Gabriel Riesser

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Gabriel Riesser (around 1848)

Gabriel Riesser (born April 2, 1806 in Hamburg ; died April 22, 1863 in Hamburg) was a German lawyer , notary , journalist, politician and, as a senior judge, was the first Jewish judge in Germany.

Life

Origin and studies

Gabriel Riesser's grandfathers were both rabbis . His father Eliesser Lazarus ben Katzenellenbogen with the adopted name Riesser (1763-1828) had moved from the Nördlinger Ries to Hamburg to study rabbinical law . He first worked as a secretary at the Jewish court in Altona and later as a businessman in Hamburg. Gabriel's mother was Frommaid Cohen (1767-1847), called Fanny , the daughter of the Altona chief rabbi Raphael Cohen (1723-1803).

Gabriel was the sixth child in the family. After completing school at the Johanneum in Hamburg and at the Katharineum in Lübeck , Riesser studied law from 1824 to 1828, first in Kiel , then in Heidelberg , and received his doctorate in Heidelberg in 1826 . In Kiel, Riesser became closer to fraternities. It did not join, although it is questionable whether one of the anti-Jewish fraternities would have accepted the professing Jew. In Heidelberg Anton Friedrich Justus Thibaut was one of Riesser's teachers. Riesser founded a discussion group with Hamburg friends in Heidelberg, to which Ferdinand Haller , Gustav von Struve and Jakob Venedey belonged. As a doctor jur. Riesser completed his studies summa cum laude .

Struggle for equality

Riesser was an advocate of equal rights for Jews all his life. He had been discriminated against on several occasions because of his belief. In Heidelberg and Jena he was refused appointment as a private lecturer after his studies , in Hamburg he was not admitted as a lawyer in 1829. In his application for approval, he had invoked the equal treatment privilege that had applied in Hamburg during the Napoleonic occupation, and a grandfathering regulation from Article 16 of the Federal Act. His application was rejected on the grounds that he lacked civil rights, which he could not get as a Jew.

In 1831 Riesser published a paper on the position of those who confess the Mosaic Faith in Germany and in 1832 founded the journal Der Jude. Periodical papers for freedom of religion and conscience , in which he fought for the emancipation of Jews in Prussia and all of Germany. The term Jew was considered a dirty word. Riesser had chosen the title on purpose, however ("If an unjust hatred adheres to our name, should we deny it instead of [...] honor it?") For the Baden state parliament of 1833 he worked out a memorandum on the emancipation of Jews out. In 1833 he founded the Comité to improve the civil conditions of the Jews. After attacks against Jews in the coffee house riots in Hamburg in 1835, he took a personal stand. From 1836 he wrote the Jewish letters in Bockenheim near Frankfurt am Main (Berlin 1840–42, 2 booklets). Besides, he lived on his father's inheritance.

Lawyer and Member of Parliament

Riesser (around 1856)

In May 1840, the Hamburg Senate passed an exception, according to which "in future one or two members of the local Israelite community, if they were otherwise qualified, could become notaries". The background to the Senate's change of heart was the death of the Jewish notary Meyer Israel Bresselau , whom the French had appointed as a notary in Hamburg in 1811 and for whose position Riesser applied. One of his advocates is his former fellow student Haller. On September 25, 1840 Riesser was sworn in as a notary .

In a well-known dispute between Heinrich Heine and Salomon Strauss, Riesser took a position against Heine in 1841 and challenged him to a duel, but soon distanced himself from the advance. From 1840 to 1843 he was a member of the management of the Hamburg Temple Association .

In March 1848 Riesser was a member of the Frankfurt pre-parliament . From May 18, 1848 to May 26, 1849 he was a member of the Duchy of Lauenburg in the Frankfurt National Assembly , where he was elected to the Constitutional Committee and twice as Vice President of the Assembly for a shorter period of time. He vigorously opposed anti-Semitic efforts, such as those of the moderate leftist Moritz Mohl and the radical democrat Wilhelm Marr . His commitment was of decisive importance in the adoption of §146 of the Paulskirche constitution : "The enjoyment of civil and civic rights is neither conditioned nor limited by religious denomination". Riesser was a member of the Imperial Deputation that offered Friedrich Wilhelm IV the German Imperial Crown on April 3, 1849 . His “Imperial Speech”, given on March 21, 1849, is considered the high point of his parliamentary work. Deeply disappointed by Friedrich Wilhelm IV's rejection of the crown, Riesser declared his resignation from the National Assembly on May 26, 1849.

Further career

After the basic rights of the German people of the Paulskirche constitution came into force in February 1849 , Riesser was able to become a Hamburg citizen. At the Union Reichstag in Erfurt in 1850, he defended liberalism against the attacks of the Gerlach - Stahl party. He has now also made several trips to England, Italy, Ireland, Canada, Cuba and the USA. He processed the experiences in lectures and essays. In 1857 he resigned from his position as a notary.

From 1859 to 1862 he was a member, at times also chairman, of the Hamburg citizenship , which had become a representative body of the people through the constitutional reform of 1859 from the assembly of house and landowners. He also became a senior judge in 1859, making him the first Jewish judge in Germany.

Riesser's tomb in the Jewish cemetery in Hamburg-Ohlsdorf

Death and honors

Riesser died unmarried of a tumor in 1863. He was buried in the Grindelfriedhof of the Jewish community in Hamburg. When this cemetery was closed during National Socialism , his grave, like the other graves, was moved to the Jewish cemetery in Ohlsdorf .

