Jakow Alexandrovich Brafman

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Книга Кагала ( Kniga Kagala, "The Book of Kahal"). Russian first edition from 1869
The book of the Kahal. German translation, second volume (1928)

Yakov Alexandrovich Brafman ( Russian Яков Александрович Брафман , even Jacob Aleksandrovich Brafman or Jakov Brafman , * 1824 in Kletsk , Minsk province , today Belarus ; † 16 . Jul / 28. December  1879 greg. In Saint Petersburg ) was a Russian journalist . After converting from Judaism to Christianity, he published influential anti-Semitic writings.

Life

Brafman was born the son of a rabbi in a Stetl in the Imperial Russian Paleon of Settlement . He was orphaned early, grew up in poor circumstances and was raised by distant relatives. Because they could not buy him free, the community leaders of the Stetl put him on the list of cantonists : The still minor was to be drafted into the Imperial Russian Army . To avoid conscription, he fled to Minsk , where he unsuccessfully tried to establish himself as a photographer.

He converted to Orthodox Christianity in 1858 , but possibly earlier to Lutheran Christianity. During a state visit by Tsar Alexander II to Minsk in 1858, Brafman submitted a memorandum to him on the question of how Jews in Russia should best be proselytized and educated to be "useful" subjects. The division into "useful" and "useless" Jews was first made by Tsar Nicholas I and was continued by his successors in a slightly modified form. Jews with a certain income and with academic and agricultural professions were considered “useful”. The “useless” Jews were subject to numerous residence restrictions and were not allowed to settle in cities. Brafman's memorandum was sent to the Holy Synod in Petersburg, and as a result, in 1860, Brafman was appointed professor of Hebrew at the Greek Orthodox Seminary in Minsk.

In 1866 Brafman moved to Vilnius , where in a series of articles he described the Kahalim , the Jewish community organizations, as supposedly the most important obstacle to the acculturation of Russian Jews. He was then awarded a scholarship to study the Jewish community books, which were translated into Russian by the students of the Vilna Rabbinical Seminary. The result of this work was Brafman's work Книга Кагала ( Kniga Kagala, "The Book of Kahal"), which appeared in 1869. In 1870 Brafman became a member of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society . In the same year he moved to Saint Petersburg. As before in Vilnius, he worked as a censor for Hebrew and Yiddish publications. He was friends with the Slavophile writer Aksakov . In 1879 he died of pneumonia in Saint Petersburg.

Create

In the 1860s, Brafman became an ardent advocate of anti-Semitism . From 1867 on he published in the "Wilnaer Kurier" (Wilenskij westnik) a series of articles about the alleged way of life and the alleged customs of Jewish communities , which in 1869 as Книга Кагала ( Kniga Kagala, German: "The Book of Kahal") and local and worldwide Jewish brotherhoods were published. In 1879 both publications appeared as a two-volume complete edition. They contain numerous anti-Jewish conspiracy theories . His work is an inaccurate and sometimes incorrect translation of the community books of the Minsk Jewish community from the years 1794 to 1833, which Brafman commented tendentiously. According to this, the Kahalim would continue to exist even after their dissolution under the government of Tsar Nicholas I in 1844: They would not only oppress the individual Jew, but also enable the Jews as a whole to exploit their non-Jewish environment. The Kahal would form a state within a state .

Using principles from the Talmud, the Jews would exclude adherents of other religions from trade and industry and would themselves accumulate all capital and property. Brafman described the "Jewish brotherhoods" as "the main arteries of Jewish society [...] They connect all Jews who are scattered in the world into a powerful and invincible group." The kahals of the whole world would be controlled from a "world kahal", that has its seat in France: This is the Alliance Israélite Universelle , which Brafman in turn traced back to the Grand Sanhédrin , an assembly of Jewish notables that Napoleon Bonaparte had called in 1807. In doing so, Brafman constructed a link between the two enemies of the Russian people whom he feared, namely France and the Jews.

With this conspiracy theory, Brafman tried to explain the pronounced religiosity of the Jews in the Russian Empire, their segregated way of life and their alleged exploitation of Christians, as well as the role they played in the formation of capitalism and in all other areas of social modernization processes .

reception

Brafman's books were made available to all Russian government agencies; they provided the key concept for the so-called Jewish question in Russia: government commissions operated just as naturally with the term kahal as did the conservative and liberal press. Brafmans presentation served as a justification for anti-Jewish regulations after 1881 ( May Laws ). Brafman was called the "new peppercorn " by his opponents .

