Simon Dubnow

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Simon Dubnow
The young Simon Dubnow

Simon Dubnow (full name: Semjon Markowitsch Dubnow ) (born September 10, 1860 in Mstislavl , † December 8, 1941 in Riga ) was a Russian historian and theorist of Judaism . At the beginning of the 20th century he was also a politician .

Life

Simon Dubnow was born in 1860 as the son of a timber merchant in a Belarusian shtetl . In 1880 he went to Saint Petersburg and Odessa without having a residence permit, and later to Vilna , where he wrote for various Jewish newspapers. In 1881 he translated the Folk History of the Jews by Heinrich Graetz into Russian, but the introduction was banned by the censor and had to appear later as a separate publication abroad. In his work he then turned to Hasidism , the great revival movement among the Eastern Jews. Dubnow married Ida Frejdlin (1860–1934) in 1884; they had three children Sofja (1885), Olga (1886) and Jakow (1887). In 1898 he began work on his main work, the world history of the Jewish people , the first part of which he was able to publish in Saint Petersburg in 1914.

The historian was also politically committed to Jewish minority rights right into the last years of his life: after the Kishinev pogrom in 1903, he advocated active self-defense of the Jews; in the Duma elections of 1905 he campaigned for the participation of Jewish parties. In 1906 he founded the Folk Party , which existed until 1918, but remained insignificant overall. He welcomed the February Revolution of 1917 as the long-awaited liberation from discrimination; during the October Revolution he warned his fellow Jewish people not to associate their fate with that of the Bolsheviks . Until 1922 he endured hunger, cold, civil war and red terror in Petrograd and tried to work for the renewal of Jewish life in Russia, but then saw that he would have no future here.

On April 23, 1922, he traveled via Estonia to Kaunas , Lithuania , where he had been promised a professorship at the university, but as a Jew he was not appointed. He moved on to Berlin , leaving his library behind. Although he was already 62 years old, the most fruitful decade of his life followed: from 1925 to 1929 his main work, the ten-volume world history of the Jewish people, appeared . In 1931 the history of Hasidism followed in two volumes. He published all books first in German, shortly afterwards also in Russian, Hebrew, Yiddish and English. In Berlin he formed - alongside Jakow Tejtel , the chairman of the Association of Russian Jews - the center of the Russian- Jewish diaspora . Among his many acquaintances were Chaim Nachman Bialik , who later became the Israeli national poet, and Meir Dizengoff , later the first mayor of Tel Aviv . He discussed the project of a Jewish university for Europe with Einstein. In his contacts he showed no prejudice, met anarchists, Mensheviks and monarchists. Most recently he worked on his autobiography for the years 1880 to 1893. In May 1933 he learned from foreign newspapers that his world history was one of the banned and burned books in Germany.

On August 23, 1933, at the age of 73, he fled to Riga. The Russian edition of his Weltgeschichte and the first two volumes of his memoirs appeared there. In 1940 he was able to complete the third part of his Book of Life covering the years 1922 to 1933 in Riga, which was now occupied by the Soviets. He invested his political commitment to Jewish minority rights in the preparation of the World Jewish Congress . The city was captured by the Wehrmacht on July 1, 1941; on October 23, the Riga Jews were locked in a ghetto . On November 29th, the mass killings began. Simon Dubnow was killed on December 8th in the forest of Rumbula , according to eyewitness reports, the commandant Johann Siebert is said to have personally murdered the 81-year-old old man - he had heard him as a student at lectures in Heidelberg. The diary that Dubnow kept up to the last few days and which was temporarily saved by Latvian friends has not turned up again.

philosophy

The basic idea behind his deliberations was the passionate plea for the Jewish "self-confidence of a nation ". He was referring to a spiritual nationalism that should harmonize with the fulfillment of the general civil duties of the Jews in their respective diaspora states. The core of his demands was always aimed at legal emancipation and autonomy in self-administration, language and education.

Criticism of Jewish historiography

In the historiography of his predecessors, primarily Heinrich Graetz and Leopold Zunz , Dubnow saw the treatment of the intellectual and suffering history of Judaism predominate. He saw a necessary innovation in Jewish historiography in showing the national character, in his opinion, misinterpreted events. Nonetheless, Dubnow, as he asserted in the introduction to his ten-volume historical work, did not pursue any tendentious intentions with regard to the elaboration of national tendencies of the historical content.

Quotes

“The first days of my literary activity coincided with the first wave of pogroms in Russia (1881), the last with the complete destruction of the Jewish center in Poland (1939). Obviously, I am destined to realize the prediction: 'You started in the storm, you should end in the storm' (DF Strauss). "

- last entry in Dubnow's autobiography

“The revolution (sc. October Revolution ) is drowning in the filth of the lowest mass instincts. In 1905 the extreme right trampled on the revolution, and now the extreme left ... But we (Jews) will not forget the involvement of Jewish revolutionaries in the terror of the Bolsheviks . Lenin's comrades-in-arms: the Trotskies , Zinovievs , Uritskis and others put him in the shade. The Smolny is secretly called the ›Jewish Center‹. Later it will be talked about aloud, and judophobia will take root in all layers of Russian society ... You will not forgive. The ground for anti-Semitism is prepared "

- Dubnow, Book of Life. Memories and thoughts. Materials on the history of my time. Vol. 2: 1903-1922, p. 248

Honors

On his seventieth birthday, he received a Festschrift in 1930 . The "Evrejskij naučnyj institut" (Jewish Scientific Institute) in Berlin celebrated this occasion with a festive event in October in cooperation with the Jewish Community of Berlin. Lectures held u. a. Eduard Bernstein , Ismar Elbogen , Alfred Klee , Dir. Joachimson , Elieser Jehuda Finkel, Leon Bramson for ORT , IL Kan (Sojuz Russkich Evreev v Germanii, SRE), Dr. Ravodovič, Dr. Taube, Julius Bruckus for OZE , Mark Wischnitzer , VI Lackij, Jacob Lestschinsky , Z. Rubašev , Ilja Čerikover , Augusta Štejnberg .

