Abraham Mapu
Abraham Mapu (born January 10, 1808 in Slobodka, a suburb of Kaunas , Russian Empire ; died October 9, 1867 in Königsberg i. Pr. ) Was a Jewish writer. He is the creator of the modern Hebrew novel .
Life
The son of a poor school teacher, Abraham Mapu grew up in a poor suburb of the Lithuanian city of Kaunas, where he distinguished himself as a brilliant student at an early age. After his first marriage at the age of 17, he studied in the home of his wealthy father-in-law in Kaunas. An edition of the Psalms with a Latin translation that he found in the house of a friend in Kaunas named Elias Ragoler aroused his interest in the Latin language, which at the time was unknown among Orthodox Jews in Eastern Europe. Despite the opposition of Orthodox circles to the learning of languages, he also acquired knowledge of French, German and Russian, studied the Bible, Hebrew grammar and modern literature and became a leading representative of the Haskala among the Jews in the Russian Empire .
Mapu worked as a private tutor and school teacher for decades and found it difficult to provide for the livelihood of his family. After his wife died in 1846, he spent a few years in Vilnius until he returned to Kaunas and married a second time in 1851. The 1850s were successful for him privately and professionally. In 1857 he received a personal congratulation from the Russian Minister for Public Institutions, Norow, which he returned with a thank you poem as an introduction to his novel Chose Chesionot, which has only been preserved as a fragment . After a long-term illness, his second wife died in 1863. Mapu's last years were marked by loneliness and additionally made more difficult by an illness in his fingers, which made writing a pain for him.
His first novel Ahawat Zion (1853), on which he had worked for over 20 years, was a great success. It was published in 16 editions and has been translated into numerous languages. The novelty of Mapu's novels is the connection between Tanach and influences of French romanticism , Alexandre Dumas and Eugène Sue .
In particular, his second novel Ajit Zawua ("the painted vulture", ie hypocrite), in which the emphasis is placed on educational and social reforms, influenced the subsequent Hebrew authors, such as Peretz Smolenskin or Mendele Moicher Sforim . Due to the fanatical opposition of the Orthodox Jews to the Haskala, the Russian censors forbade the appearance of Chose Chesionot , of which only seven chapters remained. His fourth and last novel, Ashmat Shomron , is again set in Biblical times and appeared in about ten editions.
In addition to his novels, Mapu also published some textbooks for studying Hebrew, as well as Der Hausfranzose , a French textbook printed in German with Hebrew letters and published in Vilnius in 1859.
Mapu is considered to be the literary forerunner of Zionism .
Works
- Ahawat Zion ("Zionsliebe"), historical novel (German under the title Thamar )
- Ajit Zawua ("The Hypocrite"), novel
- Chose Chesionot ("The Visionaries"), novel
- Ashmat Shomron ("The Guilt of Samaria"), historical novel
literature
- Encyclopedia Judaica , Vol. 11, pp. 932-936.
- John F. Oppenheimer (Red.) And a .: Lexicon of Judaism. 2nd Edition. Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, Gütersloh u. a. 1971, ISBN 3-570-05964-2 , col. 465.
- Dan Miron : Ahavat Ẓiyon. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 1: A-Cl. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2011, ISBN 978-3-476-02501-2 , pp. 13-17.
Web links
- Israeli postage stamp depicting Abraham Mapu ( memento October 9, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- Biography and Bibliography from the Institute for Translation of Hebrew Literature
- Abraham Mapu . In: Bio-Bibliographical Lexicon of New Hebrew Literature (Hebrew)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Mapu, Abraham |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Jewish writer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 10, 1808 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Kaunas |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 9, 1867 |
| Place of death | Koenigsberg |