Guido Kisch

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Guido Kisch (born January 22, 1889 in Prague , Austria-Hungary ; died July 7, 1985 in Basel ) was a German-speaking lawyer and legal historian . He wrote fundamental works on the history of the Jews in the Middle Ages.

Life

family

Guido Kisch came from a Bohemian family of Jewish faith that had produced many doctors, pharmacists and rabbis. One of his ancestors, Abraham Kisch, was the first in Halle for his doctorate Dr. med. Jewish faith from Bohemia . Guido Kisch's father, Alexander Kisch, was last rabbi at the Maisel Synagogue in Prague, his brother, the physician Enoch Heinrich Kisch (1841–1918), was the founder of modern balneology . The younger brother of Guido Kisch was the cardiologist Bruno Kisch (1890–1966), first in Cologne, later like his brother Guido in the USA. A second cousin was the newspaper reporter Egon Erwin Kisch , who was known in the Weimar Republic .

Education and career

Guido Kisch studied law at the German University in Prague , received his doctorate there in 1913 to Dr. jur. and Dr. rer. pole. and completed his habilitation in Leipzig in 1915 under the civil procedure lawyer Adolf Wach with the work The German Arrest Process in its Historical Development . After five years as a private lecturer in Leipzig, he was appointed professor of legal history at the University of Königsberg in 1920 , and in 1922 at the University of Halle , where he was dean of the law faculty from 1925 to 1926. In Halle Kisch worked until his impeachment on the basis of the law for the restoration of the professional civil service in 1933, with the exception of a visiting professorship at the German University of Prague in the years 1924–1925. From 1929 to 1936, Kisch was a permanent contributor to the magazine for the history of Jews in Germany, which was reprinted in 1929. It was banned in 1933 and allowed again in 1935. A complete digital reproduction of the magazine, which also contains all of Kisch's contributions, is listed under web links.

emigration

After his dismissal by the Nazi regime, Kisch was able to find a job at the Jewish theological seminar of the University of Breslau as a professor of history and formalized his second major field of work, Jewish history , with a focus on the legal history of German Jews in the Middle Ages. Since the National Socialists persecuted him and it was impossible for him to get his academic job in Germany, he emigrated to the USA in 1935, where he initially worked for the American Academy for Jewish Research . Guido Kisch was the editor of the English-language magazine Historia Judaica, which was published from 1938 in Czechoslovakia in (Mährisch-Ostrau) today Ostrava by Julius Kittl Successor. Between 1937 and 1958 he worked for the Hebrew Union College , which merged with the Jewish Institute of Religion in 1950 . In 1958 he was retired there.

Remigration

In addition, Kisch worked at the University of Basel in the summers from 1952 , where he settled in 1962. The honorary professorship at the University of Basel (since 1954) enabled him to return to the German-speaking cultural area, to which he still felt that he belonged, while the injustice done to him made a life in Germany impossible for him. In Basel he devoted himself to his third main focus of work, research into humanistic jurisprudence, especially the humanists who were active in Basel, and developed a rich publication activity well into old age, which laid the foundation for Basel's legal history. In his memoirs (p. 172), Kisch assessed his interest in the Basel humanists in 1975 as follows: "These scholars, their activities, their works and their time denote the area of ​​research to which my work has been predominantly for two decades."

In 1971 he was accepted as an honorary member of the Historical Commission for East and West Prussian State Research . In 1972 he received the Jacob Burckhardt Prize from the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Foundation in Basel.

Major works

German legal history

  • The German arrest process in its historical development . Vienna and Leipzig 1914.
  • Leipzig collection of judges' rulings . Leipzig 1919.
  • The Kulmer hand fests . Legal historical and text-critical investigations along with texts. At the same time a contribution to the history of the spread of Magdeburg law . Stuttgart 1931 (2nd edition, Sigmaringen 1978).
  • The fishing law in the Teutonic Order area . Contributions to its history . Stuttgart 1932 (2nd edition, Sigmaringen 1978).
  • Sachsenspiegel and Bible. Researches in the Source History of the Sachsenspiegel and the Influence of the Bible in Mediaeval German Law . Notre Dame, Ind. 1941 (reprint: Notre Dame, Ind. 1960).
  • Research and sources on the legal and social history of the Teutonic Order Land . Sigmaringen 1973.

