Josef Altmann (rabbi)

Josef Altmann (born July 29, 1818 in Mosbach , † November 1, 1874 in Karlsruhe ) was a spiritual member of the Upper Council of the Israelites of Baden and a rabbi of the Israelite Religious Society in Karlsruhe. In the controversy between those willing to reform and the Orthodox that had been simmering since the middle of the 19th century, he assumed a mediating position.

life and work

Josef "Jossel" Altmann ( Hebrew יוסף בן יחיאל הכהן אלטמן), Son of the businessman Michael Jechiel Altmann and the Rifka born. Stern grew up in Mosbach, where his father died in 1829. From 1834 he attended high school in Karlsruhe. In his Torah and Talmud studies he was one of Jakob Ettlinger's students for a time . In 1844 Josef Altmann began studying at the University of Würzburg and in 1849 received a position as a collegiate rabbi, presumably at the Elias Wormser school in Karlsruhe.

In 1846 he married Mina (Minka) geb. Mosbacher. Thirteen children came from this marriage, two of whom died in infancy. The first four were born in Mosbach, all others, beginning with their son Maier, born in 1852, in Karlsruhe.

From 1851 the family lived in Karlsruhe, after Josef Altmann had taken over the position of acting secretary at the upper council of the Israelites. In 1855 he participated in the decision that the reform prayer book drawn up by Moses Präger (Mannheim) in the same year should be withdrawn. In 1858 he succeeded Naphtali Epstein in the office of secretary and also became a member of the religious conference. He became the spokesman for the "law abiding" Orthodox families in the Jewish community and taught rabbinical candidates. When reformers in the Baden parishes demanded the introduction of the organ in synagogue services and further modernization, Altmann tried to avoid the departure of orthodox reform opponents and thus a split in the parish. When the secessionists, under the leadership of Baruch Wormser, prevailed in 1870, the Upper Council condemned with Altmann's voice in a message "To the Israelites of Baden" the resignation as synonymous with a turning away from Judaism. This called Samson Raphael Hirsch on the plan, who reprimanded in a "letter" to the resigned, especially Oberrat Josef Altmann, because he - as the only member of the Oberrat he recognized - supported the decision instead of the validity of the religious law and the im Schulchan Aruch to defend the rules laid down - against the reformers. Even if his successor in the Oberrat, Benjamin Willstätter, belonged to exactly this reform direction, Oberrat Altmann remained in high regard as a mediator and peacekeeper, even among his opponents.

In the autumn of 1874, Josef Altmann fell ill with pleurisy. "His position between the parties, which was associated with much excitement, may well have caused the peace-loving man, barely 56 years old, to die." His grave is in the Orthodox Israelite Cemetery on Kriegsstrasse in Karlsruhe.

The widow Mina Altmann died on March 13, 1888 in Karlsruhe. From the grandchildren of the Altmanns - many of them pillars of the Karlsruhe Israelite Religious Society - 11 people fell victim to the Holocaust . Since 2017, they have been remembered with stumbling blocks .

Works (selection)

• Speech given in the synagogue in Pforzheim on May 9th at the solemn funeral service for the death of Sr. Königl. Highness of the most blessed Grand Duke Leopold of Baden . Karlsruhe, 1852. 15 pp.

literature

• "Altmann, Joseph". In: Brocke, Michael et al .: Biographisches Handbuch der Rabbis. Part 1: Rabbis of the emancipation period in the German, Bohemian and Greater Poland countries 1781-1871 . P. 134.

Web links

• Portrait photo of Oberrat Altmann, around 1865
• Contribution by Wolfgang Strauss about the Altmann family in the memorial book of the Karlsruhe Jews (2006)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Rosenthal, Heimatgesch. P. 376