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Prussian Edict: All Fraudulence Committed by Jews in Financial Transactions Must Be Stopped (April 8, 1726)
This is another edict by the Prussian monarch Frederick William I (“the Soldier King”), who issued a flood of decrees in an attempt to discipline and order his realm and its inhabitants. This edict forbids Jewish money-changers from paying their customers in any medium other than cash, i.e., in bills of exchange or promissory notes, on penalty of forfeiting their claims and being “chased out of the country with strokes of the cane.” Title page of edict, Berlin, April 8, 1726.