Württemberg hanged Joseph Süß Oppenheimer in a cage in 1738 and auctioned his property months before the verdict

Joseph Süß Oppenheimer was born in Heidelberg in 1698. He became court factor and keeper of the privy purse to Prince Carl Alexander, who became Duke of Württemberg in December 1733. From July 1734 he ran the duchy's mint, and he was made privy councillor of finance. The duke died on the night of 11 to 12 March 1737. That night Oppenheimer and the other Jews of Stuttgart were arrested. His staff were held, his rooms sealed and his assets and papers seized. The charges included debasing the coinage, treason and bribery. On 18 August 1737, months before any verdict, his furniture and valuables in Württemberg were auctioned. A special court tried him without allowing a real defence and sentenced him to death. Clergy tried several times to convert him, and he refused. On 4 February 1738 he was hanged before a large crowd in an iron cage raised onto a gallows. He called out the Shema as he was lifted. His body stayed in the cage for six years until Duke Carl Eugen had it taken down and buried in 1744. An inventory commission administered his estate as a bankruptcy until 1772. The files are in the Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, series A 48/14. His co-accused were not executed. In 1998 Stuttgart named a square after him, and in 2013 the Baden-Württemberg parliament held a commemoration acknowledging the injustice.