Popper Bozian, Wolf
POPPER BOZIAN, WOLF
POPPER BOZIAN, WOLF (d. 1625), merchant and banker in Cracow. His father, Israel Gershon ha-Kohen, was from *Checiny; and his wife, Cyrl, was the daughter of Judah Lewek *Landau, one of the heads of the Jewish community in Kazimierz. Popper Bozian engaged in import, especially of cloth from *Cologne, and in financial transactions in a number of fairs which took place in several towns in Poland and Schleswig, from which businesses he became very rich. His will revealed that his financial transactions, which amounted to many thousands of zlotys, were often carried out with use of special promissory notes (*mamram). His success in business was used as an excuse for blaming the Jews for a period of commercial strife in Cracow in the second decade of the 17th century. In a pamphlet entitled Zwierciadło korony polskiej ("The Mirror of the Polish Kingdom," Cracow, 1618), the antisemite Sebastian *Miczyński describes Popper Bozian as a businessman who owned seven stores in Cracow and whose transactions extended to many towns and amounted to more than 300,000 zlotys. In order to incite mob hatred, Miczynski also implicated him in a blood libel. In 1620 Popper Bozian financed the construction of a synagogue (Popper Shul, destroyed by the Nazis) and a bet midrash.
bibliography:
M. Balaban, Historja żydów w Krakowie i na Kazimierzu, 1 (1931), 75, 199, 238, 270–6.
[Arthur Cygielman]