In the 17th and 18th centuries, it was the Court Jews who modernized the state, organized financing and obtained the luxury goods to reflect the prestige of the courts. Court Jew Berend Lehmann of Halberstadt is today considered one of the most important Court Jews of his day.

Berend Lehmann was born in 1661 in the high diocese of Essen. In the mid-1680s, he came to Halberstadt through his marriage to Miriam Alexander. Here he settled in the immediate vicinity of Petershof, the former bishop’s residence, in the house “Little Venice”. From Halberstadt, Lehmann worked as a court factor for the courts of Brandenburg – Prussia, Hanover, Brunswick and Saxony. The most important connection was with August the Strong in Saxony. Berend Lehmann financed his election as Polish king in 1697. However, Lehmann was unable to settle in Saxony for a long time, as this was forbidden there. A general escort by the Elector Friedrich III of Brandenburg, however, made a legally secured existence in Halberstadt possible for him.
Financing and trade were possible with this construction, but Lehmann wanted to be inscribed in the memory of the Jewish world as a promoter of Jewish life. This was impossible in Dresden. In Halberstadt, however, he was able to found the Klaus im Rosenwinkel as a Jewish teaching house and to build the community a magnificent Baroque synagogue. In addition, he financed the first printing of the Babylonian Talmud in the German area in the years 1696 – 1699. Here he was not bound to any place.
In 1730 Berend Lehmann died in Halberstadt. He is buried in the Jewish cemetery “Am Roten Strumpf”.