Abraham Geiger

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Abraham Geiger
Berlin memorial plaque on Rosenthaler Strasse 40 in Berlin-Mitte
Abraham Geiger
Painter: Lesser Ury

Abraham Geiger ( Hebrew אברהם גייגער; born on May 24, 1810 in Frankfurt am Main ; died on October 23, 1874 in Berlin ) was a German rabbi . He was one of the first and most important masterminds of Reform Judaism as well as an important Jewish scholar in the field of the science of Judaism .

Life

Abraham Geiger was born in Frankfurt am Main as the son of Rabbi Michael Lazarus Geiger (1755-1823) and Roeschen Wallau (1768-1856) into an Orthodox family and received a traditional religious upbringing. Even as a child, studies in ancient studies led him to question the orthodox interpretation of Judaism, in which both the Revelation on Mount Sinai and the commentaries written later are traced back to divine origins. At 17 he began work on his first work, a comparison of the legal systems of the Mishnah , the Bible and the Talmud . He also worked out a dictionary for the mixed (rabbinical) Hebrew . In 1823 his father died. Abraham Geiger now also had to take over the religious upbringing of his younger half-brother Salomon.

Financed by friends and against the will of his family, he began his studies in April 1829 at the University of Heidelberg. There he dealt with philological studies, history, the ancient languages, philosophy and archeology. After one semester, he moved to the University of Bonn . Here he socialized with a group of Jewish students who were preparing for later employment as rabbis, including Salomon Munk and Samson Raphael Hirsch , his later opponent. With him he organized a Jewish study society. In this context he gave his first sermon as a rabbi on January 2, 1830. Geiger studied Arabic and the Koran with the orientalist Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Freytag in Bonn . Thanks to his award-winning treatise "What did Mohammed take over from Judaism?", Which was published in book form in 1833, he received a doctorate from the University of Marburg .

However, since at that time Jews in Germany could not work as professors at universities, Geiger took over a position as rabbi in Wiesbaden (1832-1837). He continued his academic activities as the founder and editor of two scientific journals: Scientific Journal for Jüdische Theologie (1835–1839) and Jüdische Zeitschrift für Wissenschaft und Leben (1862–1875).

Due to strong resistance from the Jewish community in Wroclaw , he did not become a deputy rabbi there until 1840 after applying for a rabbi in 1838. In 1843, after the death of Solomon Tiktin , he was given the post of chief rabbi, which led to the departure of the followers of Orthodoxy under Tiktin's son Gedaliah . The tensions in Breslau persisted, however, and when the Jewish Theological Seminary was opened in Breslau in 1854, and Geiger had helped to establish it, he was not employed there because conservative Jewish circles considered his theological position to be too liberal.

Geiger left Breslau in 1863 and was rabbi of the unified congregation in Frankfurt am Main until 1870 . In 1870 he was one of the founders of the University for the Science of Judaism in Berlin, where he taught from 1872 until his death in 1874.

Abraham Geiger pleaded for an adaptation of historically conditioned religious ritual laws (as opposed to universal religious values) to the present, which brought him the contradiction of Jewish orthodoxy. His main work is considered to be the original and translations of the Bible (1857), in which he postulated that the Pharisees and early rabbis of the Mishnah had endeavored to liberalize and democratize Jewish law , in contrast to the aristocratic, conservative Sadducees among them Control the priesthood and the temple at Jerusalem were standing.

Within the reform movement Geiger took a moderate position and tried to mediate between the more radical views of Samuel Holdheim and Kaufmann Kohler and the conservative representatives like Zacharias Frankel and Heinrich Graetz . Geiger advocated the use of German in the Jewish liturgy and found most dietary laws to be inappropriate. In a letter to Leopold Zunz, he described circumcision as a “barbarically bloody act”, but opposed a call by the Frankfurt Reform Association to abolish it and also spoke out against moving Shabbat to Sunday.

