Felix Weltsch

Felix Weltsch

Felix Weltsch (born October 6, 1884 in Prague , Austria-Hungary ; † November 9, 1964 in Jerusalem ), Dr. jur. u. phil., was a Bohemian-Israeli journalist, writer, philosopher and librarian.

Life

Robert Weltsch's cousin graduated from Prague University in law and philosophy with doctorates. He was the closest friend of Max Brod and Franz Kafka and a member of the Prague circle of writers . From 1910 to 1939 he worked as a librarian at Prague University . From 1919 to 1938 he published the Zionist weekly magazine Selbstwehr in Prague . Shortly before the German troops marched into Prague on March 15, 1939, he left the city with Max Brod and his family on the last possible train and fled to Palestine . From 1940 onwards he was in charge of the national library in Jerusalem .

Along with Robert Weltsch, Martin Buber and Hugo Bergman, he was one of the most important Zionists and an important political thinker whose articles on the development of the state of Israel, philosophical discussions and his knowledge of Franz Kafka found their way into dozens of newspapers around the world. In 1952 he received the Ruppin Prize of the city of Haifa for his work Natur, Moral und Politik , published in Israel (German and Hebrew) .

His lifelong companion in beautiful and difficult times was his wife Irma Herz (1892–1969), with whom he had a daughter, Ruth Weltsch-Gorenstein (1920–1991). Irma Herz was the sister of the pianist Alice Herz-Sommer (1903–2014), who until 2014 was the oldest survivor of the Holocaust.

reception

Working with Max Brod, Weltsch became known in Germany and Prague for his work Anschauung und Term . He was a follower of the philosophy of his teacher Christian von Ehrenfels , which set him apart from many of his friends and colleagues in Prague who followed Franz Brentano , which is why they were called Brentanists .

Already before 1914 Weltsch had published some articles in various German-language newspapers, mostly in feature pages, mostly in the Prager Tagblatt . Later his authorship expanded to dozens of newspapers and magazines, and in his weekly Selbstwehr he published hundreds of articles on content from the fields of art, music, politics, Zionism, literature and philosophy over the course of 20 years. Since the 1920s, Weltsch was also responsible for many articles published outside of Czechoslovakia, such as the Wiener Morgenpost or the Jüdische Rundschau in Berlin, which his cousin Robert Weltsch directed during those years.

At the center of his interest were the basic questions of people, belief and ethics . Many publications, essays and lectures deal with problems of Judaism and Zionism . His main ethical work was not completed during his lifetime.

Fonts (selection)

Essays

• Religion and humor in the life and work of Franz Kafka . In: Max Brod: Franz Kafka's faith and teaching . Kurt Desch, Munich 1948, pp. 155-184
  • Separate reprint: Herbig , Munich 1957
  • Separate reprint: Onomato , Düsseldorf 2010 ISBN 978-3-939511-21-2
• The Rise and Fall of Jewish-German Symbiosis. The Case of Franz Kafka . In: Yearbook of the Leo Baeck Institute of Jews from Germany , Vol. 1, 1956 ISSN  0075-8744 pp. 255-276
  • again in Joseph Peter Stern, ed .: The world of Franz Kafka. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Concord (California) 1980 pp. 47-55
  • German: Franz Kafka's historical consciousness, in: Robert Weltsch, Ed .: German Judaism, Rise and Crisis. Design, ideas, works. Fourteen monographs. Publication by the Leo Baeck Institute. Deutsche Verlagsanstalt , Stuttgart 1963 pp. 271–288

Monographs

• together with Max Brod: View and Concept. Basics of a system of concept formation . Wolff Verlag, Vienna 1913 (new edition edited by Claus Zittel, De Gruyter, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-11-053719-2 ).
• Organic Democracy: A Philosophical Study of the Representation System and Parliamentary Suffrage (Der neue Geist; Vol. 3). The New Spirit, Leipzig 1918
• Grace and freedom. Investigations into the problem of the creative will in religion and ethics . Munich 1920 (new edition Onomato, Düsseldorf 2010, ISBN 978-3-939511-95-3 ).
• Nationalism and Judaism . Welt-Verlag, Berlin 1920.
• Zionism as a worldview . Färber, Mährisch-Ostrau 1925 (together with Max Brod).
• Jewish question and Zionism. A disputation . Central Office of the Zionist Organization, London 1929.
• Anti-Semitism as popular hysteria (writings on the discussion of Zionism; Vol. 4). Barissia, Prague 1931.
• Racial Theory and Judaism. Theses of National Humanism (Writings on the Discussion of Zionism; Vol. 13). Barissia, Prague 1934.
• The riddle of laughter . Kittl, Mährisch-Ostrau 1935.
• The risk in the middle. A contribution to the ethics and politics of the time . Mährisch-Ostrau 1936 (new edition Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1965).
• The dialectic of suffering . 1944 (Ha-Di'alektikah shel ha-Sevel).
• Nature, morals and politics . 1950 (Teva, Musar u-Mediniyyut).
• Manfred Voigts (ed.): Sense and suffering (studies on intellectual history; Vol. 26). Philo-Verlag, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-8257-0067-4 .

literature

• Encyclopaedia Judaica . Vol. 16. Thomson Gale, Farmington Hill 2007, ISBN 978-0-02-865928-2 (reprint of the Jerusalem 1972 edition)
• Max Brod: Felix Weltsch. In memory of the friend . In: Bulletin of the Leo Baeck Institute , Vol. 7, 1964 ISSN  0024-0915 pp. 285-294
• William Kluback: Felix Weltsch. Man of Humor, Faith and Knowledge . In: Review of the Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews, Vol. 4, 1991/92
• Carsten Schmidt: Kafka's almost unknown friend. The life and work of Felix Weltsch (1884–1964) (Epistemata Literaturwissenschaft; Vol. 698). Königshausen & Neumann , Würzburg 2010, ISBN 3-8260-4274-3 (also dissertation, University of Potsdam 2008).
• Carsten Schmidt: Two friends of the Kafka shamrock. The original Prague residents Felix Weltsch and Max Brod . In: Peter Becher (ed.): Kafka and Prague. Literary, cultural, social and linguistic historical contexts (intellectual Prague in the 19th and 20th centuries; vol. 3). Böhlau, Cologne 2012, ISBN 978-3-412-20777-9 , pp. 97–110
• Axel Stähler: The country as a task. Felix Weltsch, Max Brod and the "exemplary act" . In: Alexandra Pontzen (ed.): The promised land. Erez Israel from ancient times to the present . Rowohlt, Reinbek 2003, pp. 205-221, ISBN 3-499-55656-1
• Manfred Voigts: Franz Kafka's friend Felix Weltsch . In: Language in the technical age , Vol. 40, 2002 ISSN  0038-8475 pp. 392-410

Web links

• Literature by and about Felix Weltsch in the catalog of the German National Library
• Felix Weltsch page at onomato Verlag in Düsseldorf