Abraham gold thread

Abraham Goldfaden (* July 12 ^jul. / 24. July 1840 ^greg. In Starokostiantyniv , volhynian governorate ; † 9. January 1908 in New York ; actually Avrum Goldnfoden even Avram gold thread , Abraham ben Hayyim lip gold thread ) was a Yiddish folk poet and Composer and is considered the founder of modern Yiddish theater , for which he worked as an author , actor, director, decorator and director.

Life

In his place of birth, Goldfaden not only received thorough training in Talmud and Hebrew , but also learned Russian and German as well as secular subjects.

In order to escape military service, Goldfaden was sent to a state school at the age of 15, where he came under the influence of his teacher Abraham Bär Gottlober (1810–1899), a Hebrew writer who was also a lover of the Yiddish language.

Graduation from this school in 1857 enabled Goldfaden to attend the rabbinical seminary in Zhitomir until 1866, where rabbis, teachers and Jewish officials were trained for the Russian civil service. Gottlober and other representatives of the Haskala encouraged him there to write Hebrew poetry, which he was able to publish for the first time in Hamelitz in 1862 . After finishing his studies (1866) Goldfaden was a state teacher in Simferopol , then in Odessa .

In 1865 Goldfaden had published a collection of his Hebrew songs, the following year the first collection of his Yiddish songs followed under the title Dos Jüdele . In 1875 he joined a classmate, Isaak Joel Linetzki (1839-1915), who translated Lessing's Nathan the Wise into Yiddish, and together with him he published a humorous magazine in Lemberg called Der alter Jisrolik , which, however, only lasted for a short time. In 1876 Goldfaden published the Bukowinaer Israelitische Volksblatt in Czernowitz - just as unsuccessfully .

Goldfaden then went to Romania, where he met the Broder singers , a group of wandering Jewish singers who, with the help of very simple stage equipment (a table and two candles), performed Yiddish songs in wine cellars and beer gardens. For some of these singers he wrote short prose dialogues as part of a dramatic plot, and so in October 1876 the first performances of Yiddish plays came about. After the great success of these performances in Jassy , which was not least due to the Russo-Ottoman War and the resulting increased tourism in the Romanian capital, Goldfaden hired additional players and extended his tours to Bucharest and Odessa. The success increased and prompted the establishment of additional Yiddish theater groups.

After the war, Goldfaden returned to Russia in 1879 , made acquaintance with the Yiddish writer Mendale Lilienblum and others, and played with great success in Odessa, Charkow , Minsk , Moscow , St. Petersburg and other cities.

On September 14, 1883, the Russian government banned performances in Yiddish out of fear of this new mass medium, but also at the instigation of Orthodox circles. As a result, numerous authors emigrated to the West: Yiddish theaters were founded in Paris , London and New York. Goldfaden then tried his luck in Warsaw with the performance of pieces in German, but found little acceptance and emigrated to America in 1887. In 1887 he stayed in New York, tried his hand at publishing the Jiddische Illustrierte Zeitung , returned to Europe unsuccessfully in 1890, where he was able to build on his old successes and directed performances of his plays in London, Paris, Lviv, Vienna and Bucharest.

In 1903 he returned to the USA and lived in New York for the last five years of his life. For a long time he had suffered from great economic hardship, so that he was dependent on support and, for example, asked the Zionist leadership in Vienna in a circular to the members of the Action Committee (January 10, 1900) to raise funds for him.

Artistic importance

The first pieces of gold thread were satirical . Der Fanatik or di two Kuni Lemels ("The Fanatic or the Two Clumsy") is an adaptation of Molière's satirical comedy Les précieuses ridicules .

In the 1880s, marked by the pogroms of 1881 following the assassination attempt on Tsar Alexander II , his plays became more dramatic. The piece Bar Kochba (1883), which describes the last unsuccessful Jewish uprising against the Romans, is all about the emergence of Zionism .

After Theodor Herzl's death in 1904, Goldfaden wrote his last piece, Ben Ami (“Son of My People”), which premiered a few days before Goldfaden's death. This is in large part an adaptation of the Zionist novel Daniel Deronda by George Eliot , the plot of which is, however, moved to Odessa; the English aristocrat, who admires the Jewish people shaken by pogroms, becomes a Russian baron at Goldfaden.

Although gold thread played no instrument and read music or could write, he knew his plays even with melodies, some of which have remained popular (z. B. the lullaby Rosinke with Mandlen ).

Goldfaden wrote over 60 pieces, not all of which were published and some of which have little literary value. However, they have been cultivated over generations and have become the permanent repertoire of Yiddish theater.

