Gabriel Riesser (c. 1856) Gabriel Riesser (1806-1863) was a Hamburg lawyer and Vice President of the revolutionary Frankfurt National Assembly. He was also a leading champion of Jewish emancipation in Germany. Rejecting as undignified the traditional practice of petitioning authorities for the redress of grievances, Riesser took the battle for Jewish equality into the public sphere. He became the first Jewish judge in Germany in 1861. Atelier photograph: photographer unknown, Hamburg, c. 1856.