Isaac Breuer

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Isaac Breuer (born September 18, 1883 in Pápa , Austria-Hungary ; died July 10, 1946 in Jerusalem , League of Nations mandate for Palestine ) was a German philosopher and an important representative of Orthodox Judaism .

Life

Breuer, a grandson of Samson Raphael Hirsch , grew up in Frankfurt am Main , where his father Salomon Breuer was a rabbi and head of a Talmudic school. He married Jenny Eisenmann in 1916, they had the children Jacob (1916–2008), Mordechai (1918–2007), Ursula (1919–2006), Zippora (1927–) and Pal (1936–).

Breuer attended the secondary school of the Jewish community in Frankfurt and studied law and philosophy at the Universities of Strasbourg and Marburg . He was the founder of the Association of Jewish Academics , BJA, in Strasbourg and propagated what he called agudism for a Jewish state based on the Torah , as an orthodox alternative to secular Zionism. On September 8, 1883, he was admitted to the Frankfurt Regional Court. From 1915 to 1918 he did military service in the German army. He was then active in Palestine in the orthodox Jewish workers party Poalei Agudat Israel (which he co-founded in Katowice in 1912 ) and campaigned for workers' rights. He then worked as a lawyer in Frankfurt until 1936. In the wake of the German persecution of the Jews, he had to emigrate to Palestine, where he worked as a lawyer and represented the Poalei Agudat Jisra'el party in the Peel Commission in 1937 and in the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry in 1946 .

In addition to his legal work, Breuer published writings in which he dealt with Jewish, philosophical, but also political topics, especially Zionism . He saw himself in the footsteps of his grandfather, though shaped by his view of Kantian philosophy.

The law of God revealed through the Torah is the basis of the Jewish religion and nation. Starting from this conviction, Breuer dealt intensively with the criticism of the Bible. In the political arena, Breuer advocated a Jewish state, but he refused Zionism because, in his opinion, it meant secularization and the abandonment of Jewish independence. Until his death he was an important representative of non-Zionist Jewish Orthodoxy.

Shortly before his death, he finished writing his autobiographical work Mein Weg . It was only published posthumously in 1988 by his sons Jacob and Mordechai. It had not been published for a long time because Breuer was very opinionated in his judgment on people.

He was a member of the Kant Society .

Publications (selection)

  • The legal term based on Stammler's social philosophy . Kant studies - supplementary books, 27. Reuther & Reichard, Berlin 1912
  • Jewish problem. Hendel, Halle (Saale) 1918
  • Messiah tracks. RL Hammon, Frankfurt am Main 1918
  • Elisha. J. Kauffmann, Frankfurt am Main 1928
  • The new Kusari. Publishing house of the Rabbiner Hirsch Society, Frankfurt am Main 1934
  • Mordechai Breuer (Ed.): Weltwende . Ahva, Jerusalem 1979. Contains Weltwende (1938) and In memory of German Jewry (1942)
  • My way . Morascha-Verlag, Jerusalem & Zurich 1988
Work editions
  1. Early Religious Philosophy Writings. 2017 ISBN 978-3-643-13391-5
  2. Writings on Zionism and Agudism. 2017 ISBN 978-3-643-13392-2
  3. Early literary texts . 2018 ISBN 978-3-643-13393-9

literature

  • Breuer, Isaac. In: Encyclopaedia Judaica , Volume 4, 1973, pp. 1364 f.
  • Breuer, Isaac. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 4: Brech-Carle. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-598-22684-5 , pp. 27-37.
  • Breuer, Isaac. In: Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Hrsg.): Biographical handbook of German-speaking emigration after 1933, 1: Politics, economy, public life . Saur, Munich 1980, p. 93 f.
  • John F. Oppenheimer (Red.) And a .: Lexicon of Judaism. 2nd Edition. Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, Gütersloh u. a. 1971, ISBN 3-570-05964-2 , col. 117.
  • Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918-1945. Ed. Leo Baeck Institute , Jerusalem. Saur, Munich 1988 ISBN 3-598-10477-4
  • Alan L. Mittleman: Between Kant and Kabbalah: an introduction to Isaac Breuer's philosophy of Judaism. SUNY series in Judaica, State University of New York Press , Albany 1990 ISBN 0-7914-0239-8 limited preview in Google Book search
  • Matthias Morgenstern : From Frankfurt to Jerusalem. Isaac Breuer and the history of the exit dispute in German-Jewish orthodoxy. Mohr Siebeck Verlag , Tübingen 1995 ISBN 3-16-146510-5
  • Matthias Morgenstern: The homecoming of the grandson. Isaac Breuer and his controversial legacy. In: Judaica. Contributions to Understanding Judaism, 3, 1998, pp. 165–179
  • Matthias Morgenstern: Jewish-Orthodox Paths to Biblical Criticism. In: Judaica. Contributions to the understanding of Judaism. Vol. 2000. Issue 3, pp. 178-192 & Issue 4, pp. 234-250
  • Matthias Morgenstern: Between “War and Peace” and “Nothing new in the West”. Two anti-war stories from the Jewish-Orthodox Frankfurt Ostend. In: Klaus Herrmann , Margarete Schlüter , Giuseppe Veltri (Eds.): Jewish Studies Between the Disciplines - Judaic Studies Between the Disciplines. Papers in Honor of Peter Schäfer on the Occasion of His 60th Birthday. Leiden 2003, pp. 405-420
  • Asher D. Biemann: Isaac Breuer: Zionist Against His Will? In: Modern Judaism. Vol. 20, May 2, 2000, pp. 129-146 ( excerpt from Project MUSE ).
  • Christian Kraft: Ashkenaz in Jerusalem: The religious institutions of immigrants from Germany in the Jerusalem district of Rechavia (1933-2004). Transfer and Transformation . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht , Göttingen 2014
  • Denis Maier: Isaac Breuer (1883-1946): Philosophy of Judaism in the face of the crisis of modernity . De Gruyter, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-11-044442-1
  • Martin Kloke: Agudism against Zionism. The work of the religious philosopher Isaac Breuer appears as a German-Israeli joint project . Jewish General , April 13, 2018 ( link )
  • Barbara Dölemeyer : Short biographies of lawyers of Jewish origin in the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court district; in: 125 years: Frankfurt am Main Bar Association, p. 141.

Web links

Wikisource: Isaac Breuer  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ursula Merkin, see en: Ursula Merkin
  2. ↑ Information on the family in Biographisches Handbuch der Deutschsprachigen Emigration , 1980
  3. ↑ Christian Kraft: Ashkenaz in Jerusalem . 2014, p. 208
  4. ↑ Review: Kalonymos , 21, 1, 2018, p. 12f.
personal data
SURNAME Breuer, Isaac
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH September 18, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Pápa , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH July 10, 1946
Place of death Jerusalem