Hermann Schapira

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Hermann Schapira

Hermann Schapira (Zwi Hermann Schapira; born August 4, 1840 in Erswilken / Lithuania , † May 8, 1898 in Cologne ) was a Russian-Jewish rabbi , mathematician and Zionist . In addition to his academic work at the University of Heidelberg , he stood out as a champion of Zionism and gave the Zionist movement important impulses in its early phase.

Personal and professional career

Hermann Schapira was born in 1840 as the son of Salomon Schapira and Eva Schapira. He had been a rabbi in his hometown Erswilken (today Eržvilkas ), which at that time belonged to the Russian Empire , since 1860 . In 1868 he began studying at the trade academy in Berlin , which he completed in 1871. In the following years he worked as a merchant in what is now the Ukrainian port city of Odessa .

He then returned to Germany and began studying mathematics at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg in the winter semester of 1878/1879 at the age of 38 . On December 17, 1880 he was promoted to Dr. phil. doctorate , on June 6, 1883 the habilitation took place . From 1887 he taught as an associate professor for mathematics at the University of Heidelberg. In 1880 Schapira published an essay on a medieval Hebrew geometric font, otherwise his scientific work was exclusively in the area of ​​the co-functions already mentioned in his habilitation thesis in 1883.

He was married to Clara Blank. In 1898, at the age of 57, he died of lung disease while he was in Cologne for consultations with other Zionist activists.

Zionist activities

Parallel to his academic career, Schapira became involved in the emerging Zionist movement, which aimed to create Jewish territory in Palestine . In 1881 he was a founding member of Chowewe Zion , a Zionist movement that had developed in Eastern Europe. In 1884 he took part in the Katowice Conference at which the Odessa local group was founded by Chowewe Zion and at the same time the individual regional associations of the movement were to be better linked with one another. He also brought Zionism to Heidelberg University. At the beginning of 1884 he initiated the establishment of the “Zion” association in his new hometown, the members of which were primarily other Jews of Russian descent from the city, the majority of whom were students. Together with the Esra association in Berlin, which was founded around the same time, it was the first "national Jewish association" in Germany. Such groups were founded in large numbers in the following period and primarily pursued the goal of promoting a coordinated Jewish colonization of Palestine. The activities and successes of “Zion” in Heidelberg, however, remained within a comparatively limited framework. In addition, Schapira also made a name for himself as a publicist in the Hebrew press.

Originally, Schapira, like many members of Chowewe Zion, was critical of Theodor Herzl's political Zionism . In Palestine he only wanted to re-emerge a cultural center of Zionism; he considered a Jewish state there - in accordance with the ideas of cultural Zionism - to be the wrong approach. Accordingly, he also tried to influence the emerging Zionist movement in Germany and was in close contact with Max I. Bodenheimer , with whom he had some differences of opinion about the objectives of the Zionist movement. Among other things, he successfully campaigned for the organization that was constituted on October 31, 1897 on the 3rd delegates' day of German Zionists to be founded under the official name of the Zionist Association for Germany . According to Schapira, the name of the predecessor organization, the National Jewish Association for Germany , with reference to a desirable Jewish state, "contained the well-known red cloth for almost all German Jews, without bringing any material benefit." Schapira was also elected a member of the “Central Committee” of the Zionist Association, but died the following year.

Also in 1897, Schapira took part in the first Zionist congress that Herzl had convened in Basel. There Schapira submitted two important resolutions: On the one hand, he called for the creation of a Jewish fund for the purchase and maintenance of land in Palestine; he had already made a similar suggestion in 1884 in the founding statutes of the Zion association. On the other hand, he advocated the establishment of a Jewish university. However, his proposals only penetrated after his death at the 5th and 11th Congresses (Basel 1901 and Vienna 1913) and were implemented with the Jewish National Fund (1901) and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1918).

Fonts

  • Representation of the roots of a general equation of the nth degree with the help of cofunctions from power series in an elementary manner of treatment. Leipzig 1883.
  • Theory of Congruences. Berlin 1889.
  • Theory of general co-functions and some of their applications. 3 volumes, Leipzig 1892.

literature

Web links

Commons : Hermann Schapira  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Dagmar Drüll: Heidelberger Gelehrtenlexikon 1803-1932. Springer-Verlag, Berlin et al., ISBN 3-540-15856-1 , p. 233.
  2. ↑ a b c Photography and short biography of Hermann Schapira in the documentation "Jews at the University of Heidelberg" , accessed on November 11, 2018.
  3. ↑ Mischnath ha-mmiddoth = doctrine of measurements. In: Journal of Physics and Mathematics. Volume 25, 1880, pp. 1–56 ( digitized version )
  4. ↑ a b “Correspondence No. 8 of the Zionist Association for Germany ”, quoted from: Henriette Hannah Bodenheimer (arr.): The breakthrough of political Zionism in Cologne 1890–1900. A documentation. Letters, minutes, leaflets, speeches. Bund-Verlag, Cologne 1978, ISBN 3-7663-0162-4 , p. 244.
  5. ^ Jehuda Reinharz (Ed.): Documents on the history of German Zionism 1882-1933 (= series of scientific treatises of the Leo Baeck Institute. Volume 37). JCB Mohr (Paul Siebeck), Tübingen 1981, ISBN 3-16-743272-1 , p. XXII f.
  6. ^ Jehuda Reinharz (Ed.): Documents on the history of German Zionism 1882-1933 (= series of scientific treatises of the Leo Baeck Institute. Volume 37). JCB Mohr (Paul Siebeck), Tübingen 1981, ISBN 3-16-743272-1 , p. 10 f. (with the German version of the association's statutes).
  7. ^ A b Jehuda Reinharz (Ed.): Documents on the history of German Zionism 1882–1933 (= series of scientific papers by the Leo Baeck Institute. Volume 37). JCB Mohr (Paul Siebeck), Tübingen 1981, ISBN 3-16-743272-1 , p. 10.
  8. ^ Henriette Hannah Bodenheimer (arr.): The breakthrough of political Zionism in Cologne 1890–1900. A documentation. Letters, minutes, leaflets, speeches. Bund-Verlag, Cologne 1978, ISBN 3-7663-0162-4 , among others pp. 117–128.
  9. ^ Henriette Hannah Bodenheimer (arr.): The breakthrough of political Zionism in Cologne 1890–1900. A documentation. Letters, minutes, leaflets, speeches. Bund-Verlag, Cologne 1978, ISBN 3-7663-0162-4 , p. 201.
  10. ^ Henriette Hannah Bodenheimer (arr.): The breakthrough of political Zionism in Cologne 1890–1900. A documentation. Letters, minutes, leaflets, speeches. Bund-Verlag, Cologne 1978, ISBN 3-7663-0162-4 , p. 228.
personal data
SURNAME Schapira, Hermann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schapira, Hermann Zwi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Lithuanian-Jewish mathematician and Zionist
DATE OF BIRTH 4th August 1840
PLACE OF BIRTH Erswilken, Lithuania
DATE OF DEATH May 8, 1898
Place of death Cologne