Herz, Leopold Edler von
HERZ, LEOPOLD EDLER VON
HERZ, LEOPOLD EDLER VON (1767–1828), Austrian financier and nobleman. His father, Salomon Lefmann (1743–1825), went to Vienna from Hamburg in 1770, married the sister of Nathan von *Arnstein, and was raised to the nobility in 1797 for financial services to the crown. At the same time he was active in Jewish communal affairs. Leopold (Lippold) married Charlotte von Arnstein. Talented, ambitious, and sophisticated, he rapidly distinguished himself in financial affairs. Through his greatest achievement, arranging the subsidy promised by England to Austria after the Battle of Leipzig (1813), he acquired the friendship of Metternich and caused a minor sensation when Wellington and Castlereagh dined at his home immediately on their arrival for the Congress of Vienna (1815). In 1815 Leopold joined Nathan von Arnstein and other notables in signing the petition to Francis I for Jewish rights. However, he and five of his children embraced Christianity in the summer of the *Hep! Hep! riots (1819).
bibliography:
B. Wachstein, Die Inschriften des alten Juden-friedhofes in Wien, 2 (1917), 461; Pribram, Urkunden und Akten zur Geschichte der Juden in Wien (1918), index; S. Baron, Die Judenfrage auf dem Wiener Kongress (1920), 211; Ružička, in: Adler, 11 (1931–34), 17–31; H. Spiel, Fanny von Arnstein (1962), index; H. Schnee, Die Hoffinanz und der moderne Staat, 4 (1963), 25; 5 (1965), 235–6.