the French war depart¬ 
ment his services as a broker for the shipment of arms 
and wheat via Venice and submitted a plan for draw¬ 
ing Turkey into the war against Austria. He bought up 
the cargoes of captured enemy vessels and, on the side, 
loaned money at high rates. A number of German 
emigrants lived in his house. The expensive household 
with frequent receptions and banquets ran up a monthly 
bill of 4,000 to 5,000 francs. Where did all that money 
come, from? 

Junius answered this question at the trial: “My wife 
is the adopted daughter of a wealthy man. She has two 
million at her disposal and sends me money on demand.” 
This is not entirely correct, for we know that the 
“wealthy man” had disinherited his adopted daughter. 
It also contradicts Frey’s assertion that his fortune had 
been confiscated and his family harassed by the Austrians. 
Frey’s agent, Johann Friedrich Diedrichsen, testified that 
Frey’s wife continued to live in grand style in Vienna 
and that her fortune had not been touched. Actually, 
Wilhelmine Schoenfeld lived unmolested in Vienna until 
her death in 1801; her two daughters married into the 
Austrian aristocracy. If she did send money to her hus¬ 
band, she could only have done so in a roundabout 
way. As a matter of fact, he received several remittances 
through a bank in Hamburg. 

The above mentioned Diedrichsen (or Dietrichstein, 
as he is named in some German documents) was in 
charge of the Frey finances. He accompanied the broth¬ 
ers on their journey to Germany and joined them in 
Paris after a side trip to London. He became acquainted 
with them in Vienna and possibly earlier in Bruenn. 
(Among the Bruenn nobility there was a family Dietrich- 


131 






















THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


stein in whose house Joseph II was a frequent guest.) 
After having worked for seven years in a Viennese bank, 
he entered the service of the Frey family, living with 
and completely dependent on them. He had a sexual 
relationship with the younger brother, and Emanuel 
Frey played with the 50-year-old man like a capricious 
diva, shutting him out at night, withholding his salary, 
and engaging in similar torments. Diedrichsen once 
turned to the older brother for money because he “had 
nothing left to bite,” asking him not to tell anybody, 
“least of all your brother.” In a long letter, dated Berlin, 
February 17, 1792, he implored the latter to give him 
his freedom, and humiliated himself by begging for 
money “because it is so easy for you to get some; you 
only have to reach out with your slender arm for that 
universal metal of metals, and you enjoy being a spend¬ 
thrift anyhow.” 

The unfortunate man was taken out of the Swiss 
diligence and shared the fate of his masters for the sole 
reason that he was their employee. 



Junius Frey, 
Philosopher 
of the Revolution 

Throughout all these hectic dealings, Junius Frey found 
the time to write a 250-page social philosophy, Philo- 
sophie sociale, which he published in the summer of 1793 
and dedicated to the French people. In the preface he 


132 


The Philosopher of the Revolution 

says he had worked on it for a year with no intention of 
publishing it—nothing being more hateful to him; but 
yielding to the pressure of some friends who read it, he 
changed his mind. The book carries as a motto Alexander 
Pope’s much-quoted words “The proper study of man¬ 
kind is man.” It is a philosophic-political treatise on the 
defense of democracy through the seizure of power by 
a minority—in other words, a justification of minority 
rule. The starting point is Rousseau’s statement that 
“every people has the right to change its laws, even the 
best ones, and if it hurts itself thereby—who is to stop 
it?” This makes Rousseau, the benefactor of mankind, 
its. wdrst enemy. For the logical consequence of this idea, 
says Frey, is anarchy and permanent revolution (un 
systdme desorganisateur et perpetuellement revolution- 
naire); and this would lead to the tyrannic rule of a mad 
majority, against which the common sense minority could 
only defend itself by seizing power. 

The question arises now of how to defend democ¬ 
racy. Frey looks for the answer to the history of reli¬ 
gion, every social order being some sort of religion, with 
its own theology. He directs his main criticism at Moses, 
whose laws live on in Christianity and Mohammedanism. 
Moses knew the truth, but instead of revealing it to 
his people, he burdened them with laws that still oppress 
mankind. (This recalls a saying of Frank in Offenbach 
on November 25, 1790: “The children of Israel were 
given only the Mosaic laws, which are a burden and 
mortify the people.”) His knowledge of physics and 
chemistry should have enabled Moses to unmask and 
repeat the tricks of the Egyptian sorcerers. He should 
have told the children of Israel at Mount Sinai: “Ap¬ 
proach! For the fire you see and the divine thunder you 
hear are nothing but the work of my own and my 


133 









THE MILITANT MESSIAH 

helpers’ hands. I am going to show you the natural 
causes of these phenomena. Let us work for the per¬ 
fection of these tools of human happiness and not allow 
them to be abused by a small caste for their own selfish 
interests, lest some day man will get tired of culture 
and long for a return to his natural status.” Had he told 
them the truth, what a people would he have made of 
them in the forty years he had for it! A masterpiece of 
art and culture, and not this mess of fact and fiction, 
of light and darkness, of superstition and stubborn 
clinging to false concepts, which still poison the culture 
of even the most enlightened nations. Christ and Mo¬ 
hammed are not to blame, for they built on the foun¬ 
dations laid by Moses. Christ assumed the separation 
of State and Church to be the prerequisite of freedom 
and equality; but his teachings degenerated in the hands 
of his successors, who made a farce of the gospel. Like 
Socrates, the first martyr to common sense, he was 
sentenced to death. Since then darkness has prevailed 
on earth, despite the revolutions of Luther, Zwingli, 
Melanchthon, Calvin, Spinoza, Hobbes, Leibniz, and 
Locke. The immortal Kant had to come and overthrow 
all existing systems. His metaphysical language is un¬ 
intelligible to the ordinary reader, but protects him from 
the hemlock cup and the cross. No man ever wrote with 
such courage, never before has falsehood been better 
exposed, never before truth put into its rights with such 
determination. (This sounds like an allusion to Kant’s 
sympathies for the French Revolution which he main¬ 
tained even at the height of the Terror. Incidentally, 
Kant took up an idea of Rousseau’s when he said that 
no government had the right to make their people happy 
against their will, without Frey branding him “an enemy 
of mankind.”) Socrates, Christ and Kant are Frey’s stars 


134 


The Philosopher of the Revolution 

in the sky of human bliss; “Turn to them, you sages of 
the world, make it your foremost task to overthrow and 
disorganize this system of falsehood, lead us back to 
nature and let us draw from the well of a new culture!” 

Four-fifths of the book are devoted to showing the 
way to preserve freedom. Nothing easier than that! The 
people have only to watch their elected representatives 
not to stray from the principles of the constitution. Any¬ 
one voting three times against them automatically ex¬ 
cludes himself from the people’s representative bodies. 
Supreme law is the preservation of the individual in 
freedom and equality. Nobody may be deprived of this 
prerogative because this would nullify the social contract. 
Th& individual, in this case, would no longer owe any¬ 
thing to society and be entitled to rebellion and revenge. 
On the other hand, any violation of the constitution is 
punishable by death, even if it is done in the name of 
freedom of the press, freedom of speech, or political and 
religious tolerance. 

It is needless to point out the weaknesses and con¬ 
tradictions of these “freedom guarantees” which open 
every door to arbitrariness and tyranny. In the Jacobin 
club all were jubilant. All but Robespierre. Did he feel 
threatened in his role as philosopher of the Revolution 
or did he have other misgivings? Chabot, the most 
powerful man after Robespierre, acclaimed the author as 
“the greatest thinker of Europe,” equal to Socrates and 
Jesus, and commissioned him to write a pamphlet against 
the moderate Girondists. Frey delivered the 70-page 
booklet “within 24 hours”. He called it Les Aventures 
politiques du Pere Nicaise ou Vanti-federaliste (The 
Political Adventures oj Father Blockhead or the Anti- 
Federalist), and it pleased the ruling Montagnards so 
much that they had 20,000 copies printed. It is a violent 


135 
















THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


attack on the Girondists, these “anarchists and destruc¬ 
tive elements” (desorganisateurs, a pet word of Frey 
which he scatters left and right, in praise and reproach). 
The pamphlet contributed to the condemnation and ex¬ 
ecution of the Girondist leaders. 

The rabbinical candidate Moses Dobrushka had come 
a long way from Frankism, indeed. And the end was 
near. 



The Last Act 

At this point Leopoldine Frey entered upon the scene, 
marking the beginning of the third and last act. What had 
made her come to Paris? Love of the Revolution? 
Admiration of the great brother? He offered her in mar¬ 
riage to the former Capucin monk and “first revolution¬ 
ary of Europe,” Francois Chabot, with a yearly allow¬ 
ance of 4,000 francs, free room and board for five 
years, and a dowry of 200,000 francs payable within; 
that time. As a member of the executive branch of the 
revolutionary regime, the all powerful Security Com¬ 
mittee, Chabot was in control of the political police. 
He was an arch demagogue who appeared at the Na¬ 
tional Convention in frayed trousers, wooden clogs, 
and an open shirt which bared his hairy chest. Other¬ 
wise, however, he dressed like a dandy; the police found 
in his home twelve silk tailcoats and forty pairs of 
trousers of the finest English cloth—some wardrobe for 
a sansculotte! From father confessor to member of the 


136 


The Last Act 

National Convention, he was noted for his debauchery. 

This individual was Frey’s choice for a scheme of 
which we will soon learn more, and the bait was Leo¬ 
poldine. In order to whet Chabot’s appetite, he passed 
her off as a virgin of sixteen for whose hand several mil¬ 
lionaires had asked. Chabot married her, but later tried to 
extricate himself from the affair by claiming that the 
brothers had forced he'r upon him at dagger point (Us me 
tenaient I’epee dans les reins); besides, Chabot claimed, 
the marriage contract was void because the bride was a 
minor. Frey did not hesitate to disown his wife by 
promising Chabot that the marriage to Leopoldine would 
make him the head of the Frey family “because I would 
remain a bachelor and my brother is only half a man 
incapable of having children” (mon frere n’est qu’un 
demi-homme incapable de faire des enfants). The new¬ 
lyweds moved into the house in the rue d’Anjou after 
Chabot had paid off his housekeeper, Julie Berger, who 
was expecting his child; he paid her 1,200 francs—out 
of Frey’s pocket. Whether Leopoldine became an ac¬ 
complice to Frey’s scheming of her own free will or 
out of obedience for her brother (Chabot said she 
trembled before him) was her secret; and what he had 
in mind, his. In a petition to the authorities, he claimed 
that all he wanted was “to continue my peaceful exist¬ 
ence as a patriotic writer, helping to forge the weapons 
for the defense of the Republic.” But was this really 
“all”? 

Frey frequented the Cafe Corazza, the meeting place • 
of German ©migrants, and there met some people who 
knew more about him than he liked. There was the 
baron Frederick Trenck, the lover of the sister of Fred¬ 
erick the Great; having escaped the Prussian prison, he 
had come to Paris to try his luck. He knew Frey from 


137 

















THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


Vienna and asked him for some money and a recom¬ 
mendation for admission to the Jacobin club. Frey re¬ 
fused and managed to have him rejected by the Jacobins. 
Trenck complained about it to one Marguerie, who 
considered it his patriotic duty to report to the police 
what he had learned on that occasion; namely, that Frey 
used to be the protege of Joseph II, had gained 
the favors of Leopold II by prostituting his two sisters 
and, rotten as he was, did not even blush about it. Very 
much upset, Marguerie hurried early in the morning to 
Chabot (he found him in bed with a friend). Chabot 
calmed him down: He knew Frey well, and if the latter 
were an Austrian spy, one could not imagine a worse 
one, for he had developed a plan to frustrate any plots 
of the Austrian court. Moreover, he had been banished 
from Vienna for pressing Leopold II to repay some 
millions he owed him. On the other hand, the story about 
his sisters may be true, Frey being unscrupulous in re¬ 
gard to women; in Vienna, however, such matters were 
considered irrevelant. Having reassured Marguerie, 
Chabot apparently got in touch with Frey because the 
next morning Trenck was arrested and later executed 
as a Prussian spy. While in jail, he made the following 
“Deposition about the cause of my imprisonment”: 

I used to know a certain Jew by the name of 
Dobrushka who came from Moravia to Vienna as a 
pimp for his two sisters, who infected and ruined 
the young cavaliers and were publicly chased out 
of town and country. Emperor Joseph used this Jew 
as a spy after he had acquired the honorable name 
of Schoenfeld. Like everybody, I knew him under 
this name. . . and learned of his having free access 
also to Emperor Leopold. Four months ago my wife 
wrote me from Vienna to be on my guard, this 
cunning Jew being in Paris, doubtless entertaining 


138 


The Last Act 

some evil designs on behalf of the Emperor. ... I 
tried to find him, but could not until some Vien¬ 
nese told me of his living in the rue d’Anjou, spend¬ 
ing lots of money and playing an important role with 
the Jaeobins. He had changed his name to Frey and 
married his sister, the famous virgin of Vienna |?], to 
the deputy Chabot. I went immediately to see him, 
and there he was, the same Jew Dobmshka, the 
EmperoFs spy, who told me on that oeeasion that 
it was he who had prevented my admission to the 
Jaeobins. 

