Behrends of Hannover, the Rothschilds of Frankfurt on the Main - as one of the most highly respected Jewish personalities in Central and Eastern Europe. His ambition to make an impact on the life of his times made him a baroque figure not unlike his noble Christian contemporaries and it put him in frequent conflict with the Christian authorities trying to curb his efforts. In his charitable and religious generosity he is the model of a wealthy Jew also being a pious leader of his community. Reception Saint and hero Berend Lehmann's later image was first determined by eulogies and legends in the Hebrew and Yiddish chronicles of the community. 150 years later, in the Geschichte der israelitischen Gemeinde Halberstadt (History of the Israelitic Community of Halberstadt, 1866) the then rabbi of the city, Auerbach, passed the old stories on with some scepticism but still with great veneration. He was followed in this mood by another orthodox rabbi, Marcus Lehmann of Mainz, who in his Jüd. Volksbibliothek (Jewish People's Library) painted Berend Lehmann's life in episodes (largely invented) as a patriarch and active participant in German and Jewish political life. He stressed Lehmann's support of the Polish Jews in their misery. This 19th-century picture of the Royal Resident as a saint and hero has recently been characterized as "not necessarily having to do with reality but being an identification offer [...] invented at the writing desks of Auerbach and Marcus Lehmann". More realism Twenty years after the two rabbis, Emil Lehmann, a great-great-great-grandson of Berend Lehmann's and a Dresden liberal lawyer and politician, wrote an essay about him, which for the first time used archival evidence. He pointed out the adroitness of his ancestor in the tactics of his fighting, also admiring the foresight with which the Resident had seen to the long-time functioning of his foundations. Though more realistic as a biographer than his predecessors, Emil Lehmann still had the bias of an admiring descendant. At the turn of the 20th century the Dessau rabbi, Max Freudenthal, researched into Lehmann's merits with respect to Hebrew printing. He cleared up the business circumstances of the Talmud edition of 1697 to 1699, especially Lehmann's stressful relationship with the Christian printer, Michael Gottschalk. For the first time he showed Lehmann's tough business acumen. He also described Lehmann's connection with the printer Israel Abraham of Köthen and Jeßnitz with whom he published several