Daniel Itzig

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Daniel Itzig was born in 1723 and died in 1799. His family was mercantile; amongst his ancestors was the famous Rabbi Moses Isserlis of Cracow. He was Court Jew to King Frederick the Great and King Frederick William II of Prussia, and founder of a dynasty which included by descent or marriage many of the most notable figures of the German-Jewish period of emancipation, at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries.

Itzig was appointed Master of the Mint by Frederick the Great, and court Banker by his successor Frederick William II in 1797. Neither of these monarchs was notably philo-semitic and Itzig was one of the very few Jews to receive such marks of privilege. He also became extraordinarily wealthy as a consequence.

Nearly all of the thirteen of his children who lived to adulthood had remarkable and influential lives.

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