He married Emilie, born Oppenheim, on July 1, 1840 in Frankfurt am Main (* December 7, 1809, probably in Bonn; † December 6, 1860 in Breslau). Their son Berthold Geiger (1847–1919) became a lawyer and politician. His son Ludwig Geiger devoted himself in particular to Goethe research.

Honorary grave of Abraham Geiger in the Jewish cemetery Schönhauser Allee

Abraham Geiger died in Berlin in 1874 at the age of 64. His grave is in the row of honor of the Schönhauser Allee Jewish cemetery . By resolution of the Berlin Senate, the last resting place of Abraham Geiger has been dedicated as an honorary grave of the State of Berlin since 2001 . The dedication is provisionally valid for 20 years, but can then be extended.

The Abraham Geiger College at the University of Potsdam is named after him. It awards the Abraham Geiger Prize every two years .

On May 25, 2010 the Historical Commission of the State of Berlin unveiled a plaque commemorating the 200th birthday of Abraham Geiger in the Hackesche Höfe , Rosenthaler Str. 40, where he died.

Works (selection)

  • What did Mohammed take in from Judaism? Dissertation, Bonn 1833. Text archive - Internet Archive
    • Reprint of the 2nd rev. Edition. Kaufmann, Leipzig 1902. Edited and with a foreword by Friedrich Niewöhner . Parerga Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-937262-07-5 .
    • Reprint of Madras 1898. Zohar books, Tel Aviv 1969.
    • Judaism and Islam. Translated by FM Young, 1896. Online Edition (English)
  • Judaism and its history from the destruction of the second temple to the end of the twelfth century. In twelve lectures. In addition to an attachment: Open letter to Professor Dr. Holtzmann. Breslau: Schletter, 1865–1871. Digitized
    • Judaism and its history: in 2 parts (Judaism and its history, English). Lanham [u. a.]: Univ. Press of America, 1985. ISBN 0-8191-4491-6 .
  • Original and translations of the Bible in their dependence on the inner development of Judaism . 1857
  • Legacy writings. Reprint of the 1875–1878 ed., Published in Berlin by L. Gerschel. Volume 1-5. Arno Press, New York 1980, ISBN 0-405-12255-1
  • His writings in the magazine of the German Oriental Society

literature

Web links

Commons : Abraham Geiger  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Abraham Geiger  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Due to the date of manufacture in 1905, this portrait is often incorrectly attributed to his son Ludwig Geiger . But he himself corrected that the painter Lesser Ury had painted the painting from photos of his father Abraham and that he had met him quite well. Chana C. Schütz: No picture like any other - To Lesser Ury's portrait of Abraham Geiger . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 1, 2000, ISSN  0944-5560 , p. 16-19 ( luise-berlin.de ).
  2. ↑ Ludwig Geiger (ed.): Abraham Geiger's life in letters. Gerschel, Berlin 1878, p. 8.
  3. ↑ Abraham Geiger, Max Wiener: Abraham Geiger and liberal Judaism / The challenge of the nineteenth century , Reprint 1962, p. 4
  4. ↑ Ludwig Geiger (ed.): Abraham Geiger's postponed writings. Volume 5, L. Gerschel, Berlin 1878, p. 181.
  5. ↑ Geiger, Berthold August Michael. Hessian biography. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS). Hessian State Office for Historical Cultural Studies (HLGL), accessed on June 17, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Grave of Abraham Geiger. knerger.de. Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 , p. 352.
  7. ↑ Honorary graves of the State of Berlin (as of November 2018). (PDF, 413 kB) Senate Department for the Environment, Transport and Climate Protection, p. 25; accessed on March 24, 2019. For a 20-year time limit, see: Implementing Regulations for Section 12 Paragraph 6 of the Cemetery Act (AV Ehrengrabstätten) (PDF, 24 kB) of August 15, 2007, Paragraph 10; accessed on March 24, 2019.
  8. ^ Abraham Geiger in the memorial plaque database - Berlin-Mitte, District Office Berlin-Mitte
personal data
SURNAME Violinist, Abraham
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German rabbi
DATE OF BIRTH May 24, 1810
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH October 23, 1874
Place of death Berlin