A friend of Georg Forster, the Mainz physician Georg 
Wedekind, who lived with the Freys, hastened to declare 
Trenck insane, but Frey found it nevertheless appropriate 
to insert the following notice in the Paris press: 

The family of Leopoldine Frey-Minaires |?| has 
its origins in Bohemia and is of the Jewish faith and 
not, as has been alleged, of that of the Moravian 
Brethren. The old Frey made considerable transac¬ 
tions for the Queen of Hungary during the Seven 
Years’ War, as a result of which the Viennese court 
owed him two million. . . As the Empress was 
anxious to spread the Catholic faith in her domains, 
she moved Leopoldine’s father to abandon the Jew¬ 
ish faith and adopt the Roman Catliolic one. In 
lieu of payment, she granted him the fine manor of 
Found-Schomberg near Bruenn, valued at more than 
two million. It was there that the charming Leopol¬ 
dine was born. Her father provided her and her two 
brothers with an excellent education. After the out¬ 
break of the Revolution all three came to Paris to 
breath the air of freedom, and here Chabot came 
to know the citizen Leopoldine. 

This is a complete fabrication. “Old Frey” never was 
baptized, he carried the name of Salomon Dobrushka 


139 









THE MILITANT MESSIAH 

all his life, and the court did not owe him millions, if 
anything. Junius also spread the tale that Empress Maria 
Theresa was the godmother of Leopoldine and had 
traveled from Vienna to Bruenn for her baptism. Ac¬ 
tually, Leopoldine was baptized in 1791 at the age of 
twenty, not in Bruenn, but in Vienna, at a time when 
Maria Theresa had been dead for eleven years. If 
Junius really cared for his beloved sister, the darling of 
the family, it would have occurred to him that he could 
only hurt her by this kind of falsehood. And if, us 
rumors went, she was indeed a daughter of Leopold II, 
that would have made her a niece of Marie Antoinette, 
and— parbleu! —Chabot would have married into ^the 
royal family! What did he intend by spreading such tales? 
Pure braggadocio? Chabot, meanwhile, beaming with joy, 
announced his betrothal in the Jacobin club, boasting of 
his dowry and pointing to the patriotism of his future 
in-laws who had helped him to uncover the Girondist 
plot. He invited everybody to the wedding, which was 
to take place before a notary at eight in the morning so 
that he could be on time for the opening of the Con¬ 
vention at nine. Icy silence followed the invitation. Out¬ 
side they talked about “Chabot’s Austrian.” 

With the outbreak of the hostilities, all foreigners had 
been put under police surveillance and later expelled 
from Paris. The government, of course, had its informers 
among the German emigrants, and one of them, Johann 
Baptist Wilhelm, found out the following about the 
brothers Frey: 

There dwell two Austrians in the rue d’Anjou, 
number 19, who pretend to be arch-patriots. They 
do not mind spending in order to avoid suspicion, 
and they are clever enough to voice only patriotism 
in their writings. They call themselves the brothers 


140 


The Last Act 

Frey. . . and are Jews by birth. Tormented by the 
ambition to achieve the peerage, they had them¬ 
selves baptized and Maria Theresa bestowed upon 
them the title of Nobles von Schoenfeld. They are 
very intelligent politicians and write and speak with 
extraordinary patriotism. They frequently entertain 
many deputies and Chabot, with his mistress, are 
often seen in their company. These fellows are ex¬ 
tremely shrewd and understand how to worm any¬ 
thing out of their guests without arousing their 
suspicion (Diese Piirsche seynd aber so pfifpg, doss 
sie ihren Gdsten die Wiirmer aus der Nase ziehen, 

. ohne dass sich diese etwas vermuthen.) ... It is 
obvious that these immoral fellows are first-class 
spies in the pay of Prussia and/or Austria. They 
squandered all they had in Vienna, leaving nothing 
^ but debts. They belong to the Jacobin society, and 
not enough that they mingle with everybody in order 
to ferret out information, they have salaried Jews 
and Christians circulating about town and reporting 
to them all that happens. . . Wisdom requires that 
all measures made necessary by the political condi¬ 
tion of France be adopted against these enigmatic 
people. 







9 /yn 




T 


(One does not have to be a graphologist to infer the 
character of this fine gentleman from the conceited flour¬ 
ish of his signature.) 

More reports about the brothers Frey came pouring 
in. The representative of the Nuremberg Jacobins, G. 
Haussmann, reported the following data based on in¬ 
formation gained from Diedrichsen (he calls him Diet- 
richstein): 


141 









THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


The Freys are bom Jews by the name of Trop- 
ushka from Moravia, ennobled von Schoenfeld. The 
older Frey is married; his wife and two daughters 
live in Vienna. He enlisted his 16-year-old son into 
the revolutionary army, passing him off as his 
nephew. As to their fortune, it is only known that 
they have great debts in Germany. . . A short ac¬ 
quaintance makes one realize that these two fellows 
are the shrewdest schemers there are. 

Now the storm broke in the Jacobin club. Following 
a heated debate, a resolution was passed declaring a 
counterrevolutionary anyone who, since 1789, had mar¬ 
ried a foreigner, in particular an Austrian, and who wore 
clothes of imported material. This was clearly all meant 
for Chabot, and he was immediately expelled from the 
club, followed shortly thereafter by his brothers-in-law. 
An official inquiry into the “Affair Chabot” was initiated 
which yielded disastrous information: 

The brothers Frey have adopted this name m 
order to escape their creditors in Germany, to whom 
they owe great amounts of money. . . They are Jews 
by birth who were baptized and ennobled as von 
Schoenfeld. With the exception of one sister who did 
not want to abandon Judaism, the whole family 
embraced Christianity. Two of the brothers serve 
with the Austrian army in the war against the 
French Republic. The older Frey left his wife and 
children in Vienna where one of his sisters takes care 
of them; she, in turn, is being kept by a wealthy 
baron. Said Frey was used by Joseph II for the 
purpose of espionage, the children of Israel, as is 
well known, being superior to all other nations in 
this occupation. . . These gentlemen arrived 20 
months ago in France, eoming from Berlin. They 
started in Strasbourg and, with the help of some 
intriguers and money, smuggled tliemselves into the 


142 


Junius Frey, the Speculator 

Jacobins, who knew nothing of their moral and 
political past. . . In one word, these Freys are im¬ 
moral egoists, full of tricks and schemes, who, dis¬ 
guised as patriots, serve the enemies of the Re¬ 
public and are paid by them. In the light of these 
faets, which are beyond any doubt, there is good 
cause to assume that the two scoundrels sought the 
connection with Chabot in order to avoid the atten¬ 
tion of the poliee and the better to achieve their 
goal. 



' Junius Frey, 

the Speculator 

What was their goal? Neither this nor the preceding 
accusations tell us anything about it beyond allegations 
and malicious gossip. Chabot spilled it all. He was caught 
off guard and started retracting and contradicting him¬ 
self, which caused the prosecutor to have the house in 
the rue d’Anjou searched. When the agents arrived there, 
they were greeted by Chabot and the brothers Frey; all 
papers were neatly placed in evidence. The agents found 
them to be of the purest patriotism, with true love for 
liberty and equality. This is, at least, what the protocol 
says, which evidently was composed by Junius Frey and 
bears his and his brother’s signatures. No incriminating 
materials were found. Apparently it did not occur to 
the searchers that these could have been removed or de¬ 
stroyed. 

Chabot knew well he would not get off the hook that 
easily. He hurried to Robespierre, the only one who could 


143 













THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


save him now, and let him in on a conspiracy he had 
uncovered by lending a hand to it: With the help of 
bribed deputies and a forged resolution of the National 
Convention, the shares of the Compagnie des Indes, the 
French East-India Company, were to be made practically 
worthless and bought up by the conspirators—hence, a 
large-scale corruption affair as it has occurred many 
times without heads rolling. Robespierre remained silent. 
Chabot thereupon handed to the Security Committee the 
sum of 100,000 francs he claimed he had received for 
bribing the deputies. He did not say where the money 
came from, only where it was to go, naming the deputies 
who were to get it, and was arrested with them. Now, 
at last, Robespierre raised his voice against the foreign 
agents “who, in the guise of a glowing patriotism, have 
managed to infiltrate the revolutionary committees.” He 
did not mention names, but everybody could say for 
himself whom he meant by the following description: 

Ever since the first days of the Revolution two 
scoundrels have been living in Paris whose art of 
dissimulation makes them perfect tools in the hands 
of the tyrants, the two biggest rogues Austria has 
ever thrown up among us (les deux plus habiles 
scelerats que VAutriche ait vomis parmi nous). One 
of them has added to his assumed surname the name 
of the founder of freedom in Rome. 

However, until November 23, 1793, the brothers Frey 
and their sister remained free. It was never established 
whether the bribe money came from them. Yet it may 
be assumed that Junius Frey was involved in the affair 
of the Compagnie des Indes, even to the extent of 
having contrived it. The war made money transfers 
from Vienna practically impossible and Junius was in 


144 


Junius Frey, the Speculator 

desperate need of cash. Some witnesses who had been 
frequent guests at his home testified that at first he 
displayed great wealth (on y remarquait un air de depense 
tres imposant), but recently was cutting a poor figure 
(faisait figure assez mince). In the course of 1793, mat¬ 
ters must have deteriorated badly, because Junius had 
Diedrichsen pawn four watches, a golden box, a ring, 
and a set of table silver. Expecting some money from 
Vienna, he presented two drafts of 1,000 florins each 
for discount in Hamburg, committing thereby a felony 
as one of the notes was drawn on a nonexisting bank 
(all.in the name of poor Diedrichsen). 

Meanwhile, from his cell Chabot flooded the govern¬ 
ment with petitions, a last will, and a 60-page plea in 
his defense; he sent long letters to Robespierre, with 
the single result that Leopoldine (ma chere Poldine) was 
released from jail. However, she had to leave Paris and 
moved to nearby Boulogne. Chabot also came to the 
aid of her brothers, although in a rather peculiar way, 
writing to the Committee of Public Welfare: 

I thank providence that you have at last made up 
your minds to jail my two brothers-in-law. I consider 
them as spotless as the sun; they are honest Jacobins 
who, better than any security committees, have 
helped me to unmask the agents of Austria and 
Prussia. Otherwise one would have to regard them 
as the biggest hypocrites there are. 

A letter to Robespierre, however, sounds quite differ¬ 
ent: 

My in-laws are spies? How am I to know? Am 
I a clairvoyant? I was not given the time to find out 
for myself whether they really were traitors. If they 
are innocent, set them free; if not, behead them and 
I would willingly lend a hand. But do not blame me 
for their crimes! 


145 








THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


As for the brothers themselves, they could only 
profess their good faith, the act of accusation being 
presented to them only during the trial. In one of their 
petitions they claim: 

We are Jacobins, truly dedicated to the principles 
of the indivisible Republic. When Sophocles was 
accused by his own children, he read to the Athe¬ 
nians some parts of his works and was declared in¬ 
nocent. Like that Athenian sage, I refer to my 
Philosophie sociale in which there is not a single 
line that would not conjure the rage of the tyrants 
upon my head. There is no refuge outside of France 
for the author of such a work. 

This and another petition remaining unanswered, the 
brothers asked at least to be listened to, as they knew 
of many things of interest to the Convention. Junius 
pleaded by mentioning his rheumatism and his “only” 
sister, left behind sick and bedridden. When this plea 
was not acted upon either, the brothers apparently re¬ 
signed themselves to their fate, while Chabot tried with¬ 
out success to commit suicide. 

On April 3, 1794, they all appeared before the revo¬ 
lutionary tribunal together with Danton, who furiously 
objected to it. (Stalin adopted a similar practice dur¬ 
ing the Moscow trials of the 1930s, seating ordinary 
criminals and speculators among the political defen¬ 
dants.) The prosecutor Fouquier-Tinville had to sep¬ 
arate the defendants into two groups, the Dantonists who 
were accused of the attempted overthrow of the Republic, 
and the group involved in the affair of the Compagnie 
des Indes, including the brothers Frey. The act of ac¬ 
cusation calls them “ex-barons and agents of both En- 
gland[?] and the Austrian cabinet, disguised as revolu¬ 
tionary patriots. In order to make people believe in their 
love of freedom, they pretended to have been hanged 

146 


Junius Frey, the Speculator 

in effigy in Vienna and their property confiscated.” (One 
of the jurors, the young painter Topino-Lebrun, later 
himself a victim of the Terror, kept a notebook during 
the trial in which he wrote that Emanuel Frey, at that 
point, indignantly protested against ever having been 
hanged or persecuted: J’ai ne point ete ni pendu ni 
persecute). “Nevertheless,” the act of accusation goes on, 
“they found the means to give their sister a dowry of 
200,000 francs in order to induce Chabot to marry a 
foreign woman of the class proscribed under the reign 
of freedom [the aristocracy]. Never before have criminals 
spread their nets with greater baseness and impudence, 
never before have conspirators bared the true objectives 
of their machinations with less shame.” The judgment, 
however, dropped the charge of espionage, but found 
the defendants guilty of a conspiracy to defame the 
National Convention by bribing some of its members 
and thus bring about its dissolution. 

