Ferdinand Falk Eberstadt (14 January 1808 – 9 February 1888) was a businessman and liberal politician in Worms in the Grand Duchy of Hesse, who became the first Jewish mayor in Germany.
In the 1830s and 1840s, Eberstadt became a successful textile merchant and a leader of the Jewish community of Worms. He was a supporter of Reform Judaism and a political liberal. In the 1848 Revolution became one of the leaders of the democratic faction in Worms and subsequently served as mayor of Worms from 1849 to 1852. He briefly held a seat in the Hessian parliament in 1850 and in the Worms district council in 1852, but was repeatedly prosecuted on charges of high treason and finally stripped of office by ministerial decree in 1852.
In 1857, Eberstadt and his family moved to Mannheim in the Grand Duchy of Baden, where he established a new textile company, patronised the arts, and was a member of the managing committee of the German Progress Party. He died on 9 February 1888 in Mannheim, where he and his wife are buried in the Jewish cemetery.
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Life
Eberstadt was born in Worms on 14 January 1808 to a Jewish family, which attested in Worms from the seventeenth century. His parents were Amschel Löb (August Ludwig) Eberstadt (1771–1839) and Esther Gernsheim (1775–1819). He attended the Wormser Secondary School and then entered his father's textile and haberdashery business. He held the Handlungsvollmacht (power of attorney) over the business from 1 March 1828 and, on 1 February 1839, he and his brothers inherited the company following their father's death. At this point the Eberstadts were one of the richest Jewish families in Worms. On 10 January 1837, he married Sara Zelie Seligmann.