In 1995, the then " Simon Dubnow Institute for Jewish History and Culture eV at the University of Leipzig " was named in honor of his life's work after the Russian-Jewish historian. Today's Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture - Simon Dubnow is an interdisciplinary institute for research into Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe from modern times to the present. In a curriculum vitae of the namesake, the institute writes: “As a historian, Dubnow was one of the pioneers of the historiography of Eastern European Jewry. In addition, he developed a historical-theoretical model on the basis of which he related Jewish and general history. "

Fonts

  • The Jewish story. An attempt at the philosophy of history , German 1897; second edition: Kauffmann, Frankfurt am Main 1921.
  • The Latest History of the Jewish People . 3 volumes. Translation by Alexander Eliasberg . Berlin: Jewish publishing house, 1920/1923
  • World History of the Jewish People , Authorized Translation from Russian by Aaron Steinberg , 10 volumes. Jewish publishing house, Berlin 1925–1929.
Oriental period
Volume 1: The oldest history of the Jewish people. From the emergence of the people of Israel to the end of Persian rule in Judea , 1925
Volume 2: The Ancient History of the Jewish People. From the beginning of the Greek rule in Judea to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans , 1925
Volume 3: From the fall of Judea to the collapse of the autonomous centers in the Orient , 1926
European period
Volume 4: The earlier Middle Ages. From the Beginnings of the Western Diaspora to the End of the Crusades , 1926
Volume 5: The late Middle Ages. From the XIII. until the XV. Century , 1927
The Modern Age
Volume 6: First Period. The XVI. and the first half of the XVII. Century , 1927
Volume 7: Second Period. The second half of the XVII. and the XVIII. Century , 1928
The latest story
Volume 8: The Age of First Emancipation (1789–1815), 1928
Volume 9: The Age of First Reaction and Second Emancipation (1815–1881), 1929
Volume 10: The Age of the Second Response (1880–1914). Along with epilogue (1914–1928), 1929
  • History of Hasidism (2 vol.), Translation from the Hebrew Aaron Steinberg . Berlin 1931.
  • My life . Edited by Elias Hurwicz , Jewish Book Association, Berlin 1937. Translated from the Russian by Elias Hurwicz and Bernhard Hirschberg-Schrader.
  • Book of life. Memories and thoughts. Materials on the history of my time . Edited by Verena Dohrn . From Russian (various translators). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen.
  • History of the Jews in Russia and Poland . Translation from the Russian Israel Friedlaender , 3 volumes: The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia 1916–1920.

literature

in order of appearance

  • Ismar Elbogen , Josef Meisl , Mark Wischnitzer (Hrsg.): Festschrift for S. Dubnow's 70th birthday . Jewish publishing house, Berlin 1930.
  • Dubnow, Simon. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 6: Dore – Fein. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-598-22686-1 , pp. 17-25.
  • Anke Hilbrenner: Diaspora nationalism. On the construction of history by Simon Dubnow. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2007.
  • Chapter Simon Dubnow's Berlin Diary. In: Karl Schlögel : The Russian Berlin - Eastern Railway Station of Europe. Pantheon, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-570-55022-9 , pp. 287-307.
  • Viktor E. Kelner: Simon Dubnow. A biography , translated from the Russian by Martin Arndt. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-525-30010-7
  • Jilek, Grit: Nation Without Territory. On the organization of the Jewish diaspora from Simon Dubnow. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2013, ISBN 978-3-8329-7738-2
  • Makss Kaufmans: Churbn Latvia. Ebreju iznīcināšana Latvijā . Shamir, Riga 2014, ISBN 978-9934-8494-0-4 , pp. 213-218 (Latvian).

Web links

Commons : Simon Dubnow  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Note: The residence of Jews in Saint Petersburg and some other regions of the Russian Empire was regulated and was only permitted under certain circumstances, e.g. B. for a degree. Russian constitutional practice, however, was largely shaped by bribery.
  2. ^ Art. Simon Dubnow . In: Grigorijs Smirins: Outstanding Jewish personalities in Latvia . Nacionālais Apgāds, Riga 2003, ISBN 9984-26-114-X , p. 14.
  3. ↑ Viktor E. Kelner: Simon Dubnow , 2010, photo and legend after p. 288.
  4. ^ Schlögel: Das Russian Berlin ..., p. 290.
  5. ↑ Jilek, Grit: Nation without Territory. On the organization of the Jewish diaspora from Simon Dubnow . 1st edition Nomos, Baden-Baden 2013, ISBN 978-3-8329-7738-2 .
  6. ^ Schlögel, Das Russische Berlin ..., p. 287; Construction , New York, January 5, 1945, p. 1, Teachers and Students - How Simon Dubnow Was Murdered .
  7. ↑ quoted from: Schlögel, Das Russische Berlin ..., p. 287.
  8. ↑ the elder, lived 1879–1965, a Rosh yeshiva
  9. ^ Union of Russian Jews in Germany.
  10. ↑ Simon Dubnow - A biographical sketch , accessed on August 16, 2019.
  11. ↑ FAZ of January 24, 2011, p. 7: Pronounced sense of danger
personal data
SURNAME Dubnow, Simon
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dubnov, Simon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian historian and theorist of Judaism
DATE OF BIRTH September 10, 1860
PLACE OF BIRTH Mstislavl
DATE OF DEATH December 8, 1941
Place of death Riga