During the two-day trial the prosecutor mentioned 
the brothers only once, while inveighing against Chabot 
for having allied himself by marriage “to those Austrian 
Jews;” Toward the end of the trial, with not much time 
left (the prosecutor had already set the time of the ex¬ 
ecution), they were briefly interrogated. As may be re¬ 
called, when asked where their money had come from, 
Junius said from his wife. And asked why he had come 
to France, Emanuel answered: “To enjoy the freedom 
promised by the French. I followed my brother like a 
son follows his father. [Topino-Lebrun noted here:' 
J’etais plutot I’enfant que le frere.] I do not regret having 
come and am ready to die with him.” 

This was all. On April 5 they were sentenced to 
death and, that same afternoon, together with Danton, 
Chabot, and the others, executed on the Place de la 
Revolution, today Place de la Concorde. 


147 













THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


Alone on the empty stage remained, after six months 
of marriage, the young widow Leopoldine Chabot, nee 
Frey, with her 14-year-old nephew Joseph. Still claiming 
to be sixteen, she implored the Convention to have 
pity on her youthful age and let “the lamentable rem¬ 
nants of an unfortunate family return to Paris.” Helpless 
and destitute, she stands alone in the world, with no 
experience whatsoever. The little her brother left her 
went to his and Chabot’s creditors. “What a dowry! 
Good heavens!” (Quel dot! Juste del!) 

She received permission to go to Paris, but only for 
some clothing and utensils. Her last sign of life is a 
petition to the chairman of the Convention in which she 
asked for an answer to her previous petitions, conclud¬ 
ing: “The light of justice shines for all! Relying solely 
on this claim, we beg for a prompt decision on our fate 
or at the least an assurance that we are damned forever 
to carry the guilt of our near ones. We bewail the mis¬ 
fortune of our birth and resign ourselves to the sentence 
of the Last Judgment!” 

We do not know what became of her. She probably 
perished in the turmoil of the Revolution and is said 
to have died in 1795. According to a letter m the pos¬ 
session of the family Chabot, written in 1874, she re¬ 
turned to Vienna. According to another source she 
married the Prussian envoy to Paris, Count Sandoz- 
Rollin, in 1800. But the marriage license issued by the 
Prussian government does not give the name of the bride, 
who, therefore, may have been her sister Bluemele (that 
is Theresa Maria Josepha Eleanora von Schoenfeld), 
who died in Paris in 1808. When and why she came to 
Paris, and whether she found her sister still alive, we do 

not know. 


148 


Epilogue 


Thus the curtain falls on the triple life of Moses 
Dobrushka-Franz Thomas von Schoenfeld-Junius Brutus 
Frey, a person not deserving history’s attention, in the 
words' of J.-F. Robinet, the historian of the Dantonists. 
Posterity was of divided opinion. The French historians 
Mathiez, Boland and Lenotre considered him an adven¬ 
turer and spy, Lenotre especially not holding back his 
anti-Semitic sentiments: “This German Jew was far from 
sticking out his head for an idea; all he wanted 
was money, and for that he had the nose of a track- 
hound. Hypocritical, servile, of pliant character, he 
played his part, whether subservient or arrogant, with 
undeniable talent, although somewhat clumsily.” For 
Leon Kahn, Frey was an innocent bystander who got 
caught by the machinery of the Revolution; and for 
Avenel and Claretie he was a true revolutionary patriot 
who fell victim to Chabot’s machinations. This opinion 
is also shared by Kretschmann in his aforementioned 
eulogy on the brothers Frey. Robinet considers them in¬ 
nocent (Us ne furent convaincus de rien); they had allied 
themselves by marriage with Chabot, but this was no 
crime. He ranks them among the many speculators and 
adventurers who had come to Paris to enrich themselves. 
In the Danton trial they were assigned the parts of sup¬ 
porting actors to make the alleged conspiracy from 


149 





















THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


abroad more colorful and credible. Georg Buchner takes 
the same view in his play Danton’s Death. Gershom 
Scholem considers Frey an unusual personality and true 
Frankist; half Jew and half Christian; half Cabbahst 
and half reformer; half Jacobin and half spy, who got 
entangled in his own ropes and took his secret with him 
to the grave. Egon Erwin Kisch, the prolific Prague 
reporter, calls him a most colorful and most disastrous 
adventurer “who jumped from the Talmud into German 
literature, from the ghetto into the Theresianum, from 
uncle Popper to brother-in-law Chabot, from Cathol¬ 
icism to atheism, who took Elke Joss with him into the 
world of Austrian aristocracy and his sister and brother 
into the world of the French Revolution, and there laid 
axe to the foundations of the masonry that fell on him 
and buried him.” 

Junius Frey was all this and more, and the secret 
he thought he took with him was “the misfortune of his 
birth.” He wanted to escape from it, and this could 
only make for a sorry end, a typical Jewish destiny of 
his time. From the stuffiness of the ghetto he wanted to 
break out, that ghetto which, in 1822, made an appalling 
impression on Heine: “I shudder at the thought of the 
first sight of a Polish village near Mesritch, mostly 
inhabited by Jews. The weekly paper of W., cooked to 
a pulp, could not have a more nauseating effect on me 
than the sight of these tattered figures of filth. . . . The 
nausea, however, gave way to a feeling of pity as soon 
as I took a closer look at the living conditions of 
these people and saw the pigsty hovels in which they 
dwell, jabber, pray, haggle, and-decay miserably.” That 
ghetto from which there was no escape—one could 
not even buy one’s way out—except by way of make- 


150 


Epilogue 

believe and feint. Within the ghetto walls the Jew had 
something to hold on to, some ground to stand on, tightly 
limited though it was. Money-lending and related busi¬ 
nesses like tax-farming and army-purveying were prac¬ 
tically the only occupations left to him. They gave 
him a position of power in the ghetto which com¬ 
pensated for the humiliations that awaited him outside, 
where he remained the despised pariah, no matter how 
rich. He employed a host of agents and buyers; and 
the ghetto, from the rabbi to the schnorrer, drew its 
livelihood from him. He ruled over it with an iron hand 
and made it a point to represent it before those in power. 
The ghetto people looked up to their “princes” with pride 
a^d awe as though they were real princes, equal to those 
on the outside. 

There was something to it. Taking advantage of the 
close connections the Jewish communities maintained 
among themselves over and beyond national boundaries, 
the Jewish financiers disposed, long before the time of 
railroad and telegraph, of an international communica¬ 
tions network, such as only the Church could command. 
Undoubtedly, the transition from feudal economy to capi¬ 
talism would have come anyhow, but their prime import¬ 
ance for the development of the modern credit system 
cannot be denied. It was perhaps their position within 
the ghetto that made the Rothschilds and other Jewish 
financiers (like Frey’s father-in-law, Joachim Popper) 
never abandon their faith and indignantly reject baptism 
as a preposterous idea. For the non-Jew that is, 
the person belonging to no religious denomination there 
was no place in this world. Holland was the only exception, 
but even there one had to be a Spinoza to dare it. The Spi- 


151 















THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


nozist Lessing giaspcd the nature of the Jewish problem 
better than anybody else when he said (in a letter to Men¬ 
delssohn) that it could be solved only in a world with no 
Jews or Christians—a statement similar to that of the young 
Hegelian, Karl Marx: “when the Christians will cease to be 
Jews,” meaning never. 

Under the given conditions, the ghetto runaway led a 
sham existence, doomed to failure even before he tried to 
succeed in a world which had made cheating mandatory for 
his survival and had taught him not to try being himself. 
Moses Dobrushka, the ghetto Jew, tried it as a Frankist, 
pseudo-Jew, pseudo-Christian, subservient courtier, ama¬ 
teurish poet, pseudo-Freemason, and revolutionary philo¬ 
sopher_only to remain “a twig on the withered branch of 

the tree of humanity.” In compulsive overcompensation for 
his Jewish inferiority feelings, he always had to be one step 
ahead of everybody, only to be thrown back to his Jewish¬ 
ness, even if he did not know of the malicious reports point¬ 
ing to him as a Jew. And thus he remained, whether Catho¬ 
lic. Ficemason, or Jacobin, the eternal renegade, driven to 
be holier than thou, better than the best. 

The French Revolution, with one stroke, put an end 
to this nightmare. The Jews were given their political 
freedom, unconditionally, no questions asked, no bap¬ 
tism required for admission to European civilization; 
and the young Jews of Bayonne, in a symbolic act, 
stormed out of the ghetto, • attacked the cathedral (it 
still bears the traces), and triumphantly named the ghetto 
Quartier Jean-Jacques Rousseau. True, freedom for Jews 
did not last, but for a moment in Europe’s history, it 
looked as though it might be possible for a Jew to live 
the way he was, with no disguise or cheating. It was 


152 


Epilogue 

perhaps this feeling that made Emanuel Frey say he 
came to France “to enjoy the freedom promised by the 
French.” For Junius it was too late, he had to go on, 
dragging his brother with him. With all his enthusiasm 
for the Revolution, and we have no reason to doubt it, 
he could not equal Robespierre, the incorruptible, and 
content himself with a scantily furnished room. Chained 
to the lead ball of his past, he was unable to rid him¬ 
self of his second nature. All he could do was add one 
more to his roles and impress people with glamor and 
money, only to perish in the end as a speculator and char¬ 
latan, And therein lies his tragedy. 

It would be idle to lose oneself in a guessing game as to 
v^hat could have become of Frank and Frey in the twen¬ 
tieth century. Maybe another Emin Pasha, alias Isaac 
Schnitzer from Upper Silesia, the well-known explorer 
and champion of German colonialism in Africa, who was 
killed by slave traders; maybe another Trebitsch-Lincoln, 
alias Abraham Schwarz, Hungarian born, baptized mem¬ 
ber of the House of Commons, British spy, press-secre¬ 
tary to Wolfgang Kapp (leader of the German nationalis¬ 
tic putsch, March 1920), Tibetan monk, and Japanese 
agent; maybe even a naturalized U.S. Secretary of State— 
there will always be finaglers making history. Besides, the 
flight from the ghetto has changed by now into a flight 
back to ghetto mentality by Chabad and other neo- 
Hassidic groups with their weird, guru-like appeal to 
American intellectuals, aided and abetted by the senti¬ 
mental writings of Bashevis Singer and Elie Wiesel. 

Never mind, in their time Frank and Frey had to become 
what they were. Today they would not have to. And this 
thought somehow reconciles us with them and brings them 


153 






THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


closer to being understood by Jews and non-Jews alike. 
For they were Jews, and their revolt against their fate 
and against the world was bound to fail, no matter what 
they did or did not do. 


154 


The Memories of 
Moses Forges about 
the Frankist Court 
in Offenbach 

The writer of the following notes was the second of the 
three sons of Gabriel Forges of Prague: David (1770- 
1845), Moses (1781-1870) and Leopold (1785-1869), He 
. apparently wrote the ^‘Memories” during the last years of 
his life. I have tried to preserve the somewhat awkward 
style of the German original. My own comments are in 
square brackets. A. M. 

I was born on December 22, 1781. My father Morenu Raw 
[Hebrew honorary title meaning our teacher, master] Gabriel 
Forges, a very learned man in Jewish knowledge. A virtuous, 
righteous man. He was no stranger to the Christian sciences, 
little known to Jewish scholars at the time. He was a good- 
natured, fine man who never punished his children physically. 
My mother was a good-hearted woman who minded the busi¬ 
ness, the family’s livelihood. Father did not pay much attention 
to his business. He studied and gave lectures. The business was 
a manufacture of Rossoli [a spiced Italian liqueur] and sale of 
spirits. As it was the custom at the time, I was instructed in 
Hebrew and Bible translation. From the age of seven I attended 
the Jewish-German school until I was eleven. Because of my 
lively disposition, I was not very conscientious about going to 
school. Instead, I spent my time bathing in the Moldau river 
in summer, playing on the ice in winter. After leaving school I 
wanted to study, but my brother, then a student of philosophy, 
was against it and prevailed upon my parents to refuse. So I was 
left without occupation or education. The kindness of my 
mother enabled me to buy some books of Lessing, Mendelssohn 
and Schiller, but also of Cramer, Spies, and the like [writers of 


155 




















THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


popular adventure stories], in addition to some works on history 
and geography, and I owe my little erudition to this self-instruc¬ 
tion. 

When I was past 14, my beloved father called me into his 
room and asked me whether I believed that the Torah, as re¬ 
vealed to us, contained all there was to know for our spiri¬ 
tual welfare and bliss here and yonder. I had been a faithful 
Jew up to that time, although I had some doubts and scruples. 
He said solemnly: “There exists, next to the Torah, a holy 
book, the Zohar, which reveals to us the mysteries that are only 
hinted at in the Torah; it summons us to spiritual perfection 
and shows us how to achieve it. There are many fine men 
devoted to the new teaching, with salvation from spiritual and 
political oppression being their purpose, their aim. God has 
shown himself in recent as well as in earlier times. You, my 
son, shall be instructed in it. Mister Noe Kassowitz, one of 
ours, will be your teacher.” Shedding tears, I kissed my father s 
hand and left as if intoxicated, feeling elated at belonging to a 
higher, nobler class of men. 