Works

Appearance or date of origin known

Zizim uprachim . 1865. 2nd edition Cracow 1897 (his first volume of Hebrew songs).
Dos Jüdele . 1866, 2nd edition 1891 (collection of 22 Yiddish songs dedicated to his mother)
The Yidene . 1869 (Yiddish song collection).
Old Jisrolik . 1875 (short-lived humorous magazine).
Schmendrick or Die komishe Chaseneh . 1877 (satirical one-act play about ghetto life, the main role Sigmund Mogulescu written on the body).
The fanatic or di two Kuni Lemels . 1880 ("The Fanatic or the Two Clumsy").
Bar Kochba, or the last days of Jerusalem . Melodrama in 4 acts and 14 pictures. Warsaw 1883 (performed successfully around the world)
The tenth commandment . Magic fairy tales in 5 acts, 10 metamorphoses and 28 pictures. New York 1887 (performed successfully around the world).
The capricious Kallemoid or Kapzensohn und Hungermann . Melodrama in 4 acts and 5 pictures. Warsaw 1887 (performed successfully around the world).
Dr. Almossado, or the Jews in Palermo . (Piece in five acts). Warsaw 1888.
Sulamith or daughter of Jerusalem . Melodrama in 4 acts and 15 pictures. Lviv 1889.
King Ahasuerus or Queen Esther . Biblical operetta in 5 acts and 15 pictures. Lemberg 1890 (performed successfully many times around the world).
The funny Chassene . Comedy in 3 acts. Warsaw 1890 (performed successfully around the world).
Moshiach's times . Operetta in 6 acts and 30 pictures. Krakow 1891 (performed successfully around the world. Zionist play: The messianic era will not dawn in Russia or America, but only in Palestine).
Rabbi Joselmann or the G'seres of Alsace . Historical operetta in 5 acts and 23 pictures. First performance in Lemberg in 1894 or 1895.
The Sacrifice of Isaac or The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah . Operetta in 4 acts and 40 pictures. Krakow 1897 (performed successfully around the world).
Ben Ami . ("Son of my people"). After 1904; First performance in New York 1908.

Without year or not determined

Al Naharoth Babel . (“By the rivers of Babylon”, song).
Asoi suggests god azind . (Song).
The catarrh . (formerly one act).
The liar or Taudrus only . (Stage play).
The bob with a single article . (formerly one act).
The Holeschke . (Song).
The Kischufmacherin . (Stage play).
The recruits . (formerly one act).
The Schwebalech . (formerly one act).
The silent Kale . [= Bride] (earlier one-act play).
Rosinkes with almonds . (Lullaby).
Rothschild . (Drama).
Silent, wise . (Song).

expenditure

National poems in Yiddish. Krakow 1898.
Climbed dramatic work. Text access un areinfir S. Bilow and A. Velednizki . Kiev 1940.

literature

Eisenstein: The Father of the Jewish Stage . 1901.
Abraham Aron Roback : Gold thread bukh . Jewish Theater Museum, New York 1926.
N. Ausländer and U. Finkel: Abraham Goldfaden . Minsk 1926.
Salomon Wininger : Great Jewish National Biography . Volume 2. Chernivtsi 1927.
Eugen Tannenbaum: Article Abraham Goldfaden . In: Jewish Lexicon . Vol. II., Berlin 1927.
Abraham Aron Roback: The story of Yiddish literature . Yiddish scientific institute, American branch, New York 1940.
Leksikon fun of the nayer Yidisher literature. 2nd edition, New York 1958 (with bibliography).
Günter Stemberger : History of Jewish Literature . Beck, Munich 1977, ISBN 3-406-06698-4 .
Alyssa P. Quint: Pomul Verde. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 4: Ly-Po. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2013, ISBN 978-3-476-02504-3 , pp. 590–597.
Elvira Grözinger : Modern Yiddish Theater: For the 160th birthday of Abraham Goldfaden. In: VJS-Nachrichten. Information sheet of the Association for Jewish Studies eV , Association for Jewish Studies , Vol. 5, Berlin 2000, pp. 12-17. On-line
S. Bernfeld: Abraham Goldfaden . In: Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums , Issue 9, February 28, 1908, pp. 101-103; Download from Compact Memory .

Web links

Commons : Abraham Goldfaden - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Remarks

↑ Nathan Birnbaum , who happened to be in America, also attended the funeral
↑ there as director of the Jewish Theater 1894/95

personal data
SURNAME	Gold thread, Abraham
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Goldnfoden, Avrum (real name); Gold thread, Avram; ben Chajim Lippe Goldfaden, Abraham
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Yiddish writer
DATE OF BIRTH	July 24, 1840
PLACE OF BIRTH	Starokostjantyniv
DATE OF DEATH	January 9, 1908
Place of death	New York City

[1] Nathan Birnbaum , who happened to be in America, also attended the funeral

[2] there as director of the Jewish Theater 1894/95