spared the worst by Augustus the Strong; he was only granted back the grace of his patron after sacrificing a precious stone to him. Financial decline and death At the same time, he lost a great amount of capital, which was confiscated when his son-in-law, the Hanover court Jew Isaac Behrends, went bankrupt and Lehmann was accused of having illegally held back securities, jewels and money from the estate for him (the allegation was never verified). The Hannover Justizkanzlei (chancellery of justice) wanted him on trial in Hannover, but the Prussian king, Frederick William I, refused the extradition of his Protected Jew, and a heavy dispute continued for years whether Hannover or Lehmann's Prussian domicile of Halberstadt was the legal venue. Meanwhile, Lehmann tried to bring about a settlement with the Behrens' creditors by partly renouncing his own claims and encouraging the other Jewish creditors to do likewise. He also protested in several letters to King George I, who was also the Hannoverian sovereign, against his relatives' five years' imprisonment and ultimate torture (which did not yield the expected confession of the alleged embezzlemement). There were further losses, so that in 1727 Berend Lehmann's own insolvency was declared. The causes of his failure have not yet been researched. Neither is it clear how he, all the same, succeeded in setting up several foundations. One of them was to hold money to facilitate the marriages of poor orphan boys and girls in the Halberstadt community, another was to secure the livelihood of his yeshiva scholars. It served its purpose for the following two centuries. Early in 1730, the margrave of Bayreuth confronted him with a debt claim of 6,000 talers dating back to 1699. It took him some time to borrow the sum in order to have the "execution" of house arrest lifted. After his death on July 9, 1730, claims of several hundred thousand talers could only partly be satisfied through the auction of most of his real estate. Subsequently, his eldest son, Lehmann Behrend of Dresden, also failed. Lehmann's gravestone, in the oldest Halberstadt Israelitic cemetery, is preserved, and it praises his generosity as a community benefactor and his high reputation in the Christian "palaces" which enabled him to act as a shtadlan (an advocate) of his correligionists. Importance Berend Lehmann ranks among the great court Jews - the Wertheimers and Oppenheimer Vienna, Joseph Süss Oppenheimer of Stuttgart, Leffmann