There is no need to go into detail about the instruction by 1C. 
The important thing is that he told me of a messenger of God 
by the name of Jacob Frank, also known as the Czenstochover, 
Polish by birth, who, after having spent some time in Turkey, 
revealed himself as the Messiah, gathering around himself 
many renowned Jewish scholars who believed in him and 
adored and worshipped him. He acquired a huge following, 
which he was able to captivate by prophesying and promising 
a spiritual and physical salvation and especially life eternal. 
The authorities, having learned thereof, sentenced him to be 
confined to a fortress, and he spent quite some time in the 
fortress of Czenstochau. Released at last, he converted to Chris¬ 
tianity, his family and most of his followers with him, in order 
to liberate the Sh'ekhina (the holy ghost) from Roman bondage. 
Some time later he appeared with pomp and circumstance 
under the name of Baron Frank in Prossnitz, Moravia, his own 
bodyguards surrounding him on his promenades. It is well 
known that Emperor Joseph II visited him there. From Prossnitz 
he went to Offenbach where he moved into a house of his own. 


156 


Memories of Moses Porges 

with a great number of followers, mostly Poles. Conversion 
to a different religion is an important step, with lasting influence 
for the life of the individual concerned. Taken out of convic¬ 
tion, this step should be regarded as respectable; taken out of 
the delusion of a passion which can be only satisfied this way, 
it must end in misfortune and bitter regret, once the passion 
is gone and replaced by calm reasoning. After his death his 
daughter, named Gevira [Hebrew for power], assumed the 
leadership of the believers; she was no longer young and had 
her two brothers, Roch and Joseph, at her side. 

These revelations made an enormous impression upon me, 
a lively, truth-seeking youngster. I was seized by a strong long¬ 
ing for the holy encampment in Offenbach; I found no peace 
and had no other thought but to go there. But how manage it 
with ho money, my good father being unable to give me any? 
During the general levy of 1798, when the young men were 
tdken out of their beds at night, I went into hiding with friends 
(Salom. Brandeis); a few weeks later it was decided that, in 
order to escape the danger of being drafted, I was to go to 
Germany. As this could not be done legally, I was taken by a 
Teplitz merchant, called Katz, who waited for me at the Stratov 
gate, to an old Jew in Soboten. He guided me over the moun¬ 
tains into Saxonia, for two florins, one specie-thaler, which I 
gladly paid. 

There I was on the top of the Geiersberg, a youth of 17, all 
alone; after having been used to living in the company of loving 
parents, brothers and sisters, nursed by a tender motherly hand, 
there I was in the forest all abandoned. I cried, but the thought 
of the goal of my journey, Offenbach, comforted me. Could 
it be that the sufferings and privations that awaited me had only 
to test my faith in the new teaching? I had received from 
my family 60 florins in gold and silver and some three florins 
small change. In the zeal of my faith, I took a vow to cover the 
trip to Offenbach with these three florins, even if I should go 
hungry and begging, in order to bring the 60 florins as an offer¬ 
ing to the divine lady. 

Firm in purpose, I started out and arrived towards evening 
at Fuerstenau, a Saxonian village. After a frugal meal at the 
inn, they prepared for me a straw pallet on which I lay down 


157 








THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


and, tired out, soon fell asleep. About midnight a big noise 
awakened me and a man—in my imagination of giant size- 
entered the inn, a huge pack on his back and a mighty stave in 
his hand. He was followed by another like him and so on until 
the room was packed full. I was scared to death. An hour later, 
after some beer and brandy, they left, and I was told that they 

were smugglers. . r ,, 

In the morning I continued my journey, spent the following 
night in another village, and arrived in Dresden at noon. 
Immediately upon entering the town I went through something 
unpleasant and offensive. I had to pay the Jew toll. For the 
pleasure of being a Jew, you had to pay a tax almost all over 
Germany, just like for cattle. Searching my knapsack the cus¬ 
toms man declared my nightcap to be new and unused, and in 
addition to the toll, I had to pay a penalty for not having de¬ 
clared it; this exhausted the little cash I had on me. I was 
directed to a Mister Jonathan Eibenschuetz, one of ours. This 
was a nice young man, but almost deaf and stammering, hard 
to understand. [This could not have been the rabbi mentioned 
earlier in this book, who died in 1764, nor his son Jonas who 
was no longer a young man at the time; possibly a younger, 
otherwise unknown member of the same family.] He read the 
letter and greeted me kindly with kiss and handshake. He gave 
me room and board during my stay in Dresden and procured 
for me a Saxonian passport to get rid of the obnoxious Jew toll. 
When 1 left Eibenschuetz, the good-hearted man gave me two 

imperial thalers. u i 

I left Dresden in the most beautiful spring weather and 
Started out for Offenbach on foot, intoxicated and exalted at the 
thought of the goal I was heading towards. At first everything 
went well. Singing with joy, despite the heavy rucksack I was 
carrying, I arrived in the evening at Meissen. After having 
eaten, I slept on a layer of straw into the late morning. When 
I got up, my feet were hurting, I could not walk nor put on 
my shoes, a sorry situation, especially when you are in a hurry 
to reach your goal. There was nothing to do but take the road 
to Leipzig barefoot, on swollen, aching feet. 1 arrived there 
three days later, having spent the two previous nights in Oschatz 
and Wurzen. They did not let me pass through Leipzig, and a 


158 


Memories of Moses Forges 

policeman led me around the town to the Weimar road. I 
walked with great effort, tortured by pain and hunger and, at 
last, lay down on the roadside, weak and disheartened. 

An hour had passed when a coach approached from the 
direction of Leipzig. I pulled myself together and seeing that 
it was empty, I asked the coachman where he was going. “To 
Weimar,” he said. “That’s where I am going. Would you not 
take me with you?” He said yes. “What shall I pay you? I am 
poor and cannot give you much.” “Get in, we will settle that 
later.” I put my bag into the coach, got in and the wagon rolled 
on. What a wonderful feeling, after all that pain, to sit in a 
comfortable coach, looking forward to making more than 12 
miles in this agreeable way! It was night when we arrived in 
Weissenfels. The coachman went to a hotel. Two waiters with 
lanterns in their hands came to help the newly arrived guests 
out of the coach. When they noticed me, they said I belonged 
to the inn, not here. My good coachman took me there and 
promised to call for me in the morning. For supper I had a 
slice of bread and a glass of beer. I slept on my straw bed 
through the night without interruption and got up well re¬ 
freshed. I did not have to wait long for my transportation to 
arrive. I shoved my bag into the coach, and on we went, all day 
long, except for lunch and feeding time. The night was spent 
in a village, the next morning we were on the way again. Shortly 
before Weimar, at about 10 o’clock, the coachman asked me 
to get out. I took my baggage and left hesitantly. How much 
was he going to charge me? Frightfully I asked what I owed 
him, and to my surprise, the good-hearted fellow demanded 
only 20 Kreutzer, remarking he wanted only what he had to 
lay out for me. 

I passed through Weimar without stopping and reached 
Gotha that evening, before reaching Erfurt. I put up at some inn 
and ordered beer and bread. In the adjoining room there was 
a table decked out for many people, looking very festive: 
various meats, pies, fruit and other dishes. They celebrated a 
child’s baptism. I had had no meat since Dresden and the smell 
of the dishes attracted me. The lady of the house came out and 
said, “I see he is a child of decent folks,” and put before me 
a plate of roast, eggs, and pastry. 


159 










THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


The following afternoon I reached the gate of Erfurt. There 
was an Austrian garrison in town at the time. I was stopped 
to pay the head tax, about 2 florins. No use arguing, not even 
my offer to bypass the town was accepted. They confiscated my 
luggage, but in the end the collector gave in to my request to 
see the commander, and a soldier led me to him. He was not in, 
but was with some baroness. I asked to be taken there and was 
admitted. Asked what I wanted, I remonstrated with him, 
saying how wrong it was to demand a toll of two florins from 
a poor traveling craftsman. He said this was the law of the 
land, but I answered: “The collector may talk that way, but 
he^ an illustrious high official, will agree that this tax was im¬ 
posed on Jews engaged in trade and commerce, and not on 
poor traveling artisans.” And more of the sort. The commander 
hesitated, but the baroness said in French: “The young man is 
right, it would be cruel to exact such an exhorbitant duty, and 
intolerant at that.” So the commander gave me a certificate 
exempting me from all such taxes. 

The same evening I reached Eisenach and without further 
adventure Hanau, where I arrived at noon. Hoping to make 
Offenbach the same day, I accelerated my pace, in what mood 
and excitement I cannot describe! The gathering of the believers 
in Offenbach was called Makhane, encampment, after the en¬ 
campment of the children of Israel under Moses. And this 
Makhane I was to join that same day. 

It was already dark when I reached Offenbach, an open 
town. It was raining. I asked for the Polish court and was told 
it was on the other end of town. A stately mansion. Crying 
with religious fervor at the thought of entering the holy house, 
I ascended some steps and rang the bell. The door opened, a 
young man in Turkish dress greeted me with embrace and kiss, 
called me brother, and said I was expected. Several ma-aminim 
[Hebrew for believers] assembled, among them an old man 
looking very distinguished with his snow-white hair and col¬ 
onel’s uniform: his name was Czynski. He took me to his room 
on the upper floor, assured me that he would assist me any time 
with fatherly advice, and instructed me how to behave at my 
forthcoming audience with the holy mother. 


160 


Memories of Moses Porges 

I was then taken to a room where three long-bearded men 
in Polish dress were sitting, deeply absorbed in heavy volumes. 
I noticed, to my surprise, various emblems of the Catholic 
church on the walls, a picture of the Gevira made up like the 
holy virgin, portraits of several men, and all sorts of human 
figures covered with Hebrew letters. On a board there were 
the ten names I knew from the holiday prayers: Keter, Hokhma, 
Bina, Gedula, Gevura, Tiferet, Nezach, Hod, Yessod, Malhut 
[the ten Sephirot or divine emanations of the Cabbala: Crown, 
Wisdom, Reason, Greatness, Strength, Beauty, Eternity, Splen¬ 
dor, Foundation, Kingdom], fused into the word Ejn-Sof [In¬ 
finite]. One of the three addressed me thus: “My son, the 
Shekhina is in trouble, held captive by Edom and Ishmael 
[Christianity and Islam]. Her children have to deliver her by 
sharing in her trouble. As soon as three Sephirot unite in trinity, 
salvation will come. Two of them have already appeared in 
human form, we wait for the third one. Hail the man chosen 
to unite with Tiferet [Eva Frank?], for he will bring forth the 
savior of the world. As for you, serve well in order to be one 
of the chosen.” Thereupon, I was given a scrap of paper show¬ 
ing the board with the ten names. 

That same evening, many ma-aminim, old and young, came 
to see me. The next day I was called to the Gevira. She lived 
on the upper floor. A chambermaid received me in the entrance 
hall where I had to wait a while. How moved I was, how my 
heart was beating! At last the door opened and I entered the 
room. I did not dare to look into the Gevira’s face, kneeled 
down and kissed her feet, the way I had been ordered to do. 
She said a few friendly words, had some praise for my father, 
and approved of my decision to come there. On leaving, I put 
the purse with the 60 florins in gold and silver on a table and 
walked out backwards. The impression she made on me was 
sublime and favorable. The lovely face expressed kindness, 
mildness and gentleness, the eyes holy enthusiasm. She was no* 
longer young but of lovely appearance. Hands and feet, charm¬ 
ing. As I was later to learn, I found favor in her eyes. 

Afterwards I was taken to the guardroom where I met a 
great number of young and old men in military dress and armed. 

I was outfitted the same way and assigned quarters. My training 


161 






THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


started the next day. The food was not bad and our duty was 
to stand guard in the castle and all around on the walls. As 
no attack or other disturbance occurred, it was very easy. The 
detachment which was off duty assembled in the evening to 
listen to lectures by the three elders. But only a few of us 
understood anything except for the names of the Sephirot, of 
Shabtai Melekh Mashiah [Sabbatai, King Messiah] and most 
biblical figures. There was always talk of one called Malhut, but 
nobody ever saw him. 

On high order, 1 was assigned to the Liberia, a unit of young 
men serving the lady and her brothers at table and during 
their daily promenades. Also Sunday in church. We had our 
own room. I had frequent opportunity to observe the lady and 
her brothers at very close range. I received a hunter’s uniform 
and, instead of a hat, a green leather cap with metal mountings. 
I served frequently at table, standing behind the Gevira. The 
meals were taken in a spacious room, with three of us as 
attendants. We ate the leftovers. This extra food tasted good 
indeed as the inhabitants of the castle and many who lived 
outside got their food from the community kitchen, usually 
soup with poor quality vegetables. On Sunday there was church 
parade with those of us wearing uniforms participating. 

