German-Swedish community leader. He was a merchant born in Schwaan, Mecklenburg (Germany). The year, according to the most authoritative interpretations of old notes and his gravestone in Hebrew, was 1749. He came north to Sweden and its capital city of Stockholm in 1779, moving to Norrköping (the country's fourth largest city) after being given special commercial privileges there in 1782. While helping King Gustav III with supplies for an ongoing war with Russia, he had his unusual royal privileges expanded further. In 1793 (a year after that king was assassinated), he and a partner acquired a large textile factory which he then ran successfully for twenty years. His business connections extended all the way to Hamburg, Germany. With a sizeable endowment he got from a Swedish count, he was able to buy valuable riverfront property in downtown Norrköping. His buildings were torn down in 1917 but the modern apartment building on the site today (2022) has a painting of the old Marcus place in the lobby. From the start he had a leading position in the Jewish Community (official leader from 1798) and built the first synagogue in Norrköping which was in use until 1858. He had been persuaded to make some unsound investments for the sake of acquaintances, so his old age and his final years were lived in meager circumstances, while he was supported intermittently by his many children. Exquisite oil paintings of him and his wife were made in the 1790's by an artist no longer known. His thousands of descendants in the Bonnier, Marcus, Reis, Josephson, Uggla and more prominent families in Sweden, the United States, and other countries consider themselves fortunate to descend from him. Most have adopted Christian identities in later generations after marrying in and into the Swedish State Church (Lutheran). There is considerable literature about him, such as his full page in Sweden's top biographical encyclopaedia Svenskt biografiskt lexikon (1985).