CALMER, MOSES ELIEZER LIEFMANN

CALMER, MOSES ELIEZER LIEFMANN (1711–1784), the earliest French Jewish noble. Calmer, who was born in Aurich (Hanover), was one of the most colorful personalities of 18th-century Jewry in France. After being in the service of the suasso family in The Hague, Calmer settled in Paris. Here he made a fortune in commerce and became offical purveyor to Louis XV. In 1769 he received French citizenship, together with his sons. In 1774 he acquired the barony of Picquigny, through a purveyor of straw, and became a gentilhomme, with such feudal privileges as tax collecting, administering justice, and appointing priests. This inevitably provoked ecclesiastical animosity and eventually the sale of the property was annulled. Calmer was administrator of the "German" Jews in Paris. His son ANTOINE LOUIS ISAAC CALMER (1764–1794) joined the Jacobins at the outbreak of the French Revolution, and was appointed president of the Committee of Public Safety in the Clichy quarter. During the Reign of Terror, he was denounced for the allegedly arbitrary arrest of citizens, perhaps because of his Jewish, "cosmopolitan" origin. In July 1794 he was guillotined by a revolutionary tribunal which condemned him for "collusion with the external enemy." -BIBLIOGRAPHY: L. Kahn, Les Juifs de Paris pendant la Révolution (1898), 267ff.; Ḥ.J.D. Azulai, Ma'gal Tov ha-Shalem, ed. by A. Freimann (1934), 122, 164; Z. Szajkowski, Franco-Judaica (1962), nos. 466, 1199–1244. (Emmanuel Beeri)