My only contacts were with fellow believers. I was very fond 
of the older men, among them some highly venerable ones 
such as Wolowski, Dembitski, Matushewski, Czerwinski. The 
younger ones, especially my roommates, although respectful 
in their talk, were frivolous, as it is with young people. There 
was, in general, a moral tone, but they did not take it too 
seriously. Sexual intercourse or marriage was strictly forbidden. 
One morning, it was announced that, according to a vision, 
anyone desiring a female was to be given ten strokes with a 
rod, and, lo and behold, almost all the young men submitted 
to it. I have to remark on this occasion that such visions by the 
lady or one of her brothers were announced almost daily; they 
were afterwards written down in a book, and copies were made. 
We young people were drilled by a Polish drill master; however, 
all rifles and sabres were hidden away when the French entered 
Offenbach in 1799. 

In the summer of 1798 the three sons of Jonas Wehle came 


162 


Memories of Moses Porges 

to Offenbach and with them my younger brother Leopold. The 
Wehles were well educated young men, Abraham, Jontef, and 
Ekiba by name; they were renamed Joseph, Ludwig, and Max. 

My brother was renamed Karl Junior [in distinction to 
the writer of the Memories who, as will be seen later, was called 
Karl]. He was 14 years old, could not think for himself, and 
was assigned to be a barber. In autumn of the same year, my 
dear father arrived in the company of the brothers Jonas and 
Aaron Baer Wehle. I was overwhelmed with joy to see my 
beloved father. The three learned gentlemen were respectfully 
received and next morning presented to the holy lady, deposit¬ 
ing sacrificial gifts at her feet. The Wehles gave gold, which 
was acknowledged with pleasure; they were both quite rich. ^ 

My good father, not being so well-to-do, brought a piece of 
carnbri'c linen, which was the cause of my beginning to weaken 
in my faith, until I became convinced that everything here was 
a j^windle with several hundred honest people being attracted 
from hundreds of miles away, only to be exploited, impov¬ 
erished, and made miserable. 

That year, Mr. Salomon Zerkowitz came to Offenbach also. 

He used to be very rich and brought with him all that remained 
of his wealth, which he was ordered to give up. His wealth 
consisted of Austrian government securities which I took to 
Frankfurt to be turned into cash by the old Rothschild. Zerko¬ 
witz was a fine, honest man and cried when forced to give up 
his last belongings. 

Next to the dining room there was the sanctuary with the 
bed and clothing of the holy father (so they called Jacob Frank, 
the father of the Gevira and her brothers). The room was dark, 
the curtains drawn, and here the believers prayed, kneeling 
at bedside in ardent prayer. The room was accessible all day. At 
the entrance to the dining room some young, mostly beautiful 
women in Amazon dress stood guard, armed with rifles and 
sabres. 

As I alluded to above, I was offended by a sarcastic remark 
the holy Joseph made at the table in my presence about the in¬ 
expensive gift of my father. I realized that here the gift meant 
more than the giver. From this time on, I became pensive and 
started observing. First I suppressed the negative thoughts and 


163 










THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


considered it a sin to doubt what so many distinguished and 
learned men believed in. I went to the holy room to repent. 
Yet, another event soon made me relapse. One of my room¬ 
mates, a young man from Dresden, Jonas Hofsinger, had been 
drawing closer to me for some time and, after sounding me out, 
confided in me that he did not agree with the things going on 
here. Realizing, at last, that I would not betray him, he spoke 
out freely: after long consideration and examination, he had 
come to the conclusion that an unheard-of swindle was being 
perpetrated here. The believers, having made great sacrifices, 
could not allow themselves the thought that they had been 
cheated, the more so as they had been deprived of all means 
to return to their distant homes. 

After frequent consultations we decided to escape. In view 
of our lack of cash, Hofsinger suggested certain methods in¬ 
compatible with the honesty and good reputation of our family. 
Instead I wrote to my brother. Dr. Forges, and told him of my 
decision to leave Offenbach, asking him for an address in 
Frankfurt where we could go and receive the means for our 
journey. The answer did not fail to arrive; the family agreed 
and indicated a Mr. Neustadtl in Frankfurt where we would 
find money and a friendly reception. Now matters became 
serious. I told my brother of our intentions and showed him the 
letter of our brother; he immediately declared himself ready 
to join me in every way. So we figured out how to leave. As a 
Polish member of the community had recently been caught 
and punished, we decided to flee early in the morning by way 
of the garden. We often stood guard at night and I managed 
to have the night watch assigned to myself and Hofsinger. The 
few belongings we had were put into one pack. 

The eve of our flight I was called by a parlormaid to the 
Gevira. It was getting dark; entering the room, I was attacked 
by her favorite dog, a greyhound, who knew me and never 
before had barked at me. The unusual hour of the appointment 
and the unusual behavior of the dog scared me—I thought we 
had been discovered and betrayed, and fell on my knees. The 
Gevira calmed the dog, saying: “What’s the matter with you 
today, don’t you recognize our dear Karl?” and she continued 
to me in Polish: “I have noticed that your uniform is worn out. 


164 


Memories of Moses Forges 

You may go to Frankfurt tomorrow and order a new one.” She 
asked me whether I had any other wishes. I was deeply moved 
by such grace and benevolence and almost confessed every¬ 
thing. She let me kiss her hand and dismissed me. I left in tears, 
because I adored and loved this woman; I was then 19 years 
old. 

At midnight I was relieved from my duty and went to sleep. 
Up at 2:00 in the morning, we packed our clothing and under¬ 
wear into a blanket, takifig only what I had brought with me, 
Hofsinger and my brother did the same. At 4:00 it was again 
my and Hofsinger’s turn to stand guard. We took the package 
with us and stored it in the hallway next to the quarters of the 
holy Bernhard [?] and Joseph, when my brother came down the 
stairs. We put our rifles into a corner and, our hearts beating 
with great excitement, we made for the courtyard, every mo¬ 
ment in danger of being stopped by the coachmen or stableboys. 
Ffom there into the garden and over the wooden fence into 
the open. 

We ran to the nearby forrest, reached Oberrad and at about 
6:00, Frankfurt. We found Mr. Neustadtl before long; he re¬ 
ceived and treated us well, gave us shelter and handed us the 
money he had received from our family. We bought some 
clothing for me and my brother that day. 

Next morning we set out by coach for Seeligenhof and 
through the Spessart forest to Esselbach, where we spent the 
night. Somewhat earlier we were almost robbed by several men 
who came out of the forest. Our coachman stopped and pointed 
fearfully to the men who had lined up across the road, when 
we heard behind us the approaching sound of a postilion. The 
men withdrew into the woods and we reached Esselbach in 
company of the diligence. We had been advised from home to 
go to Fuerth and wait there for further instructions. We made 
the trip from Esselbach to Fuerth via Wuerzburg by foot. 
Somewhere between Esselbach and Wuerzburg I suddenly was 
overcome by a gnawing hunger and, too weak to go on, had 
to lie down. Fortunately some passing peasant women gave me 
a piece of bread. Later I was told by physicians that, had it not 
been for that food, I would not have been able to rise and would 
have perished. 


165 








THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


In Fuerth, we put up at an inn. Hofsinger being destitute, 
we supported him with the money we had received in Frank¬ 
furt. I have to add here that Hofsinger did a dishonest thing 
the night before our escape. He got hold of the key to the chest 
of Joseph Wehle and Johann Klarenberg [this is the same per¬ 
son: Joseph Wehle adopted, after his baptism, the name of 
Johann Klarenberg] which was kept under his pillow, and took 
the Book of Visions and a jacket with him. I took the book 
from him lest he misuse it. He repeated this in Fuerth; 
one night he took the book from under my pillow and never 
showed up again. He sold it to a son-in-law of Zerkowitz who 
happened to live m Fuerth, but the latter did not use it in a 
detrimental way. [The interrogation of the three escapees by a 
Fuerth rabbinical court is not mentioned here.] 

We had letters of recommendation to several people in 
Fuerth, among them Mr. Moses Gosdorf, one of the most prom¬ 
inent. He received us well and invited us to his table. We had 
been instructed by our relatives to stay in Fuerth until receiving 
order to continue our journey back home. We remained there 
over Whitsuntide, when we were called to the police station 
and told to leave Fuerth within 48 hours. This was done on 
behalf of the head of the Jewish community, and Mr. Gosdorf 
told me that we were expelled because I let myself be shaved 
with a razor [which is forbidden by Jewish law]. We had to 
leave Fuerth, no use arguing.. We went to a Nuremberg suburb, 
Jews not being allowed to stay in town, and called for the letters 
from home in Fuerth. At last we were directed to proceed, 
which we did immediately. In Weilhaus, the last Bavarian bor¬ 
der town, I was handed a letter telling us not to cross into 
Austria, as this would expose us to being recruited. Instead we 
were to return to Bavaria; enclosed was a letter of recommenda¬ 
tion to a Mr. Engel. 

I have to report here a certain incident which happened in 
the Nuremberg suburb of Gerstenhof where we had a lunch 
of beer, bread and butter. A guest, easily recognizable as Jew¬ 
ish, asked us whether we were Jews. Thereupon, he took to 
abusing us, wishing us a misse meshine (an ignominious death) 
because we were eating butter with the knife of a goy. I called 
the innkeeper and told him that the Jew was insulting us for 


166 


Memories of Moses Forges 

using his knife and asked him whether he did not keep things 
clean; whereupon the innkeeper grabbed the Jew and threw 
him out. 

We took the road to Bayreuth and arrived there the next 
forenoon. Mr. Engel, a portly, handsome man, received us in 
a friendly manner and, after reading the letter, invited us to 
stay with him. We were given two nicely furnished rooms and 
the generous man gave us breakfast, lunch, and supper. He 
expressed regret at not being able to serve us at his table, as he 
was in mourning for his beautiful and beloved wife whom he 
had loved dearly and over whose loss he was disconsolate. 
We felt very good with Mr. Engel and the stay in Bayreuth was 
quite pleasant. Mr. Engel, whom we seldom saw, summoned 
us after four weeks and said that leisurely life and idleness 
were not good for young men; he had therefore inquired with 
a friend of his in Hamburg and found me a job which I was to 
start immediately. Thanking him for his good intention, I said 
I would have to get my parents’ permssion. Such did not arrive; 
instead we were given some hope of an early return home. 
When I informed Mr. Engel thereof, he told us to leave his 
home since we had not accepted his well meant offer. He 
promised us a letter of recommendation to his friend, Baron 
N., proprietor of the Emet estate near Burgkundstadt, who 
would receive us well. 

We started out in the month of August, on a very warm day. 
We passed Burgkundstadt at noon. Somewhat earlier I had 
taken off my jacket and put it on my rucksack. In the pocket 
there was a little purse with 40 florins. The road from Burg¬ 
kundstadt to Emet goes over a steep mountain. At the midpoint 
I asked my brother Leopold who was walking behind me: “Is 
the jacket there?” “No, you lost it.” This hit me like a thunder¬ 
clap. The money in the jacket was all we had. Unable to stand 
on my feet, I threw myself down. Leopold ran downhill to 
Burgkundstadt, asking everybody he met for information, with¬ 
out success. He passed the gate when somebody asked him 
what he was looking for, and when he told him, he led him to a 
tanner who had found the jacket. First he denied it, but upon 
Leopold’s insistence and his telling him of our misfortune and 
misery, he brought the jacket; the purse was in the pocket. 


167 






THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


He had to give the finder a few florins. Who could describe my 
delight at the sight of my brother running uphill and holding 
thp iRcket high! 

In the afternoon we reached Emet, a little hamlet. I went to 
the castle with my letter and was shown to the garden where 
I found two gentlemen, one well dressed and bemedaled, the 
other in his houserobe. The latter asked me what I wanted. ‘T 
have a letter for the baron.” He took it and broke the seal, 
while the other man came closer and, looking into the letter, 
asked: “Who is this writer who calls you dear friend?” “A 
certain Mr. Engel.” “What, a Jew dares to call you friend?” 
Somewhat embarrassed, the baron said: “This Engel is a friend 
of Minister Hardenberg” and told me to come back the next 
day. When I did, he reproached me for having given him the 
letter in the presence of his brother, an imperial court coun¬ 
selor. He spoke in the Jewish idiom and continued: “My friend 
Engel recommending you so well, I am going to admit you 
here. You build a house, engage in commerce, and I will arrange 
for a Jewish Bes-Hayim [house of life, a Hebrew euphemism 
for graveyard] where you may bury yourself.” We felt all 
abandoned in this miserable place. There were some poor 
Jewish families there, among them a man from Bohemia who 
took pity on us. We told him we were expecting mail which 
would tell us when to come home, and he advised us to have 
ourselves certified as destitute travelers and go begging in the 
nearby Jewish communities. After some persuasion we agreed 
to try it. Our adviser wrote down the places with Jewish com¬ 
munities, and we began our tour. An oppressive, shameful 
feeling seized us at the first attempt. In . . . one had to look . . . 
for the host [lacunae in the manuscript]. They are mostly cattle- 
traders away from home during the week. One is received by 
the lady of the house and given bread and soup in the evening, 
a night’s lodging, and in the morning, soup again and a few 
pennies. We were soon tired of it and gave it up. 

