firstly, this happened because of the oppression of jews. they're consigned to cramped, unhygienic ghettos, forbidden from owning land, and were often forced into such positions because of christian necessity rather than any kind of desire to work in finance. second, the negative stereotype of the greedy banker jew, the shylock, is what most people think of when we talk about "moneylenders," but these were often small craftsmen or traders who ran operations on credit or offered semi-legal loans on the side. third, some money lending jobs were brutal and hazardous. as a jew, people could easily take you to court and win on flimsy grounds. many of these jobs involved carrying huge sacks or carts of coins or merchandise around all day. this made you a target for robbers and was also really just a physically strenuous job. if you were dealing in cheaply made coinage, your fingers would blacken from handling those coins regularly. you could get weird metal poisonings, which was also simply a fact of life in many professions in the past. the stereotype we are aware of today is of the wealthy and greedy banker jew, sitting on a pile of gold like a dragon, but the reality is that this was very rough and unpleasant work that did not necessarily or usually make people rich.
Germany