The Economic and Social Circumstances of the Jews within the domain Munkacs–Szentmiklos in the 18th century. 

Reprint, even partial, is forbidden. Copyrighted by Professor Dr. Andreas Sas. Mukacevo. Czechoslovakia.

By Professor Dr. Andreas Sas.

Continuation

The accounts from the 18th century concerning the management of the seigniorial estate are full of complaints about the material misery of the population living in the highlands of the domain. Hand in hand with this misery went lack of love of work and the characteristic indifference of the serf. These were fed by the awareness that not even the most strenuous and industrious forced labor on the master’s behalf would alleviate the burdens and the misery of the villager without a field of his own. Of the population groups living here the Jews were the one who made possible for the landed proprietor the exploitation of the domain’s natural wealth and feudal claims without special administration and without executive means of coercion, who brought to the all too languid rhythm of agriculture an inkling of the mobility of commerce and raised the all too rare but all the more desired rents. The estate sought to increase its returns and the Jewish tenant was indispensable to attaining this increase. The complaint on the part of the domain’s owners that the peasantry was handed over to the Jews could not have been either sincere or tactful, since the property’s owners undertook nothing by way of energetic protection of the serfs against the Jews.

The social situation of the Jews was unquestionably more favorable than that of the serfs tilling the land. For even though they were oppressed through feudal burdens in the form of various taxes, their status or rank within the management and judicial order of the domain was determined by a contractual relation rooted in the forms of finance. Undoubtedly it is also the case that in feudal rural society Jewry oriented itself in terms of the lord of the manor and clung to him. Objective consideration of the surroundings described by us cannot justifiably claim from either a historical or a moral perspective that the owner of large estates presented himself as protector of the peasantry vis-à-vis Jewry. This protection remained on paper only in the form of some stronger turns of speech. One could have protected the serfs against inn–indebtedness by not locating a dispensary of beer and brandy in every village, no matter how poor. Pocketing, on the one hand, the considerable rents and increasing by all possible means the income from the retailing of drinks, while, on the other hand, painting the tenant keeping bar as a bloodsucker: the lessor of the bars is not unburdened thereby of his responsibility. If there is responsibility in this regard, then the domain is here as much at fault as the Jews. Only the master of the estate as subject of the -- from a social perspective asserted to be objectionable -- license to sell intoxicants was a governing body, while the Jews were dispersed individuals, engaged in a hard battle for their existence, isolated as a people, deprived of their rights as a lowly social stratum, who without the domain’s permission could never have sidled up to the peasantry.

Until 1718 the lease contracts with the manorial lessees are for one year; later they are for three years. The public auctions occurred in the second half of the month December with the following conditions: The one offering the most received the lease, but was obligated to purchase his grain from the domain’s master at current prices. The lease costs were paid quarterly. The retailing tenant could grant to a well off serf credit of at most two florins, to a poor one at most credit of one florin. The drinks had to be measured out in correct quantities by means of standardization provided by the domain. Joseph II then later reduced the credit an inn could offer to thirty farthings.

The tax paid by the Jews, the Tolerance introduced 1718 by the same Charles VI who gave the domain of Munkacs–Szentmiklos to the Schönborns as a gift, consisted in the beginning of poll–tax, capital levy and profit tax. Later on, the Tolerance–tax was estimated in the lump for all of Hungary by county; within each county however, it was assessed in relation to the lease monies paid by the Jews. In the year 1735 the estate still objects since the county wants to raise the number and the financial situation of the Jews on the estate. The master is later forced to yield and the royal chamber in Kaschau allows the Tolerance–tax to be collected by a lessee who was likewise a Jew. Then this system of collecting the Tolerance–tax by a lessee is stopped and the governmental Thirtieth Council [? Dreißigstamt] in Munkacs administers the Tolerance–taxation. The Estate Agent Duschek on May 24, 1730, entreats Baron Sztaray, an official of the royal chamber in Kaschau, that the governmental agencies entrusted with the collection of the Tolerance–tax not extort from the manorial Jewish lessees larger sums than those prescribed, lest one would have to fear that the lessees, having grown anxious, would leave the estate. The administration of the estate sharply distinguished the Jews living in the four districts of Bereger county, the so called county Jews, from the manorial Jews.

How the interests of the latter were looked after is shown by the conflict in 1751 between the Inspector Rosshirt and the vice-governor of the county, who supposedly overburdened the lessees of the estate, especially the Jew Schmul from Munkacs who paid the highest lease costs, with Tolerance–tax. Rosshirt objects to the fact that the vice-governor of the county imposes taxes on the Jews not in terms of their wealth but in terms of the lease amounts paid by them. He points out in particular that in the four noble districts of Bereger county the Jews are in many places members of the Co–possessor Board [? No clue] and only enter into smaller leases, which is why they are better off in regard to the Tolerance–taxation than the manorial Jews who signed large leases but have no landed property. Acting resolutely vis-à-vis the vice-governor of the county, the Estate Agent considers it necessary to note that in this disagreement he is in no way guided by interest in the Jews but rather by the estate’s interest. He was afraid that in so far as the lease costs would serve as basis for the imposition of the Tolerance–tax, the Jews would only be willing to take on smaller leases and that such expensive leases as the brandy tavern of Munkacs Rosvigovo, for which 160 florins were asked and 80 florins of Tolerance-tax in addition, would remain without lessees and thus a burden for the master of the estate. According to Rosshirt, Jews pay the tolerance–tax for protection through the king and the greater the property and the number of domestics [tenants? Hausvolk] of a Jew, the more he lays claim to that protection. Within the domain it happens that some Jew pays high lease costs without acquiring anything thereby, while it is more frequently the case in the noble districts of the county that a renting Jew [? Bestandjude], who pays a very small amount of lease money, gathers as co–possessor [? Kompossessor] a considerable fortune by raising cattle.  Rosshirt’s kind disposition proved unavailing. The county assembly sided with the vice-governor of the county against Rosshirt’s suggestion. But this much is certain: the estate sought to protect the Jews living within its confines against over-taxation.