At last a letter from home telling us to go to Bamberg and 
present ourselves to the local Jewish elder, Mr. Abraham Neu- 
zedlitz; enclosed was a letter of recommendation. We imme¬ 
diately were on our way; it was September, 1800. We were 
approaching the theatre of war. The French had passed through 


168 


Memories of Moses Porges 

Regensburg, the Austrians were in Bamberg. The villages we 
passed were all occupied by Austrian soldiers. We wanted to 
put up at some inn, but were refused; the same at the next. 
When the third innkeeper, an old man, turned us down, we 
told him of doing us wrong by abandoning us to the night and 
bad weather. He hesitated a while and said we were French 
spies, not believing our assuring him we were Austrians. But 
when we told him we were Jews, he said: “So show me the ten 
commandments.” We could not because we did not have any. 
[Unintelligible. Maybe the phylacteries were meant.] Then he 
brought out a loaf of bread and asked: “What is this called in 
Hebrew?” And when we said lekhem, he was satisfied at last, 
and we satisfied our hunger with lekhem, butter, and beer. 
Next day at noon we arrived at Bamberg and immediately went 
to Mr. Abraham Neuzedlitz to deliver our letter of recommen¬ 
dation. He read it and received us in a friendly way, inviting us 
to^stay with him. Mr. Neuzedlitz was an old, simple man, all 
Jewish in talk and dress, but also hospitable and charitable. 
He invited us to his table on Saturdays and holidays; he was a 
decent, pious man. Coming home from the synagogue on the 
Day of Atonement, he asked us to go up with him to the roof 
to mekadesh the levone, that is, to bless the moon with a prayer, 
a thing we had never done before. We could hardly keep from 
laughing, hearing him pray in ashkenasic Hebrew, and when 
he started jumping and hopping at the Sholem Alekhem [peace 
be with you; a prayer greeting the new moon] we could not 
hold on anymore and burst into loud laughter. The good man 
stopped dumbfounded and left, and next morning we were 
told to get out of his house. 

We received a letter from home telling us to go to Leipzig 
where the fair was being held, and from there, if possible, home; 
if not, to Frankfurt on the Oder where we had relatives. We 
started early next morning for we wanted to be in Bayreuth 
that night. An innkeeper, standing in front of his house, tried 
to dissuade us from continuing, because a storm was approach¬ 
ing. We thanked him for his good advice, which we thought was 
to make us put up at his inn, and moved on. An hour and a half 
later the storm broke with great violence. It was pitch dark, 
we lost our way and found ourselves in a forest where many 


169 












THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


trees had been dug up. We fell into the holes up to our hips and 
got all wet from the pelting rain above and the water below. 

After somfe wandering back and forth, we saw a light in the 
distance and hurried towards it. It turned out to be an inn, loud 
with music. The proprietress met us in the entrance hall and 
refused to accommodate us for lack of space; anyhow, we would 
find no peace, a wedding being celebrated all night. She told 
us to go on until we should reach the Fantasie, and there we 
would have a quiet night. 

The Fantasie is an amusement place near Bayreuth. We 
found the host all alone, his family gone to town and no guests. 
We were, as I said, soaking wet. I asked the host to heat the 
stove, which he did, and ordered, for want of anything else, 
bread, butter, and a glass of beer. Brother Leopold did not want 
to eat and preferred to warm himself. Hardly had I taken a bite 
when I heard a heavy clap. Turning around, I saw him on the 
floor, unconscious. I asked the host to call a doctor, but he said 
there was none nearby. We carried the unconscious lad to the 
upper floor, undressed him, and had to cut open his boots. . . . 

This is as far as the manuscript goes. The brothers made 
it to Prague, apparently without any further difficulties. 
Later they became pioneers of the industrialization of 
Bohemia and were raised to peerage as Nobles of Forges 
von Portheim. 


170 


On the Intimate Letters 
about France 


Avenel and Claretie attribute the Intimate Letters about 
France to Junius Frey (see chapter 26 of this book), and Max 
von Portheim lists the following item in his materials for a 
bibliography on the Austrian Jews (Jiidisches Archiv, 1929, 
Nr.. 8-9, p. 66): Frey, L, Vertraiite Briefe iiber Frankreich. 
Berlin 1792-1793, 1. Band, pp. 21-23. Professor Scholem quot^ 
this listing, but does not know the book; he assumes that pageV 
21-23 deal with Junius Frey {Zion, 1970, p. 167). As a matter 
of fact, the book does not mention Frey. The pages indicated 
contain a description of the Frankist court in Offenbach, ap¬ 
parently not by Frey, as the Frankists are considered to be 
aristocratic Polish refugees, waiting only for an opportunity 
to return home. 

With the help of the librarian of the Berlin Staatsbibliothek, 
I was able, after a long search, to locate a copy of the book 
in the British Museum. It was easy now to locate other copies, 
one of them, so to say, under my nose, in the Music Library 
of the University of California at Berkeley, my place of resi¬ 
dence. 

The full title of the book is Vertraute Briefe iiber Frank¬ 
reich. Auf einer Reise im Jahre 1792 geschricben. Erster Teil. 
Berlin, bei Johann Friedrich Unger, 1792. The second part 
appeared in 1793. The frontispiece corresponds to Avenel’s 
description: Jacobin bonnet, etc. The editor’s preface is signed 
by J. (not I.) Frey, and the anonymous author is assumed to be 
the composer, writer, and orchestra conductor at the court of 
Frederick the Great, Johann Friedrich Reichardt (1751-1814). 
With the exception of the two above-mentioned French his¬ 
torians, no one ever refers to Frey as the author. Reichardt’s 
authorship, on the other hand, has not been established defini- 


171 








THE MILITANT MESSIAH 

tively. The following arguments speak for Reichardt: (1) he 
actually was in France in the spring of 1792; (2) two of 
Reichardt’s works have similar titles: Vertraute Briefe aus 
Paris, 1802/3 and Vertraute Briefe geschrieben auf einer Reise 
nach Wien, 1808/9; (3) A. Laquiante, the translator of the 
abridged French version, Un Prussien en France en 1792. 
Lettres intimes de J. F. Reichardt, as can be seen, names 
Reichardt as the author and also believes that he was hiding 
under the pen name J. Frey; (4) Reichardt frequently used pen 
names such as Trahcier or J. F., and J. Frey could be an acro¬ 
nym of J(ohann) F(riedrich) Rei(chardt) [cf. Sieber, J. F. 
Reichardt als Musikdsthetiker, p. 116]; (5) Reichardt occa¬ 
sionally defended himself against having anonymous works 
attributed to him; in this case, however, he listed the book 
among his works. Several arguments speak against Reichardt’s 
authorship: (1) various biographers (e.g. Eitner, Schletterer) 
do not mention the book among his works; (2) some works 
attributed to him were not his, and he did not raise any objec¬ 
tions [Sieber, 115 f.]; (3) the first volume is not concerned with 
music, but exclusively with political, military, and social mat¬ 
ters. 

The arguments for Reichardt outweigh those against. Never¬ 
theless, there is reason to assume that Junius Frey had a hand 
in writing, at least, the letters from Strasbourg. This assumption 
is based on the following grounds (we are only concerned with 
the first volume; the second was written in Paris between March 
4 and April 2, 1792, hence before Frey arrived): Volume I 
contains 22 letters, two of them from Frankfurt, dated January 
6 and 10, and nine from Strasbourg, written between January 
ISand January 31. The preface is dated “W., August 15, 1792” 
and signed “J. Frey”; it reads: 

A free German who made the journey to France solely 
for the purpose of acquainting himself with the true con¬ 
dition of the important French problem [elsewhere it says: 
to inform himself by all possible means of the French 
people’s mood and opinion and the present political situa¬ 
tion of the country] wrote these letters to his most intimate 
friend, leaving her at liberty to show parts to her closest 
friends. ... As for himself, he will perhaps live a long time 


172 


Intimate Letters about France 

away from his country and as the publication of the letters 
does not inconvenience him in any way, he has nothing 
against their being made public. . . However, the editor 
asks anybody who, with the excerpts, may have learned 
the author’s name, not to divulge it, lest he be compro¬ 
mised needlessly. 

There is a contradiction here. Reichardt had no intention 
of remaining in France; he returned to Prussia in April, 1792, 
and fell temporarily into disgrace because of his republican 
ideas. Frey, however, could say of himself that “he will perhaps 
live a long time away from his country.” Reichardt and Frey 
(or Schoenfeld, as his name was at the time) must have known 
each other. Both belonged to the Goettinger circle, both were 
friends and frequent house guests of Voss. Their chance meet¬ 
ing irt Strasbourg seems to have given them the idea of writing 
the letters together, perhaps at the suggestion of Frey, who saw 
here an excellent opportunity for sending his reports acroJs the 
border (at the risk of misusing Reichardt’s trust?). ^ 


The relevant parts of pp. 21-23 from the Intimate Letters of January 
10, 1792 (missing in the French edition) read as follows: 

“One more word about Offenbach. We saw there many of that 
strange sect whose patriarch was buried last year with royal pomp 
and exotic ceremonies. They form a separate community, about a 
thousand of them I was told, in part armed. The patriarch appar¬ 
ently is their leader and regent and provides them with all necessary 
food and even many a thing of luxury and extravagance. All pay¬ 
ments are made in ready money which they receive frequently, 
with none of them carrying on a trade. The most reasonable of the 
many contradictory assumptions seems to be that these are some 
wealthy families of Polish nobility who have left Poland on account 
of the internal disorders of recent years. In order to wait undis¬ 
turbed for the time of their safe and profitable return to their 
motherland, they have adopted the form of a religious sect. The 
prince of Ysenburg is obviously quite satisfied with these people 
spending considerable amounts of money in his country and grants 
them all possible freedom so long as they do not commit any 
excesses. That such a rapid increase of well-to-do, unproductive 
elements also raises the food prices for the inhabitants—is the 
latter’s concern. Let them cope with it as best they can!” 


173 







Bibliography 

& Source References 

The present book is based in part on research in the following 
institutions: 

Archives de France and Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France 

British Museum, London, England 

Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Oesterreichisches Staats- 
archiv, Wiener Stadtbibliothek, Vienna, Austria 

Staatsbibliothek (Preussischer Kulturbesitz) Berlin, Stadt- und 
Universitaetsbibliothek, Frankfurt a.M., Hessische Landes- und Uni- 
versitaetsbibliothek, Darmstadt, Stadtarchiv Offenbach, Federal Re¬ 
public of Germany 

Deutsches Zentralarchiv, Merseburg, German Democratic Re¬ 
public 

The libraries of the University of California, Berkeley, and 
Stanford University, California. 

The author wishes to express his gratitude to Mr. Karl Fried¬ 
rich von Frank (no relation to Jacob Frank), Schloss Senftenegg, 
Austria, for kindly making accessible to him the wealth of his genea¬ 
logical collections. The reader is at liberty of skipping the following 
references. A.M. 


ABBREVIATIONS 
AF — Archives de France 

BH — Martin Buber, Origin and Meaning of Hassidism 

BL - Mayer Balaban, On the History of the Frankist Movement 
(Hebrew), 2 vols. 

BS — the same, Studien und Quellen zur frankistischen Bewegung, 
Livre dliommage a la memoire du Dr. Poznanski. 

DG — Simon Dubnow, Geschichte des Chassidismus. 2 vols. 

DH - the same. History of the Jews, 10 volumes (in 6). 

174 


Bibliography 

GF — Heinrich Graetz, Frank und die Frankisten. 

GH — the same. History of the Jews. 12 vols. 

GS — Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. 

GT — Gustav Trautenberger, Chronik der Landeshauptstadt Briinn. 

HS — Heinrich Schnee, Die Hoffinanz und der moderne Staat, 

6 vols. 

KF — Alexander Kraushaar, Frank i Frankisci Polscy, 2 vols. 

LK — Leon Kahn, Les Juifs de Paris pendant la Revolution 

LR — Leon Ruzicka, Die oesterreichischen Dichter judischer 
Abstammung Moyses und David Dobruschka, Jiidische 
Familienforschung, 1930, No. 3 

MG— Monatsschrift fiir Geschichte und Wissenschaft des 
Judentums 

P3 — Peter Beer, Geschichte, Lehren und Meinungen aller\bestan- 
denen und noch bestehenden religiosen Sekten der Juden, 2 
vols. 

VZ — Vaclav Zacek, Zwei Beitrage zur Geschichte des Frankismus 
in den bohmischen Liindern, Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft fiir 
Geschichte der Juden in der Czechoslowakischen Republik, 
1938. 

SOURCE REFERENCES 

Page 

1 Vossische Zeitung, 1794, No. 48. 

8 trial papers: AF-W342/648. 

9 childhood: KF I/19f.; all sayings of Frank are quoted 
from KF. 

14 Eibenschuetz, Wehle: VZ 395. 

15 Khlyste: all references from Karl Grass, Die russischen 
Sekten, vol. 1. 

16 Pietism, Buddhism: Gaster, preface to Horodezky, Leaders of 
Hassidism. 

Christian Hassidism: Nigg, Des Pilgers Wiederkehr, 170f. 

17 Maimon: Lebensgeschichte, chap. 18. 

18 Nahman of Horodenko: DG 11/172. 


175 






THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


Page 

all references to “Free Spirit” from Grundmann, Ketzerge- 
schichte des Mittelaltcrs. 