The Riesserstraße in Hamburg-Hamm is named after Riesser . His portrait, a column relief, in the Hamburg town hall hall was removed in 1933 and restored in 1948. Gabriel Riesser's nephew Jakob Riesser was a member of the Weimar National Assembly and the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic for the DVP , whose sons and thus great-nephews of Gabriel Riesser were the diplomat Hans Eduard Riesser and the pharmacologist Otto Riesser .

Gabriel Riesser and Carlo Schmid, two parliamentarians and lawyers as neighbors

In 2014, in the course of the development of the culture campus in the Frankfurt district of Bockenheim, a new street was named "Gabriel-Riesser-Weg".

Freemasonry

On June 12, 1808 (foundation letter of August 17, 1807), the Masonic lodge L'Aurore naissante ("To the rising dawn") was founded in Frankfurt am Main under the Grand Orient de France with the help of the Mainz lodge Les amis réunis . Riesser was a member there alongside Ludwig Börne , Berthold Auerbach , Isaak Markus Jost and Michael Creizenach .

Works

  • About the position of the confessors of the Mosaic faith in Germany. To the Germans of all confessions . Altona 1831.
  • A word about the future of Germany . Hamburg 1848. ( online at pkgodzik.de ; PDF; 55 kB)
  • About the constitutional strike . Hamburg 1850.
  • Meyer Isler (Ed. On behalf of the Riesserstiftung Committee): Collected writings. 4 volumes. Frankfurt am Main / Leipzig 1867–1868

literature

  • Michael Silberstein : Gabriel Riesser. Wiesbaden 1886.
  • Wolfgang Meyer: From the high school graduate register of the Johanneum 1804-27 , Lütcke & Wulff, Hamburg 1906, pp. 36-42, digitized .
  • Heike Catrin Bala: 'In the name of an oppressed class.' The journalist, lawyer and politician GR In: Sachor. Journal for anti-Semitism research. Book 9: From emancipation to disenfranchisement. German-Jewish ways of life. Klartext, Essen 1999, ISBN 3-88474-789-4 , pp. 12-26.
  • Uwe Barschel : Gabriel Riesser as a member of the Duchy of Lauenburg in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt 1848, 49 . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1987, ISBN 3-529-2687-5 .
  • Arno Herzig : Gabriel Riesser. Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-8319-0311-5 .
  • Fritz Friedländer: The Life of Gabriel Riesser. A contribution to internal history in the nineteenth century . Philo Verlag, Berlin 1926.
  • Meyer Isler: Gabriel Riesser's life along with communications from his letters. With Riesser's portrait . Publisher of the Riesser Foundation, Frankfurt am Main / Leipzig 1867.
  • Jochen Lengemann: The German Parliament (Frankfurt Union Parliament) from 1850. A manual: Members, officials, life data, parliamentary groups. Munich 2000, ISBN 3-437-31128-X , pp. 258f.
  • Karl Wippermann :  Riesser, Gabriel . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 28, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1889, pp. 586-588.
  • Moshe Zimmermann : Hamburg patriotism and German nationalism. The emancipation of the Jews in Hamburg 1830 - 1865. Christians, Hamburg 1970, ISBN 3-7672-0557-2 .
  • Moshe Zimmermann: Jewish emancipation and hatred of Jews since 1848: Gabriel Riesser and Wilhelm Marr in a dispute. In: Moshe Zimmermann: German-Jewish past: hatred of Jews as a challenge . Paderborn u. a. 2005, ISBN 3-506-70120-7 , pp. 81-100. (First published in: Journal of the Association for Hamburg History. Issue 61, 1965)
  • Peter Rawert: Notary and Judge - For Gabriel Riesser's 200th birthday. In: Communications from the Hamburg Judges' Association. 2/2006, pp. 20-22;

Web links

Commons : Gabriel Riesser  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Riesser, Gabriel. Hessian biography. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
  2. ↑ Karin Wiedemann: Gabriel Riesser. Politician, lawyer, notary, judge. 1806-1863. In: Communications from the Hamburg Judges' Association. No. 1/2013 . accessed on May 10, 2016.
  3. ↑ Riesser, Gabriel. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 18: Phil – Samu. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. De Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 2010, ISBN 978-3-598-22698-4 .
  4. ↑ a b c d e Peter Rawert: German or homeless. A portrait of Gabriel Riesser on the 150th anniversary of his death. In: The time . No. 18, April 25, 2013, p. 17.
  5. ↑ Arno Herzig : Gabriel Riesser. Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-8319-0311-5 , p. 32f.
  6. ↑ Digital copies of the magazine volumes at Compact Memory . Internet archive of Jewish periodicals
  7. ↑ Riesser, Gabriel | Jewish Hamburg. Retrieved May 17, 2019 .
  8. ^ Association of German Freemasons: General Manual of Freemasonry. Third edition, completely revised and brought into line with new scientific research. from Lenning's Encyclopedia of Freemasonry. Max Hesses's publishing house, Leipzig 1900.
personal data
SURNAME Riesser, Gabriel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rießer, Gabriel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and politician, MdHB
DATE OF BIRTH April 2, 1806
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH April 22, 1863
Place of death Hamburg