Jewish history and legal history

  • Prague University and the Jews, 1348–1848. With contributions to the history of medical studies . Moravian-Ostrau 1935 (Amsterdam 1969).
  • The Jews in Medieval Germany. A Study of their Legal an Social Status . Chicago 1949 (German as: Research on the social and legal history of Jews in Germany during the Middle Ages . Stuttgart and Zurich 1955; 2nd edition, Sigmaringen 1978).
  • The Wroclaw Seminar. Jewish theological seminar (Fraenckelscher Foundation) in Breslau 1854–1938 . Tubingen 1963.
  • Erasmus' position on Jews and Judaism. In: Philosophy and History. A collection of lectures and writings from the field of philosophy and history No. 83/84, Tübingen 1969. pp. 5–39.
  • Legal and social history of the Jews in Halle 1686–1730 . Berlin 1970.
  • Baptisms of Jews. A historical-biographical-psychological-sociological study, especially for Berlin and Königsberg . Berlin 1973.
  • Research on the legal and social history of Jews in Germany during the Middle Ages . In: Guido Kisch, Selected Writings, Vol. 1, 1978, 2., Erw. Ed., Sigmaringen 1978
  • Research on the legal, economic and social history of the Jews . In: Guido Kisch, Selected Writings, Vol. 2, 1979, Sigmaringen 1978

Humanistic Jurisprudence

  • Johannes Sichardus as a Basel legal historian . Basel 1952.
  • Humanism and jurisprudence. The fight between mos italicus and mos gallicus at the University of Basel . Basel 1955.
  • Bartolus and Basel . Basel 1960.
  • Erasmus and the jurisprudence of his time. Studies on humanistic legal thought . Basel 1960.
  • Zasius and Reuchlin . A comparative study of the history of law on the tolerance problem in the 16th century . Constance and Stuttgart 1961.
  • The beginnings of the law faculty of the University of Basel 1459–1529 . Basel 1962.
  • Enea Silvio Piccolomini and jurisprudence . Basel and Stuttgart 1967.
  • Melanchthon's law and social theory . Berlin 1967.
  • Figures and problems from humanism and jurisprudence. New studies and texts . Berlin 1969.
  • Claudius Cantiuncula . A Basel lawyer and humanist of the 16th century . Basel 1970.
  • Studies in humanistic jurisprudence . Berlin and New York 1972.

Autobiography

literature

  • Kisch, Guido. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 14: Kest – Kulk. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-598-22694-2 , pp. 54-73.
  • Heiner Lück: The legal historian Guido Kisch (1889–1985) and his contribution to the Sachsenspiegel research . In: Hallesche jurists of Jewish origin . Berlin, Bonn, Munich 1996, pp. 53ff., ISBN 3-452-23486-X .
  • Herbert A. Strauss / Werner Röder (eds.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945 . Vol. 2: The Arts, Sciences, and Literature . Saur, Munich a. a. 1983, pp. 622f.
  • Wilhelm Güde: Life and work of the legal historian Guido Kisch (1889–1985) . In: Basler Juristische Mitteilungen 1, 2010, pp. 1–24.
  • Wilhelm Güde: The legal historian Guido Kisch (1889-1985). Karlsruhe 2010 (= issue 18 of the series of publications by the Legal History Museum, Herrenstrasse 45a 76133 Karlsruhe).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Enoch Heinrich Kisch . In: Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon 1815–1950 , Vol. 3, Vienna 1965, p. 349.
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Schaper and Jutta Schaper: Bruno Kisch, life and work. An attempt ( memento from April 12, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) (memory lecture on the occasion of the 61st annual conference of the German Society for Cardiology, Cardiovascular Research in Mannheim in April 1995).
  3. ↑ See his articles Research in Medieval Legal History of the Jews . In: Proceedings of the AAJR , Vol. 6, 1935, pp. 229ff .; The Jewry Law of the Medieval German Law Books . In: Proceedings of the AAJR , Vol. 7, 1936, pp. 61ff. and The Jewry-law of the Medieval German Law-Books. Part II . In: Proceedings of the AAJR , Vol. 10, 1940, pp. 99ff.
  4. ↑ Guido Kisch: The life path of a legal historian. Memories. Sigmaringen 1975, p. 172.
personal data
SURNAME Kisch, Guido
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American lawyer and legal historian
DATE OF BIRTH January 22, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague
DATE OF DEATH July 7, 1985
Place of death Basel