Bruno Italian

Bruno Italiener (born February 6, 1881 in Burgdorf near Hanover , † July 17, 1956 in London ) was a German liberal rabbi .

Life

Andreanum, military, university degree, field rabbi

After attending the Jewish Samson School in Wolfenbüttel and the Hildesheim high school Andreanum , Italians studied philosophy and oriental philology from 1899 at the university and at the Jewish-theological seminar in Breslau , where he passed the exam in 1908.

From 1902 to April 1903 he did his military service and then completed his university studies in the summer semester of 1903 with a doctorate to become a Dr. phil in Erlangen. His dissertation is entitled “The Doctrine of God by Thomas Campanella ”. - As early as 1907, the year before his ordination , he was employed as a liberal rabbi for the Darmstadt Jewish community, which he initially looked after until 1914.

Former reform synagogue in Oberstrasse, Hamburg, today NDR

Memorial in front of the so-called temple , where Italians worked as rabbis

Italians served as field rabbi of the 7th Army on the Western Front in France during World War I. In 1914, 1915 and 1916 he presented observations of the war, which were published jointly in 1916 under the title "Von Heimat und Glaube".

Passover Haggadah, patriotism, defensive struggle against hostility towards Jews

In 1918, Italians resumed his work as a liberal rabbi in Darmstadt . In addition to his rabbinical functions, he also made a name for himself as a scholar. In addition to numerous essays on the science of Judaism, he published a facsimile edition of the Passover Haggadah in Darmstadt , which he supplemented with a monograph on the history of the illuminated Haggadot (1927).

Italians saw themselves as a “German-Jewish patriot” and viewed anti-Semitism in the early Weimar Republic with concern. His brochure "Waffen im Abwehrkampf", published several times in 1920, attempted to provide German Jews with arguments against anti-Semitic hostility.

Liberal rabbi in Hamburg, London and Berlin

At the end of 1927 Bruno Italiener followed a call from the Israelite Temple Association to Hamburg . The temple association built a larger synagogue in Harvestehude with up to 1200 seats, which was inaugurated in 1931. Under the Italians and the cantor Kornitzer, community life near the Alster flourished again in the early 1930s.

In 1928, as a teacher at the Helene-Lange-Oberrealschule , Italian formulated a request to the high school authorities in which he demanded Jewish religious instruction. In April 1929, for the school year 1929/1930, Jewish religious instruction was introduced at this school as a subject that Italians attended.

In 1937 the 120th anniversary of the temple was celebrated with a speech by Italians that under Italian leadership the temple congregation had become a living Jewish community, according to reports. In 1937 he became Italian Chief Rabbi and in 1938 Joseph Carlebach renounced the title Chief Rabbi of Hamburg , but instead called himself Chief Rabbi of the Synagogue Association .

But in 1938 the temple was desecrated and closed during the November pogroms. Italian was the last rabbi of the Hamburg temple movement. - In 1939, together with his wife and two daughters, he managed to escape via Brussels to London, where he worked in the East End at St. George's Settlement Synagogue from 1939 to 1941 and as Assistant Minister at the West London Synagogue from 1941 to 1951 of British Jews was active. Joseph Norden was a makeshift successor in Hamburg until he was deported .

In 1951 Italians retired, but remained active as a rabbi and Jewish scholar. He worked on the publication of two festschrifts for his friend and colleague Leo Baeck and from 1954 helped out as a gastrabbi in Berlin .

In 1956 Bruno Italiener died as a result of a domestic accident.

Works (selection)

• The doctrine of God of Thomas Campanella. Dissertation Erlangen, Peine 1904.
• About home and faith. War contemplations. Schlapp, Darmstadt 1916.
• Weapons in defense. 1919 (reprinted several times.)
• The Passover Haggadah in Darmstadt: With a complete bibliography of the Haggadah. Codex orientalis 8 of the Darmstadt State Library from the 8th century. Edited by Bruno Italiener with the participation of Aaron Freimann , August Liebmann Mayer and Adolf Schmid, Verlag Hiersemann, Leipzig 1927.
• One God - One People. Sermon cycle. Held on the High Holidays 5697 (1936) in the Hamburger Tempel, Hamburg 1936.
• (Ed.) Festschrift for the hundred and twenty years of existence of the Israelite Temple in Hamburg 1817 - 1837. Hamburg 1937.
• The rabbi . In: Festschrift for the 80th birthday of Leo Baeck on May 23, 1953, London [1953], pp. 33–42.

Literature (selection)

• Salomon Wininger : Great Jewish National Biography. Volume VII, 102, Chernivtsi 1936.
• Leo Baeck: Address on the inauguration of Rabbi Dr. Bruno Italian. In: Bruno Italiener (Ed.): Festschrift for the 120th anniversary of the Israelite Temple in Hamburg 1817 - 1837. Hamburg 1937.
• Andreas Göller: Bruno Italian and the facsimile of the Passover Haggadah in Darmstadt. In: 450 years of knowledge - collecting - conveying. From the court library to the university and state library Darmstadt 1567–2017, Darmstadt: Justus von Liebig Verlag, 2017, ISBN 978-3-87390-402-6 , pp. 192–195.
• Guido Kisch (Ed.): The Breslau seminar. Jewish-theological seminar (Fraenckelscher Foundation) in Breslau 1854-1938. Tübingen 1963, p. 24.
• Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945. Edited by the Leo Baeck Institute, Jerusalem. Saur, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 , p. 167 (further references given there).
• Ursula Wamser / Wilfried Weinke (eds.): A vanished world: Jewish life on the Grindel. Revised new edition Hamburg 2006, ISBN 3-934920-98-5 , p. 67.
• Biographical handbook of the rabbis. Edited by Michael Brocke and Julius Carlebach s. A., edited by Carsten Wilke, Part 2: The Rabbis in the German Empire 1871-1945. Volume 1, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2009, pp. 301-302 (detailed bibliography).

Web links

• Literature by and about Bruno Italiener in the catalog of the German National Library
• Website on the works of the painter Ernst Vollbehr (1876-1960) . Far left is the portrait of Bruno Italiener, as a field rabbi in German Southwest Africa

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Andreas Brämer: " Italians, Bruno ". In: Institute for the History of German Jews (ed.): Das Jüdische Hamburg - a historical reference work , Göttingen 2006 p. 127.
2. ↑ Wamser / Weinke 2006 p. 67
3. ^ Andreas Brämer: Judaism and religious reform. The Hamburg Israelitische Tempel 1817-1938. Dölling and Galitz Verlag, Hamburg 2000 ISBN 3-933374-78-2 , p. 89.