Court factors were the financiers of the princely houses. They occupied a special position, enjoyed freedom of establishment and were at the top of the Jewish society. In the 17th and 18th centuries, some of them gained enormous importance. The most famous and historically most negatively portrayed court factor (especially by the National Socialists) was Joseph Süß Oppenheimer (“Jud Süß”), born in Heidelberg in 1698, who fell victim to judicial murder in Stuttgart in 1738. As early as 1384, wealthy merchant Jews had enjoyed tax privileges in the Starkenburg Oberamt. Moses Löb Isaak zur Kann (born around 1690 -1761) was the richest resident of Frankfurt’s Judengasse in the 18th century. His family owned the “Stone House” of the alley. He had pushed through the construction of the city palace against the Frankfurt City Council and after the intervention of his father-in-law Samson Wertheimer (court factor at the imperial court in Vienna). Moses Kann’s family had become wealthy by leasing the salt mines of Orb and Soden in the Electorate of Mainz and the tobacco monopoly in Hesse-Darmstadt. He himself was court factor appointed by both courts and at the same time chief rabbi in Darmstadt, as well as Klaus rabbi and head of the Talmud school in Frankfurt. From 1728 to 1739, Moses Kann leased the Seehof manor near Lorsch from the Electorate of Mainz for 2,700 gulden a year. Mainz had drained the former Lorsch Lake at the beginning of the century and relied on the agricultural development of the area. Kann and his subtenants planted special crops such as hops and tobacco, and operated an oil mill, a brewery and a distillery. Fourage, i.e. hay, grain and oats were delivered to the court in Mainz via the Rhine. These beginnings later developed into the Lorsch filial village of Seehof, which would cease to exist already in 1856.