Eugene Wednesday

Eugen Wednesday (born December 4, 1876 in Schrimm near Posen ; died November 8, 1942 in London ) was a German orientalist. He is considered to be one of the founders of modern Islamic studies in Germany and an important Jewish scholar. Eugen Wednesday was also active intelligence service in both world wars: the First World War, he led from 1916 to 1918 on behalf of the Foreign Office , the Intelligence Bureau for the East , in World War II he worked in exile in London in by Ernst Jaeckh led East Department of the British Ministry of Information .

Life

Youth and education

Wednesday envisaged establishing a rabbi to be and graduated from the Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin . In 1899 he received his doctorate in Islamic studies under Eduard Sachau . His habilitation took place in 1905. From 1906 until the closure of this institution in 1933, Eugen Wednesday taught at the Veitel Heine Ephraim 's educational institution in Berlin, one of the most important Jewish schools of the time.

Headquarters of the news office for the Orient, Mauerstraße 45/46. Wednesday headed the news office from 1916 to 1918

Head of the intelligence agency for the Orient in the First World War

During the First World War , Wednesday headed the news office for the Orient from 1916 to 1918 as the successor to the founder Baron Oppenheim and Karl Emil Schabinger von Schowingen . After his predecessors had actively propagated the " jihad " among the Muslim peoples in the Middle East , Wednesday, who was appointed head of the office by the Foreign Office, tried to get the news office to work more scientifically, including the newly founded magazine Der Neue Orient should serve. On Wednesdays, personalities such as Friedrich Schrader (social democrat, founder and deputy editor-in-chief of Ottoman Lloyd in Constantinople), Max Rudolf Kaufmann (former employee of Schrader and from 1952 to 1963 head of the Orient department of Inter Nationes ) worked for the news office and the magazine Der Neue Orient in Bonn), and Nahum Goldmann , who later became President of the World Jewish Congress . In the summer of 1918, Eugen Wednesday stayed longer in Zurich as part of his intelligence work for the "news office", where Max Rudolf Kaufmann's father ran a front company for the news office that sold German propaganda to the Middle East and from "neutral" soil sent the Islamic area.

Academic activity in Berlin and Palestine

After a first job at the University of Berlin from 1906 and 1915-16 and a brief appointment at the University of Greifswald in 1917, he was Professor of Semitic Studies at Berlin University from 1919 until his dismissal by the Nazi government in 1935 . During this time he also worked as an important Jewish scholar, including the academic teacher of Rabbi Joseph Ber Soloveitchik , who was known as "The Rav". In 1924 Wednesday stayed in Jerusalem to help establish the chair for Semitic studies at the Hebrew University there.

Opening ceremony of the Hebrew University - 1925, Wednesday 1924 worked there as a consultant for the establishment of a chair in Semitic Studies and advocated Iwrith as the national language of Israel

Wednesday promoted the knowledge of Hebrew in Germany and Palestine and was one of the first German Jews to speak modern Hebrew ( Ivrit ).

Activity in the Third Reich as an Abyssinia expert and involvement in Jewish organizations

At the beginning of 1933 he was for a short time the head of the department for Jewish affairs in the Foreign Office. The fact that Wednesday 1935 regularly retired and later received payments from the Berlin University was due to personal intervention by Benito Mussolini . Wednesday was the leading expert on Abyssinia in Europe and therefore of considerable importance as a scientist in the Italian Abyssinian War . Between 1910 and 1930, Wednesday trained young falashas and was an important member of the Aid Association of German Jews . He was the last chairman of the Society for the Promotion of the Science of Judaism , was managing director of the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith and head of the Berlin office of the Joint Distribution Committee .

Escape to London in 1938, work for the British Ministry of Information, death, fate of relatives in the Shoah

When he was surprised by the “Reichskristallnacht” during a stay in France on behalf of the Joint Distribution Committee , he did not return, but in 1939 emigrated to Great Britain. From March 1941 until his death in November 1942, Wednesday worked as a consultant in the Middle East department of the British Ministry of Information , headed by Ernst Jäckh , who emigrated in 1933 .

Headquarters of the British Department of Information, worked there on Wednesday from 1941 to 1942

His mother was murdered in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp , and the relatives who were unable to get to London with him also died in the Shoah . Eugen Wednesday's eldest daughter Ursula Wednesday (* 1924 in Berlin; married Springer, now Wednesday again; Tp 127194762 ) lives in London, where she was Professor of Human Genetics at the University of London until 1990 . His second daughter Adele (1925-2011; Tp 138392064 ) was a psychotherapist practicing in London and also active and well-known in Germany. The youngest daughter Anita (born 1926; Tp 138392072 ) worked as a linguist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem , where she still lives today.