20 Maimonides: DH II(IV) 759f., Iir(V) 102; DG 11/206. 

21 tsaddik of Lezaisk: DG ir/17f., 26. 
tsaddik of Lublin: DG II/250f. 
amulets: DG 1/87. 

every aberration: BH 40. 

22 anecdote reported by the Talmud: tractate Baba Mezia. 

23 “Great Maggid”: DG 1/13If., 146f. 
grandson of the Balshem: DG ll/65f. 

Sadagora: DG II/230f., GS 349. 

24 Buber: DG 1/310; Scholem, Martin Bubers Deutung des 
Chassidismus, Jiidaica 1963, 198. 

against its will: BH 22. 

Elia of Vilna: DG I/I77f., 224f., II/U6f., 135. 
murder: Histonshe Sin if ten, Yiddish Scientific Institute, 1929, 
vol. I; cf. DG 11/308. 
tsaddik of Ladi: DG II/89f. 

25 Napoleonic war: DG 11/264. 

Nahman of Bratslav: DG II/189f. 

26 prominent Hassidim: Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, VII, IX. 
Orzeszko: O Zydach i kwestji zydowskiej (On the Jews and the 
Jewish Question), 1913 ed., 5, 38. 

27 Vincenz, Na wysokiej poloninic, English translation by H. C. 
Stevens: On the Higlv Uplands. 

disputation: BS 57f., DG 1/117, 332f.; Das offizielle Protokoll 
der Frankistischen Disputation in Lemberg (Balaban, Skizzcn 
und Stiidien zur Geschichte der Juden in Polen.) 

28 Kossakowski-Molivda: KF 1/130, 149, 182. 
death of the Balshem: DG I/115f. 

29 horses: BL 164. 

Frankism in general: BL, DH IV (VII) 378ff.; GH X, KF, GS 
chap. 8; Scholem, Le mouvement sabbataiste en Pologne, 
Revue de VHistoire des Religions, 1953; the same. The Mes¬ 
sianic Idea in Judaism, 78ff. 

30 Doenme: Scholem, Die krypto-judische Sekte der Doenme in 
der Tlirkei, Numen, December 1960; KF I/47f. 

31 cutthroat: GF 20. 

35 miracles: BS 53, KF 1/69, Horodezky, Leaders of Hassidism, 8. 


176 


Source References 

Page 

36 Dzikever: Duker, Jewish Social Studies, 1953, 194. 
heresies: DG I/196f. 

37 according to the Talmud: tractates Sanhedrin, Makkot. 

39 felix culpa: St. Paul, Romans 3. 

bewildering sayings: tractates Nazir, Menahot, Temura. 
rabbinical court: BL 107, 122f., GF 19. 

40 sexual symbolism: Langer, Die Liebesmystik der Kahhala. 

41 the religious rites: BS 53, GF 26f., KF 1/132. 

42 the sexual element: Epstein, Sex Laws and Customs in Judaism. 

43 Sabbath: Patai, The Jewish Goddess, 195, 247. 

Shekhina: Talmud tractate Sota, DG 1/96. 

Moses: Zohar I/21b-22a, III/180a. 

44 tsaddik of Ladi: DG 11/111. 
tsaddik of Berditchev: DG II/54f. 

Jacob Joseph of Polnoy: DG 1/228. 
vulgar Hassidism: DG II/96f. 

45 Scholem: GS 317. 

Rubashov-Shazar: On the Ruins of Frank's House (Hebrew). 

46 Leisegang, Die Gnosis, chap. V, VII; Pulver, Vom Spielraum 
gnostischer Mysterienpraxis, Eranos-Jahrhuch 1944; Epiphan- 
ius, Panarion Contra Haereses, chap. 26 

Flekeles: VZ 398. 

cult of Mary: Patai, op. cit., chap. V, VI. 
trinity: GF 15 

47 Simon Magus: Iraeneus, Adversus Haereses, 1/27, 1-4. 
Charlety, Histoire du Saint-Simonism, 267f. 

Czynski, Les Juifs de la Pologne et de la Russie, Archives 
Israelites, 1844, 780. 
excommunication: BS 125f. 

48 Uriel Acosta's Autobiography: A Specimen of Human Life, 
1967 ed., 76. 

even the Balshem: DG 1/116 

49 disputation: BL 137f., KF I/70f. 
theses: KF I/78f., 85f. 

51 escape to Turkey: KF I/97f., GF 42. 

52 pseudo-Isaiah: KF II, chap. 19. 

55 ritual murder trials: Balaban, Hugo Grotius und die Ritual- 
mordprozesse von Lublin, Festschrift fiir S. Dubnow, 87f.; BL 



177 





THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


Page 

10If.; Stern, Die pcipstUchen Bullen iiber die Blutbeschuldigung. 

58 disputation: BL 209f. 

59 thesis VII: BS 45; Scholem, Le mouvement etc., op. cit., vol. 
164/44f. 

60 Dr. Usiel: BL 253f. 

Mikulski: GF 53. 

61 Galinski: VZ 40If. 

65 an old Polish custom: Wielka Encyklopedja Powszechna, 1964, 
vol. IV, (under Frank). 

65 in 1492: Zeitschrift fiir kathoUsche Theologie, 1938, 155f, 
some sources: Mieses, Polacy-Chrzescijanie pochodzenia 
zydowskiego (Polish Christians of Jewish Descent), 2 vols.T 
I/XX. 

68 strange similarities: DG 11/197, 202f., 209f., 213. 

Jewish devils: DG 207, KF 1/421. 

70 Frankist officers: Jeske-Choinski, Neofici Polscy; Mieses, op. 
cit., (passim). 

71 Jewish officers: Rubin, 140 Jewish Marshals, Generals, and 
Admirals. 

Inquisition: KF I/183f. 

74 emissaries: PB 330f. 

75 cult of Eve: KF I/240f. 

77 Henrietta, Marianna: KF I/249f., 11/310. 

78 Maria Lactans: Reallexikon der deutschen Kunstgeschichte, 
vol. III. 

79 Prossnitzer: GF 66, GH X/348. 

80 Sheindel Dobrushka: MG 1917, 205; Krauss, Festschrift fiir 
A. Kaminka, 143f.; BL; Trapp, Dobrushka-Schoenfeld-Frey, 
Tagesbote, Bruenn, 16. I. 1928. 

81 Eibenschuetz: HS 11/249, IV/317; KF 1/305; MG 1877, 23. 
Salomon Dobrushka: Trapp, op. cit.; Notizenblatt der histor.- 
statist. Section der mdhrisch-schlesischen Gesellschaft zur Be- 
f or derung des Acker bans etc., 1871, II/9. 

82 Frank had succeeded: VZ 393. 

Bluemele Dobrushka: LR 287; Trapp, op. cit. 

83 patent of nobility: Oesterreichisches Staats- und Verwaltungs- 
archiv, Vienna. 

85 Popper: HS IV/325; Krauss, Joachim Edier von Popper, 75f, 
106f. 

178 


Source References 
Page 

Moses Dobrushka: De Luca, Das Gelehrte Oesterreich, des 
ersten Bandes zweytes Stuck, 105f.; Wurzbach, Biographisches 
Lexikon des Kaiserreiches Oesterreich, XXXI/150f.; Goedeke, 
Grundriss zur Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung, IV/152, 
VII/11; Giebisch-Gugitz, Bio-Bibliographisches Literaturlexi- 
kon Oesterreichs, 369. 

87 poems of the brothers Schoenfeld: Becker s Taschenbuch zum 
geselligen Vergniigen, 1790 and later; Blumenlese der Musen, 
1789-1790. 

89 letters of Kretschmann, Gleim, Ramler: AF-T- 1524. 

The Seven Penitent Psalms: ibid. 

90 Asiatic Brothers: Katz, Jews and Freemasons, 26f. 

91 coronation of Leopold: MG 1917, 206. 

secret instructions: Kretschmann, Ehrengedachtnis der Herren 
Franz Thomas und Emanuel von Schoenfeld, Becker’s Taschen¬ 
buch zum geselligen Vergniigen, 1799, 136f.; Lenotre, Le Baron 
de Batz, 45. 

93 war against Turkey: KF 11/12. ) 

the Chronicle reports: KF 11/41; VZ 392, 404. ^ 

Molitor: Katz, Zion, Jerusalem 1965, 204; Scholem, The Ca¬ 
reer of a Frankist, Zion 1970, 144. 

94 on his own authority: KF 11/20; Mieses, op. cit., I/XXXVI. 

95 Paul I: KF 11/36, 54f. 

Alexander I: GF 78; GT V/31; Kraushaar, Obrazy i Wizerunki 
historyczne (Historical Images and Sketches), 275; KF 11/237. 
Frank’s health: KF 11/36. 

Peter Beer: PB 11/324. 

96 the waterman: Journal des Luxus und der Moden, Weimar, 
February 1800. 

tobacco monopoly: Krauss, Joachim Edier von Popper, 3If. 
Koffiler: GT IV/163. 

97 elixir: KF 11/84. 

99 departure: KF II/90f. 

Frank’s sons: KF 11/86, 92. 

100 the work of my hands: Talmud tractate Sanhedrin. 

Prague Frankists: VZ 358f.; Balaban, Zur Geschichte der 
Familie Wehle, Zeitschrift fiir Geschichte der Juden in der 
Tschechoslowakei, 1923, III/113f. 

Gottlieb Wehle: Scholem, A Sabbataian Will from New York, 
Miscellanies of the Jewish Historical Society of England, 1948. 


179 







THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


Page 

101 Brandeis: Josephine Goldmark, Pioneers of the '48. 

102 Hoenigsberg: MG 1877, 234. 

Pawlowska: KF 11/242. 

rabbinical court: MG 1877, ]8f, 232f. 

103 Bukovina: Bidermann, Die Bukovina unter oesterr. Verwal- 
tung, 7Of. 

for the ceremonies: MG 1877, 192f. 

104 Schenck-Rinck, Die Polen in Offenbach. 
interpreter: GF 21. 

107 Goethe: Arnsberg, Von PodoHen nach Offenbach, 9; Mieses, 
op. cit., 11/210, 259. 

108 Mickiewicz: Mieses, op. cit., II/119f.; Duker, Some cabbalistic 
and frankist elements in Mickiewicz’ “Dziady,” Studies in 
Polish Civilization, 1966, 213f.; Scheps, Adam Mickiewicz, ses 
affinitites juives. 

Casanova, Epistolario, 354f. 

110 rumors: GF 38. 

eyewitness: Schenck-Rinck, op. cit., 35. 

Lubomirski: KF II/120f 

111 stroke: KF 11/126. 

funeral: GF 84; GT IV/194; Leonhard, A us unserer Zeit in 
meinem Leben, I/29f. 

112 Hofsinger: MG 1877, 238. 

113 protests: Wielka Encyklopedja Powszechna,YV (under Frank), 
appeal: Gelber, Aus zwei Jahrhunderten, 56f.; PB II/334f. 

114 anonymous informer: VZ 404f. 

115 Count Trautmannsdorf: Gelber, op. cit., 66f. 

the Prussian government: Die Franksche Sekte zu Offenbach, 
Deutsches Zentralarchiv, Hist. Abt. II, Merseburg, Rep. 81 
Frankfurt VB No. 23. 

118 Johann Georg Forsters Briefwechsel, 1829, II/111. 

Prague Frankists: VZ 378f., 40.8f. 

119 the following notice: Arnsberg, op. cit., 32, 50. 

121 Courrier de Strasbourg, April-June 1792. 

123 letters to Voss: AF-T-1524. 

124 open letter: ibid. 

125 Avenel, Anarcharsis Cloots, Vorateur du genre humain, II/2. 

126 Claretie, Camille Desmoulins, 247f. 
chased out of Berlin: LK 264. 


180 


Source References 
Page 

127 Frey’s son: AF-W342/648. 

128 that same evening: Le Courrier de Gorsas, 11. 6. 1792. 
inventory: AF-F7-4637. 

Robespierre: AF, Pieces trouvees dans les papiers de 
Robespierre. 

Tuileries: AF-F7-4713. 

129 citizenship: AF-T-1525. 

130 Ruehl: Mathiez, LA Revolution et les Etrangers, 116. 
adoptions: AF-F7-4637. 

national estates: AF-F7-4713. 

131 shipment of arms: Mathiez, op. cit., 118. 

Turkey: Histoire veritable du wariage de Frangois Chabot 
avec Leopoldine Frey, AF-F7-4637. 

. captured vessels; loaned money: AF-W342/648. 
at the trial: LK 263f. 

Frey’s daughters: LR 287. 

Diedrichsen: AF-W342/648. 

135 within 24 hours: Histoire veritable, op. cit. 

136 Leopoldine: AF-F7-4637. 

Chabot: Aulard, Les Orateurs de la Legislature, II/294f. 

137 at dagger point: letter to Robespierre, AF-W342/648. 
my brother: Histoire veritable, op. cit. 
housekeeper: AF-F7-4637. 

she trembles: Chabot’s defense, ibid, 
petition: AF-F7-4713. 

Trenck: Annales Revohitionnaires, \9\4, 101 f. 

