(; ) are spiritual heads of the Jewish communities of a country, province, or district, particularly in Germany and Austria. The office is a result of the legal condition of the Jews in medieval times when the Jewish communities formed a unit for the purposes of taxation. As the community had to pay certain taxes to the government, the latter had to appoint some one who should be responsible to it for their prompt collection, and who consequently had to be invested with a certain authority. The office of Landesrabbiner had no ecclesiastical meaning until the 18th century, when the various governments began to consider it their duty to care for the spiritual welfare of the Jews. Such ecclesiastical authority, owing to the strictly congregational constitution of the communities, never took root among the Jews (see, however, on the chief rabbinate of Moravia after the death of Marcus Benedict, Moses Sofer, Responsa, Oraḥ Ḥayyim, 13). Earliest Data The transfer of the Jews from the status of imperial to that of territorial subjects, provided by the charter of Frederick II of Austria (1244) and recognized by Emperor Charles IV in his Golden bull (1356), as well as their very frequent expulsion from the large cities in the 15th and 16th centuries, scattered the Jews in small communities. These were without protection against the arbitrary action of petty tyrants; and they caused the rulers considerable inconvenience owing to constant litigation concerning encroachments on the rights of Jews living under their protection. Therefore, the Jews of a given territory organized themselves into an association which elected an advocate ("Shtadlan") for the protection of their interests. Such an official was recognized by the government as the legal representative of the Jews, whose duty it was to see that the taxes imposed on the Jews as a body were promptly paid, that the laws against usury were obeyed, and who in turn was given jurisdiction in civil cases. This jurisdiction, which he exercised either personally if a scholar or through his deputy if not one, gave the Landesrabbiner an authority within the community. Inasmuch as the Jews from the sixteenth century lived almost exclusively in small communities and could not maintain a rabbi or a rabbinical court (which consisted of three members in every settlement), several communities in a district combined to do so. To this condition of things may be attributed the real creation