Ephraim Joseph Hirschfeld

Ephraim Joseph Hirschfeld , born Ephraim Joseph Hirschel (* probably 1758 in Karlsruhe ; † January 27, 1820 in Offenbach am Main ), was a German-Jewish mystic of the Enlightenment period and an active Freemason .

Life

Hirschfeld was born the son of the talmudically educated cantor Joseph Hirschel Darmstadt and his wife Rachel Hirschl and was originally called Ephraim Joseph Hirschel. With the support of Johann Georg Schlosser , Goethe's brother-in-law , he attended grammar school in Karlsruhe from 1773 and then the University of Strasbourg to study medicine, but did not graduate. He mastered French, Latin and German and had a broad general education.

Between 1779 and 1781 Hirschfeld (at that time still under the name Hirschel) stayed in Berlin, where he worked as an accountant and court master of David Friedländer through Schlosser and maintained close contacts with Moses Mendelssohn and the Haskala circle . In 1782 he moved to Innsbruck and worked there as an accountant for the Jewish owner of the Tyrolean salt deficit, Gabriel Uffenheimer. Instigated by the founder of the Masonic Order of Knights and Brothers of Light or the Asian Brothers , Baron Hans Heinrich von Ecker and Eckhoffen , which is also open to Jews , he went to Vienna , where his brother Pascal later moved from Maastricht. There both brothers left their previous name Hirschel , called themselves Hirschfeld from now on and worked for the order.

After the Asian brothers were banned in Vienna in 1785, Ecker and Ephraim Joseph Hirschfeld, with the support of the Freemason committed Landgrave Karl von Hessen, moved to Schleswig , where there was also a group of the Asian brothers . In 1790, Hirschfeld got into legal difficulties due to a dispute with Ecker and was placed under house arrest, from which Franz Thomas von Schönfeld (born as Moses Dobruška or Dobruschka ), with whom he had joined the Asian Brothers together , freed him in 1792 by paying 550 thalers .

Hirschfeld followed Schönfeld on his way to Paris - where he was finally guillotined - to Strasbourg, but then went to Frankfurt am Main and Offenbach; he lived there from 1792 until his death. He kept in touch with the Offenbach court of the Frankists , the " Christian Kabbalist " Franz Joseph Molitor and the Freemasons.

Enlightenment, Kabbalah and Freemasonry

Hirschfeld's role as a Jewish Kabbalist and Freemason in the context of the Enlightenment is still awaiting precise investigation. His stay in Berlin with contact to the Haskala , his membership in the Masonic Order of the Asiatic Brothers in Vienna and Schleswig and finally his contacts with the Frankists and the newly emerging Jewish or Jews accepting Masonic lodges may be considered the three determining stages of his intellectual activity Frankfurt and Offenbach apply.

The educational elements of the Enlightenment, which were initially assessed as positive in the first stage - also through the contact with David Friedländer - are gradually turned into an abrupt rejection by Hirschfeld, since in the Haskala and the Enlightenment he generally shows an ignorance of the Bible and a turning away from He believed he recognized faith in God - an indispensable element of a justified existence - as he later made clear: "One preaches a dry morality based on reason, and what we call faith is in their eyes a pipe dream."

The second stage shows him as an active contributor to the content of the Order of the Asiatic Brothers , to whose knowledge and influence the formulations of the Kabbalistic content in the order rituals can be traced back. The openness of the Order towards Judaism, promoted by Hirschfeld, on the one hand, and the opening of the Masonic teaching content of this high-level system to Kabbalistic interpretations are also essential. - There is no deeper insight into the reasons for his dispute with the order master Hans Heinrich von Ecker and Eckhoffen and his exclusion from the order in Schleswig in 1790.

In the last stage in Frankfurt and Offenbach, the focus is on the publication of his cabbalistic textbook Biblical Organon , which he wrote together with his brother Pascal, as a summary of his mystical convictions; it shows Hirschfeld's path from the Haskala to mysticism. Despite his advocacy both in Freemasonry and through his contacts with the Frankists for a religious fusion of Judaism and Christianity through the Kabbalah (probably promoted by his converted friar Thomas von Schönfeld and still to be disclosed), he never converted to Christianity.

Ephraim Joseph Hirschfeld belonged - not unlike the Freemasons adhering to pietism - to a branch that was understood as "apocryphal" in today's Freemasonry, at least not representing the main enlightenment direction, which sought to combine the mystical "yesterday" with the enlightened "tomorrow".

Works

• Ephraim Joseph Hirschfeld, Pascal Hirschfeld: Biblical Organon or real translation of the Bible with the mystical accompaniment and critical comments: Genesis, 1 chapter, verses 1-5. Offenbach: Publishing house at the expense of the author 1796.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Quote from a letter of March 27, 1796 to Landgrave Christian von Hessen-Darmstadt with the request for support for the printing of his book Biblical Organon ; quoted according to Katz (see sources), p. 304.

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• Gershom Scholem : A lost Jewish mystic of the Age of Enlightenment: EJ Hirschfeld . In: Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 7 (1962), pp. 247-279.
• Jacob Katz: Moses Mendelssohn and EJ Hirschfeld . In: Bulletin of the Leo Baeck Institute 28 (1964), pp. 295-311.
• Christoph Schulte : The Jewish Enlightenment. Philosophy, religion, history. Munich: Beck 2002.
• Katharina Koch: Franz Joseph Molitor and the Jewish tradition. Studies on the Kabbalistic Sources of Philosophy of History. With an appendix to unpublished letters from F. von Baader, EJ Hirschfeld, FJ Molitor and FWJ Schelling . Berlin: de Gruyter 2006.
• Klaus S. Dawidowicz: The Kabbalah, an introduction to the world of Jewish mysticism and magic. Vienna: Böhlau 2009, esp. Pp. 134–147.

See also

• Joseph Hirschfeld