Publications

A complete list of publications from Wednesday can be found in Walter Gottschalk's commemorative publication on Wednesday's 60th birthday. Important publications:

• Hebrew inscriptions from Palmyra. (Hebrew inscriptions at Palmyra). 1902.
• Ibn Saad: Biography of Mohammed up to the escape. (Biography of Mohammed up to the time of his flight). Published by Eugen Wednesday and Eduard Sachau . 1905 digital .
• The Arabic textbooks of ophthalmology. (The Arabic manuals of ophthalmology). Published by I. Hirschberg, with the co-operation of I Lippert and E. Wednesday. 1905.
• The literary activity of Hamza al-Isbahani. (The literary activity of Hamza al-Isbahani). A contribution to ancient Arabic literary history. 1909.
• Abyssinian children's games. 1910 f.
• On the history of the origins of Islamic prayer and cult. (On the origins of Islamic prayer and cult). 1913.
• Hebrew inscriptions in the Aleppo synagogue . (Hebrew Inscriptions at the Synagogue of Aleppo) by M. Sobernheim and E. Wednesday. 1915.
• Mohammed biography, 1917.
• Hebrew etymology. (Hebrew Etymology). 1923.
• The traditional pronunciation of Ethiopian. (Traditional pronunciation of Ethiopian). 1925.
• From Yemen. Hermann Burchardt 's last expedition to Yemen (From the Yemen: Hermann Burchardt's last expedition to South Arabia). 1926.
• Moses Mendelssohn : Collected Works. Jubilee Edition. Published by I. Elbogen , I. Guttmann and E. Wednesday. 1929-1932.
• The Amharic version of the Soirees de Carthage. (The Amharic Version of the Soirees de Carthage). 1932.
• With Johann Heinrich Mordtmann : Sabaean inscriptions. Friederichs, de Gruyter & Co., Hamburg 1931.
• With Johann Heinrich Mordtmann: Himjar inscriptions in the state museums in Berlin. Hinrichs, Leipzig 1932.
• With Johann Heinrich Mordtmann: Old South Arabic inscriptions. Pontifico Instituto Biblico, Rome in Orientalia , volumes 1–3, 1932 and volume 1, 1933.

Posthumous publications

• Aramaic Documents of the Fifth Century. By GR Driver. Oxford, 1953 (Eugen Wednesday provided decisive preparatory work for this).

literature

• Rainer Voigt :  Wednesday, Eugen. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 17, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-428-00198-2 , p. 591 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Joseph Walk (Ed.), Brief Biographies on the History of the Jews 1918–1945. Edited by the Leo Baeck Institute, Jerusalem, Saur, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 .
• Wednesday, Eugene. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 17: Meid – Phil. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. De Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-22697-7 , pp. 109-113.
• Esriel Hildesheimer , Mordechai Eliav: The Berlin Rabbinical Seminar 1873-1938. Berlin 2008, ISBN 9783938485460 , pp. 194-195.
• Maja Ščrbačić: Eugen Wednesday against the country of Prussia. The dismissal measures in the Berlin oriental studies, 1933–1938, in: Arndt Engelhardt, Lutz Fiedler, Elisabeth Gallas , Natasha Gordinsky, Philipp Graf (eds.), Ein Paradigma der Moderne. Jewish History in Key Terms, Göttingen / Bristol, CT 2016, pp. 39-55. ISBN 978-3525300848
• Susannah Heschel : Jüdischer Islam: Matthes and Seitz, Berlin, ISBN 978-3-95757-341-4 , chapter: "Eugen Wednesday - Jewish liturgy and Islamic prayer" (pp. 73-77)

Web links

Wikisource: Eugen Wednesday  - sources and full texts

• Literature by and about Eugen Wednesday in the catalog of the German National Library
• Peter Heine: Rediscovered commonalities ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), review of the by Martin Kramer ed. Volume "The Jewish Discovery of Islam", In: Orientalistische Literaturzeitung. 2000.
• Manfred Lehmann: Re-writing the Biography of Rav Soloveitchik.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Karl E. Grözinger (ed.): The foundations of the Prussian-Jewish court jeweler family Ephraim and their traces in the present ( Jewish culture, volume 19). 1st edition. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 978-3447057554 . Pp. 32, 55, 57, 79
2. ↑ La Section de Renseignements de l'Etat-Major général de l'Armée suisse au Département politique, Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland , 1919, 7a, Doc. 146, January 30, 1919, pp. 291-293 ( digitized version ).
3. ^ ^{A b} Prof. Eugene Wednesday, Famous German-jewish Orientalist, Dies in London , obituary in the JTA , November 10, 1942
4. ↑ Ursula Wednesday celebrates her 90th with colleagues, past and present ( Memento from April 7, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
5. ↑ Ursula Wednesday: “Adele Wednesday - Orbituary”, The Jewish Chronicle , May 13, 2011.
6. ↑ "Prof. Anita Wednesday. Born in Berlin. Linguistics Professor at the English Department 1971–1993. ” Homepage at the Hebrew University , accessed on August 21, 2018.