The idea that there was an internationally operating Jewish conspiracy , which Brafman drafted in Kniga Kagala , subsequently spread in the global anti-Semitic discourse and was used above all in the protocols of the Elders of Zion . This anonymously written fictional script, created around 1900, purports to provide evidence of a Jewish world conspiracy . There is talk of an “exemplary Kahal scouting service ” with which the Jews would secure their future world domination . Brafman's book is considered the intellectual forerunner of the protocols.

Brafman's book vom Kahal saw numerous editions in different languages. In 1925 a French translation by the anti-Semitic clergyman Ernest Jouin appeared under the title Les Sources de l'impérialisme juif. A German edition was published by Siegfried Passarge in 1928 by Hammer-Verlag .

In Umberto Eco's novel Der Friedhof in Prag (2010), Brafman (in the German Romanization Jakob Brafmann ) is presented in detail as a “gentleman of monastic appearance, a large, gray beard and thick, bushy eyebrows that ended in a kind of Mephistophelian curl” unfolded his Kahal conspiracy theory. The first-person narrator Simonini is amazed at his voracity and that he doesn't look Jewish at all: “As you can see, converting one's faith also changes facial features, not just those of character”.

Translations (selection)

  • Jacob Brafmann: The Book of the Kahal. Due to a new Germanization of the Russian original edited by Dr. Siegfried Passarge. 2 volumes. Hammer-Verlag , Leipzig 1928 ( digitized in the Freimann collection of the university library of the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main).
  • Żydzi i Kahały: dzieło wydane w języku rossyjskim w Wilnie w roku 1870. Translation into Polish by Kalikst Wolski. Lwów: J. Dobrzański & K. Groman, 1874 [The Jews and their community assemblies].

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Anke Hilbrenner: Brafman, Jakov. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus . Vol. 2: People . De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-44159-2 , pp. 97 f. (accessed via De Gruyter Online)
  2. ^ Encyclopedia Judaica , Vol. 14, p. 483.
  3. ^ John Doyle Klier: Imperial Russia's Jewish Question, 1855-1881
  4. ^ The History of Anti-Semitism, Volume 4: Suicidal Europe, 1870-1933 .
  5. ^ Yvonne Kleinmann: Jewish elites, Polish traditions, western models and Russian rule. Culminations in the years 1804, 1844, 1869 and 1881. In: Karsten Holste, Dietlind Hüchtker and Michael G. Müller (eds.): Rising and staying on top in European societies of the 19th century. Actors - arenas - negotiation processes. Akademie Verlag, Berlin, p. 193; Anke Hilbrenner: Kniga kagala (Jakov Brafman, 1869) . In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Vol. 6: Writings and periodicals. De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-11-025872-1 , p. 408 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  6. ↑ Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern: The enemy of humanity. The Protocols paradigm in nineteenth century Russian mentality. In: Esther Webman (Ed.): The Global Impact of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. A Century-Old Myth. Routledge, London / New York 2012, p. 60.
  7. ↑ Anke Hilbrenner: Brafman, Jakov. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Vol. 2: People. De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-44159-2 , p. 97 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  8. ↑ Jeffrey L. Sammons (ed.): The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The basis of modern anti-Semitism. Forgery. Text and comment. 6th edition. Wallstein, Göttingen 2011, p. 92.
  9. ↑ Leonid Luks : Two faces of totalitarianism. Bolshevism and National Socialism in comparison. Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2007, p. 33.
  10. ↑ Anke Hilbrenner: Kniga kagala (Jakov Brafman, 1869) . In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Vol. 6: Writings and periodicals. De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-11-025872-1 , p. 409 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  11. ↑ Digitized in the Freimann Collection of the University Library of the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main.
  12. ^ Umberto Eco: The cemetery in Prague. German by Burkhart Kroeber . Hanser, Munich 2011, p. 231.
personal data
SURNAME Brafman, Jakow Alexandrovich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Brafman, Jacob Aleksandrovich; Brafman, Jakov; Бра́фман, Я́ков Алекса́ндрович (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian journalist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH 1824
PLACE OF BIRTH Klezk, Minsk Governorate , now Belarus
DATE OF DEATH December 28, 1879
Place of death St. Petersburg