In the area of the taxation of Jews in 18th century Hungary, considerable disorder was the case, as is evident from an edict of the highest Hungarian administrative office, that of the Stadthaltereirat [?]. In some regions the Jews handed their taxes only to the national treasury, elsewhere they utilized only the county treasury, and there were cases where the lord of the manor pocketed their taxes entirely. The national tax went into the so called Contribution Treasury or cassa bellica [war chest?]. The local county administration possessed a cassa domestica and the taxes given to the lord of the manor formed a private income for the nobility. The tolerance–tax belonged properly to the state, the county then demanded a distinct amount for itself and the lord of the manor laid claim to a ninth part to be paid by the Jews. The national government, the territorial administration and the lord of the manor competed with one another in burdening Jewry.

On August 9th, 1710, the royal chamber in Kaschau sent to the domain Munkacs–Szentmiklos an official communication, in which are specified the amounts to be collected from the Jews under the rubric tax. The head tax for every single Jew, whether a native or a foreigner or a German, was one ducat. The profit tax was fixed at 6% of the lease costs; the foreign Jew paid in addition 3% of his income. As property tax counts the determination of these prescriptions according to which a tax was to be collected for each acre, for every horned animal, every sheep and every beehive. Even the salaries paid for spiritual work did not escape the attention of the chamber, since Point 6 specifies that Jewish teachers are also obligated to pay the head tax of one ducat. In the year 1773, Maria Theresia decreed that even those rabbis and teachers must contribute to the hitherto allocated Tolerance–tax who had until then escaped from this type of taxation. The archive of the domain Munkacs possesses an inventory, which shows what the renting Jews [? again] had to pay in Tolerance–tax relative to their livestock. The tax on an ox was 15 farthings, on a horse likewise. At the same time the Jews paid a profit tax in terms of the fields cultivated by them. This is an appearance worth noting, since what emerges from it is that part of the Jewry on the estate is also engaged in agriculture already in the first half of the 18th century. Thus we see that Jewish farmers live in Verecke, Zavadka, Volovec and Svaljava. How productive agriculture is for some Jews, is shown by the tenant in Szentmiklos who in 1746 owned no less than 18 oxen.

On the basis of a royal ordinance in the year 1713, 12% of the lease costs, together 236 florins and 14 farthings, is demanded from 22 manorial Jews as Tolerance–tax. This makes it possible to infer that the lessees contributed more than 2800 florins in this year to the estate’s treasury. Since the net income of the domain in the thirties of the 18th century moved between threefold and fourfold this sum, it is possible to ascertain the amount of the total contribution of the lease monies in relation to the net profit of the estate. Jakobus Zelikovits, who simultaneously held the lease in Munkacs and in Rosvigovo, paid annually 350 florins. The smallest lease was held by Israel Hiasovits in the village Kajdano; he paid annually only six florins. All Jews carry a Slavic family name in addition to their first name as proof of their immigration from the Slavic East.

In the year 1746, 305 Jews are registered in Bereger County. These include fathers, mothers and all children because the head tax, consisting then in two florins, applied as much to the infant as to the head of the family. This inventory mentions in Munkacs as manorial lessee living in the noble Leövey–dale a certain Itzko Lazarovits who pays the head tax not only for his wife and three children but for their Jewish teacher (praeceptor) Zalka and the latter’s servant (servus) named Mailas. In the year 1746 there also lives in Munkacs as manorial lessee the Jakob Zelikovits mentioned above, with his servant (ancilla) Dina and his lodger (inquilinus) Abraham. Further living at the same time in Munkacs are Smujo Herskovits and the kosher butscher (jugulator) Hersko Davidovits, as also the widow Maria Aronika, about whom the register notes that she is pitiable (misera) and has a daughter living with her who is absent from her marriage (a marito derelicta). The city Munkacs thus has in the year 1746 five settled Jewish families, to whom belong 25 persons. There are still not enough men to hold the ritual religious service. Two families provide homes for orphans. The Jews gathered then on feast days in Szentmiklos, which had the largest number of Jewish inhabitants and formed the economic and spiritual center of the Jews on the Estate.

In the year 1751, the tax estimate of the Jews approved by Inspector Rosshirt amounted to 306 florins and 30 farthings, which shows that the total lease amount has increased approximately 33% since 1743. Eight years earlier Jews are to be found only in 26 manorial districts, but now they are already in evidence in 40 districts. The entire tolerance–tax is collected by the manorial lessee from Szentmiklos, Israel Lazarovits, as executor. The latter is, beyond his lease, bound to the estate’s administration by other ties as well, for example by being entrusted with confidences of a most intimate nature. 

For the manorial Jews also provided political services. Retailers of alcoholic drinks were obligated to watch their guests and were responsible for not serving suspicious persons and, if needed, to report them. The manorial lessee from Szentmiklos Israel Lazarovits was sent in 1742 to Poland in order to purchase weapons and war materials for the Theresian army of the War of Succession. When Field–marshal Count Alexander Kàrolyi, who had his estate in neighboring Szatmar County, heard of this, he urged the Prefect of the domain’s master to communicate the information brought back by the Jew, for he wished to know if the Poles did not plan an invasion. In the year 1771, the manorial lessee from Svaljava went on his master’s instruction to Poland, but was arrested on suspicion of espionage by a Russian watch even though he had proper passports. The master of the estate sent thereupon an official letter in Latin to the supreme commander of the Russian border guard in order to obtain the release of the innocent Jew. 

(Continuation follows.)