In the 17th and 18th centuries the three fairs at Leipzig were the most important business events of Europe. At Michaelmas, New Year and Easter, huge caravans of covered waggons set off from towns all over Germany and Austro-Hungary for the long journey to the fair. Jewish merchants played a major role in the success of the Leipzig Fair and the preparations for the departure for Leipzig were a major part of the social life of every Jewish community. Substantial numbers of Jewish merchants from Nikolsburg travelled to Leipzig for the fairs every year, on the way joining the far larger contingent from Prague.

As usual, the authorities made sure that Jewish participants in the Leipzig Fairs paid far more than anyone else for the privilege, and careful records were kept of those in attendance. At the beginning of this century, the old attendance records for the years 1675 to 1764 were discovered in the Leipzig archives and in 1928 Max Freudenthal published his catalog of attendeees, "Leipziger Messgäste" (J.Kauffmann Verlag, Frankfurt am Main). This contains the entire record of Jewish participants at the Leipzig Fair broken down according to town of origin. The following is the list he published for Nikolsburg. The style of naming varies; some persons already used a family name (e.g. Michelstädter, Fränkel, Holleschauer), others simply used the traditional combination of personal name father's personal name (e.g. Aron Josef, Jakob Salomon).

Copyright © 2009 Bob Lenk

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