From Refugees to Royalty Sample

18 from refugees to royalty
Ludewig I, Grand
Duke of Hesse, from
a portrait by Louis
Ammy Blanc
prevent contagion. From the preamble to his will Gumpel
clearly knew that his illness would soon lead to death, which
is consistent with smallpox. Perhaps his business dealings
brought him into more regular contact with the Christian
population and exposed him to the virus.
Gumpel lies buried in the Jewish cemetery of Dieburg
next to his father Aharon. His tombstone is well preserved
with the top half of the Hebrew inscription clearly legible in
the red sandstone below an elaborate pitcher and basin. Both
Gumpel and his father bore the Hebrew name Jehuda (Judah,
fourth son of Jacob) for use in synagogue, and, in keeping
with Jacob’s description of Judah as a lion in Genesis 49:9,
the male members of the family were given the secular
nickname of Lion – in Aharon’s case the Yiddish versions
Leib or Löb; for his sons and grandsons the German version Löw. Yet the presence
of a pitcher on the tombstones of both Gumpel and his younger brother Ephraim
denotes that they were a Levite family, as it signifies the Levites’ ritual duty of
purifying the hands of the priests (cohanim) before religious services. 7
As provided for in Gumpel’s will, the family passed to the guardianship of his
brother Ephraim in Darmstadt. The family home was sold on 9 June 1806 to the
innkeeper Johann Michael Wältz for the sum of 700 guilders, and Gumpel’s son
Aron Löw Messel moved to Darmstadt soon afterwards. Aron was already active
as a tradesman in his own right, and his business acumen in this period was to lay
the foundations for the Messel family’s future prosperity. As with other notable
families that built up banking empires in the nineteenth century – both Jewish
and non‐Jewish – it was war that enabled Aron to accumulate the initial capital
he needed.
Ludwig X, Landgrave of Hesse‐Darmstadt, had sided with the Holy Roman
Empire against Napoleon in the French Revolutionary Wars that raged across
Europe until 1801. Yet five years later, with Darmstadt under military occupation
by French troops, he signed up as one of the client states in the Confederation of the
Rhine created by Napoleon as a buffer against France’s principal adversaries on
the Continent: Prussia and Austria. By way of reward Ludwig’s newly expanded
territories were confirmed by Napoleon and his title upgraded to Grand Duke
of Hesse, whereupon he enlarged his own name to the grandiose Ludewig I. The
village of Messel was incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Hesse and its male
inhabitants required to perform several years’ military service in order to help
make up the three regiments that Hesse had to contribute to the Napoleonic
forces. While some fought in Spain or Austria, many were forced to take part
in Napoleon’s disastrous invasion of Russia during the winter of 1812. Of the