Phibes Heilbot

Helga Heilbut, “Die Frühgeschichte de Familie Heilbut”, Maajan Die Quelle 94 (2010): 3492-3495, suggested that the Heilbuts in Hamburg were descended from the Heilbots in Hannover. Phibes Heilbot of Hannover probably is the father of Jakob Heilbut, who was buried in Altona in 1648. First, in the sixteenth century, the family name Heilbot only occurs in Hannover (with a branch in Hildesheim). Second, men called Phoebus or Phibes in German sources were called Feibelman in Yiddish (and Meshullam in Hebrew). Jakob Heilbot (died 1648) was the son of a Feibelman. Thus Jakob was the son of a Philip or Phibes Heilbot. There is unlikely to have been another Phibes Heilbot in Hannover or Hildesheim in the generation before Jakob, because Phibes of Hannover was named after his maternal uncle.

In 1988 Dr. Rotraud Ries wrote a book chapter on Phibes Heilbot. However, my short description of his life will be based on her later book on Jewish life in Lower Saxony in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In 1568 Phibes is mentioned for the first time, when he received a letter of protection (Schutzbrief) according to which he was allowed to marry and enjoyed the same rights as his mother and uncle Phibes, as long as his mother was still alive. Phibes, his wife and children were living with his mother Brunneken in the Altstadt of Hannover. Like his parents, he was a moneylender. However in 1588 the council decided that Jews were not allowed to charge more than 5% interest from their non-Jewish debtors. As a result Phibes could not repay his non-Jewish creditors, who charged a much higher interest rate, and in the beginning of 1598 he was imprisoned. After a year he was released on condition that he either repay his creditors or leave the city. Unable to pay, he left for Prague, where his wife died in 1603. He continued to negotiate his return to Hannover until 1608/09 (Rotraud Ries, Jüdisches Leben in Niedersachsen im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1994), pp. 116-117, 309-311). The last sign of life of Phibes is probably from Northeim. G.J. Vennigerholz, Beschreibung und Geschichte der Stadt Northeim in Hannover und ihrer nächsten Umgebung (1894), mentions a Schutzbrief issued for Philip Heilbach in Northeim. Philip lived in Northeim from 1610 until 1615, when he was forced to leave. Unfortunately, the original document has been lost and it is now impossible to check the exact spelling of the family name. Dr. Ries (1994, p. 134) believes the document refers to Philip Heilboth from nearby Hannover and not to a Jew from the distant village of Heilbach, near the border with Luxemburg, where no Jews are known to have lived at the time.