138 deposition: AF-W342/648. 

139 Wedekind: Avenel, op. cit., 11/202; AF-F7-4637. 
notice: Annales de la Republique Frangaise, 4. 10. 1793. 

140 Maria Theresa: Chabot’s defense, AF-F7-4637. 

in the Jacobin club: Gazette Nationale, 1793, No. 63. 
Wilhelm; Haussmann: AF-W342/648. 

142 the storm broke: ibid. 

143 the prosecutor: AF-F7-4713. 

144 Compagnie des Indes: AF-F7-4637 and 4590; also Mathiez, 
Un Proces de Corruption sous la Terreur. 

Robespierre: AF, Pieces trouvees dans les papiers de Robes¬ 
pierre. 

145 witnesses: AF-F7-4775; Moniteur Universel, 17. 11. 1793. 


181 






THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


Page 

in the course of 1793: AF-F7-4637 (Diedrichsen to Frey). 
Chabot: AF-W342/648, F7-4637, and among letters found at 
Robespierre’s. 

146 tried to commit suicide: AF-W342/648. 
act of accusation: ibid. 

147 Topino-Lebrun: Revue d*Histoire de la Revolution Frangaise, 
1875, 177. 

judgement AF-W342/648. 

Emanuel Frey: LK 264. 

148 Leopoldine: AF-F7-4637. 
last sign of life: AF-F7-4713. 

family Chabot: Boland, Frangois Chabot, 339. 

Sandoz-Rollin: GT IV/240. 

marriage license: Information Deutsches Zentralarchiv, Merse¬ 
burg. 

Bluemele: LR 287. 

149 Robinet, Le Proces des Dantoniens, 185, 398. 

Lenotre, Le baron de Batz, 45. 

Scholem, Zion, op. cit., 175. 

Kisch, Tales from Seven Ghettos, 41. 


182 


Index 


Abelard, Pierre 133 
Acosta, Uriel 48 
Agnon, Shmuel Joseph 27 
Alexander, I. 71, 95, 113, 119 
Anski, Shlomo 27 
Arnim, Bettina von 107, 118 
Avenel, Georges 125f., 149 
Balaban, Mayer 58, 66 
Balshem, Israel 15ff., 21ff., 43f., 48 
Battenberg-Mountbatten 71 
Bedersi, Yedaya 86 
Beer, Peter 95 
Bellarmini, Roberto 59 
Bin-Gorion, Mikha Joseph 27 
Boccacio, Giovanni 78 
Bodrtier, Johann Jakob 88 
Boland, Vicomte de 149 
Bolekhover, Baer 27, 59 
Brandeis, Louis Dembitz 101 
Buber, Martin 19ff., 27, 38 
Buchner, Georg 150 
Cagliostro, Alexander 108 
Calvin, John 134 
Cardozo, Benjamin N. 101 
Carlebach, Shlomo 27 
Casanova, Giacomo 108 
Chabot, Francois 8, 125fT. 
Chmielnitsky, Bogdan 13, 63, 75 
Claretie, Jules 126, 149 
Clemens XIII 55 
Cloots, Anacharsis 125 
Czynski, Jean 47 
Dante Alighieri 78 
Danton, Georges-Jacques 7f., 145f. 
De Luca, Ignatz 85 f. 

Dembowski (bishop) 49 
Dembowski, Andreas 113 
Dembowski, Jan 70 
Desmoulins, Camille 7, 126 
Diedrichsen, Johann Friedrich 131, 
141, 145 

Dobrushka, Bluemele 82, 148, also 
Theresa Maria von Schoenfeld 


Dobrushka, Carl 80f., 91 
Dobrushka, David 82, 87, also 
Emanuel von Schoenfeld, Eman¬ 
uel Frey 

Dobrushka, Ester 82, also Leo¬ 
poldine Frey 

Dobrushka, Moses 82ff., also Franz 
Thomas von Schoenfeld, Junius 
Frey 

Dobrushka, Salomon 80f., 84f., 95 
140 

Dobrushka, Sheindel 80, 84 
Dov Baer of Mesritsch 23 
Duns-Scotus, John 86 
Diischenes-Dusensy, Abraham 85 
Dzikever, Eliezer 36 
Eckhart, Master 18f., 42 
Eckhoffen, Hans Carl and Hans 
Heinrich 90 

Eibensc^uetz, Jonas Wolf 80 
Eibensd^uetz, Jonathan 14 
Elia of Vilna 24 
Elimelekh of Lezajsk 21 
Emden, Jacob 80 
Emin Pasha 153 
Enfantin, Prosper 47 
Flekeles, Elazar 46, 113, 118 
Forster, Johann Georg 138 
Fouquier-Tinville, Antoine 146 
Francis of Assisi 23 
Frank, Eva 34, 46, 10Iff. 

Frank, Hanna 32, 46 
Frank, Jacob, childhood 9fT., and 
Balshem 15f., 28, in Turkey 28ff., 
in Poland 34ff., in Bruenn 79ff., 
in Offenbach 102ff. 

Frank, Joseph 73, 117ff. 

Frank, Rochus 73, 103, 117ff. 
Franz II 91, 123 
Frederick Wilhelm II 90, 123 
Freud, Sigmund 44 
Frey, Emanuel 7f., 82, 127ff., 146, 
also David Dobrushka, Emanuel 


183 





THE MILITANT MESSIAH 


von Schoenfeld 
Frey, Joseph Franz 127, 146 
Frey, Junius 7f., 82, 121ff., also 
Moses Dobrushka, Franz Thom¬ 
as von Schoenfeld 
Frey, Leopoldine 7, 126f., 136ff., 
also Ester Dobrushka 
Friedmann, Israel 23f. 
Furstenberg, Maria Josepha 86f. 
Galinski 61, 95 
Gessner, Salomon 85f. 

Gleim, Johann Wilhelm 89 
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang 106, 118 
Goldmark, Alice 101 
Graetz, Heinrich 45, 66 
Grotius, Hugo 58 
Hassid, Yidl 14 
Hauke, Maurice 71 
Heine, Heinrich 87, 150 
Herder, Johann Gottfried 88 
Hitler, Adolf 12, 19 
Hobbes, Thomas 134 
Hoenigsberg, Israel 80ff., 96, 101 
Hoenigsberg, Loew 102, 118 
Hofsinger, Jonas 164 
Humboldt, Wilhelm von 108 
Hurwicz, Jacob Isaac 21 
Issakhar (rabbi) 29, 31, 52 
Isemburg (duke) 99, 105, 117 
Jacob Joseph of Polnoy 44 
Jakubowicz, Adalbert 71 
Jakubowski, Joseph 70 
Jakubowski, Peter 93 
Jasinski, Jacob 70 
Jesus Christ 13, 24, 13f., 50f., 58, 
77, 111, 134 

Jezioranski, Anthony and Jan 70 
Joseph II 82, 91f., 97, 124, 132, 138, 
142 

Joss, Elke 85, also Wilhelmine von 
Schoenfeld 

Josselewicz, Berek 70 
Jung, Carl Gustav 16 


Kahn, Leon 149 
Kant, Immanuel 134 
Kemal Atatiirk 71 
Kisch, Egon Erwin 150 
Kleist, Ewald von 88 
Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb 88, 
129 

Kohn, Abraham 24 
Kossakowski-Molivda, Anton 27 
Kretschmann, Karl Friedrich 89ff., 
149 

Krysa, Leib 66, 70 
Krysinski, Jan and Xavier 70 
Landau, Samuel 119 
Lavater, Johann Kaspar 88 
Laveaux, Charles 12 If., 125, 129 
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 124 
Lenotre, G. 51, 149 
Leopold II 7, 91, 126f., 138, 140 
Lepeletier, Louis-Michel 128 
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 152 
Leti, Gregory 59 
Levi Isaac of Berditchev 44 
Lewinski, Jacob 70 
Locke, John 134 
Lubomirski, Martin 110 
Luther, Martin 134 
Maimon, Salomon 17 
Maimonides, Moses 20f. 

Majewski, Ignace 70 
Malakh, Haim 14 
Marat, Jean-Paul 128 
Maria Theresa 61, 82, 94, 140 
Marie Antoinette 91, 140 
Marx, Karl 152 
Mathiez, Albert 149 
Matuszewicz, Alexander 70 
Maupassant, Guy de 78 
Mauthner, Fritz 101 
Medici, Ferdinando, Juan, Vitale 65 
Melanchthon, Philipp 134 
Mendel of Kotsk 26 
Mendelssohn, Moses 88, 152 


184 


Index 


Mesmer, Franz 108 
Mickiewicz, Adam 108 
Mikulski (canonicus) 55, 58f. 
Molitor, Joseph Franz 93 
Moses 31, 41, 74, 133 
Nahman of Bratslav 25, 68f. 
Nahman of Horodenko 18 
Napoleon Bonaparte 25, 70, 113, 
116 

Niemcewicz, Julian 26 
Orzeszko, Eliza 26 
Paul ! 95 

Pawlikowska, Paulina 102 
Perez, Jitzok Leibush 27, 69 
Pliny the Elder 78 
Pope,- Alexander 133 
Popper, Joachim von 83f., 96, 151 
Porges, David 155 
Porges, Gabriel 155 
Porges, Leopold 103, 155 
Porges, Moses 103, lOOf., 155 
Portheim, Max von 171 
Prossnitzer, Loebel 79 
Ramler, Karl Wilhelm 89 
Rappaport, Haim 59 
Reichardt, Johann Friedrich 171 f. 
Robespierre, Maximilien 128, 135, 
143f. 

Robinet, J.-F. 149 
Rothschild, Mayer Anschel 113, 
151 

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 123, 128, 
143f. 

Rubashov-Shazar, Salman 45 
Ruehl, Philippe 130 
Sabbatai, Zevi 13, 24, 30f., 40, 46, 
51, 61, 73f., 79, 101 
Saint-Martin, Louis-Claude 108 
St. Epiphanius 46, 59 
St. Jerome 42, 58 
St. Paul 35, 39, 43f. 

Sandoz-Rollin, Daniel Alfons 148 
Schiller, Friedrich 89, 129 


Schneider, Eulogius 124f. 
Schoenfeld, Emanuel 82, also David 
Dobrushka, Emanuel Frey 
Schoenfeld, Franz Thomas 82M., 
93f., 112, also Moses Dobrushka, 
Junius Frey 

Schoenfeld, Wilhelmine 85, 113, 
also Elke Joss 

Scholem, Gershom 44, 58, 150 
Schorr, Elisha 40 
Schorr, Shlomo 66, 107 
Schwabacher 101 
Shneyer Salmen of Ladi 24f., 44 
Simon Magus 47 
Singer, Isaac Bashevis 153 
Sokolow, Nahum 45 
Soltyk (bishop) 57f., 60 
Spinoza, Barukh 22, 134, 151 
Stalin, Joseph 19, 146 
Stolberg, Christian and Friedrich 88 
Swedenborg, Emanuel 108 
Szymanpwska, Celina 108 
Szymanqwska, Maria 107 
Szymanowski, Joseph 70, 108 
Topino-Lebrun, Frangois 147 
Trebitsch-Lincoln 153 
Trenck, Frederick von der 138 
Usiel, Abraham 59 
Vincenz, Stanislaw 27 
Voss, Johann Heinrich 89, 123f., 
129 

Wedekind, Georg 139 
Wehle, Aaron Baer 14, 100 
Wehle, Gottlieb 100, 123 
Wehle, Jonas lOOf., 118 
Wieland, Christoph Martin 87f., 
129 

Wiesel, Elie 153 
Wilhelm, Johann Baptist 140 
Wolowska, Kasimira 108 
Wolowski, Franz and Michael 113 
Zwingli, Ulrich 134 


185 



VERTRAUTE BRIEFE 

UBER 


FRANK REICH 


AUF EIXER REISE 
f’ \r r A H p. T 7 9 X ^ 5 c Jt A i >: n. p. .x. 



ERSTER THEIL. 


BERLIN, 

nri JOHAWW PIMEDRir.K tTNCEA. 

X 79 2.‘ 

Title page of the Intimate Letters About France 

British Museum, London, and Mu¬ 
sic Library of the University of 
California at Berkeley 


PHILOSOPHIE 

" sNp C I A L 

JofiDlfiE 

•^i^RUPLE FRANgOIS. 


The proper study of flankind is Man. 

Pope. 



Pjr un Citoyen de la Section de la 
Repuhlique Franfoise ^4 - devant du 
Route. 


A PA R I S. 

Chez pROULLfe, Imprimeur-Llbraire , 
Qual des Augustins, 39. 

1793 . 

Title page of Junius Frey's Philosophie Sociale 

(Biblotheque Nationale, Paris); 













Lcopoldine Chabot, nee Frey 



rHilABOT, 

:y^^//’f'A (/fh‘ /f /ff 

'•/ ff y^/ ^>V//VV//^V/ ‘///fZ. y/<r//f /.//f /ff 

/.r /A'^rr/.'mi.'/' 





Eva Frank’s house in Offenbach 

during the visit of Tsar Alexander I, November 1813 

Offenbach Stadtarchiv 



Frank on the way to his prayer service 
at right, on horseback, the “waterman’