Julius Landsberger (rabbi, 1819)

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Julius Landsberger (born on August 10, 1819 in Zülz , Neustadt OS district , Upper Silesia ; died on March 3, 1890 in Darmstadt ) was a Jewish scholar, orientalist and rabbi .

Life

Julius Landsberger was the son of the merchant Wolfgang Landsberger in Głogówek (Oberglogau). He studied the Talmud in Prostějov (Proßnitz) and Lipník (Leipnik). In 1837 he was ordained by Gerson Zippert Asche in Prenzlau . This was later certified by a Morenu certificate from the Berlin rabbi Öttinger. In the same year he came to the Friedrichsgymnasium in Breslau . He enrolled in Breslau in 1842 as a guest student. He studied at Fraenckel's Bet-Midrash ( Yeshiva ) with Abraham Geiger . In 1844 he passed his Abitur externally and then enrolled regularly at the University of Breslau . In 1845 he enrolled at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin , received his doctorate in Halle in 1845 and then returned to Breslau.

In 1849 Landsberger went to Brieg as a rabbi and religion teacher , where he also supervised the Jewish school and taught at the municipal grammar school.

In August 1854 he accepted the call to be a rabbi for the Jewish Brethren in Posen . There he gave religious instruction at the royal secondary school and at the religious school, which he reorganized.

Landsberger worked from 1859 to 1889 as the Grand Ducal State Rabbi of the Starkenburg Province in Darmstadt . He was considered a charismatic Torah scholar and preacher and shaped an era in Darmstadt that lasted almost 30 years. A high point of his work was the inauguration of the Liberal Synagogue Darmstadt in Fuchs- / Friedrichstrasse on February 23, 1876 in the presence of the assembled Grand Ducal VIPs. The imposing church, over 20 meters high, towered over the roofs of Darmstadt and was considered "an ornament of our city". During the Darmstadt November pogrom from November 9th to 10th, 1938, the sacred building was desecrated, looted, set on fire and blown up by the SA in civilian clothes. 65 years later, the “apparently miraculous return of a Jewish house of God” occurred: At the beginning of October 2003, the remains of Landsberger's destroyed synagogue were discovered during excavation work on the construction of the New Clinic for Internal Medicine. The then Lord Mayor Peter Benz imposed a construction freeze, convened a round table and pushed through the creation of a city memorial. Since November 9, 2009 there has been a place of remembrance inside the new hospital for internal medicine, Liberale Synagoge Darmstadt. It is therefore the only hospital in Germany that houses such a scene of a Nazi crime. In December 1889, Landsberger resigned from office due to illness.

On August 3, 1852, Landsberger married Pauline Löwe, daughter of Rabbi Simon Löwe in Ratibor. The marriage resulted in two sons, including Richard Landsberger (1864 – after 1936), the founder of biological dentistry, and a daughter.

Landsberger was a member of the German Oriental Society . When Zouaves were prisoners of war in Darmstadt in 1870/71, he held services with them in Arabic and read them from the Koran .

Works (selection)

  • Fabulae aliquot Aramaeae / interpretando correctae adnotationibusque instructae a JL Berlin 1846. (Text in Latin and Aramaic).
  • The Fables of Sophos. Poznan 1859.
  • Love, Dream and the Devil: 3 lectures from the fields of mythology, psychology and demonology. Jonghaus, Darmstadt 1869.
  • To the defense (1871); The book of Job and Goethe's Faust. The. 1882.

Furthermore, the translation of Iggeret baale Chajim by Kalonymos ben Kalonymos (das. 1882), an Arabic fairy tale containing a legal dispute between humans and animals before the court of the King of Genii, is provided with scientific and text-critical notes .

Honors

On the initiative of the Friends of the Liberal Synagogue Darmstadt eV, Mayor Jochen Partsch inaugurated Julius-Landsberger-Platz on November 9, 2011 on the Darmstadt hospital grounds not far from the Liberal Synagogue memorial site. The chairman and founder of the Friends' Association Martin Frenzel, who initiated the idea, said in his address that they wanted to honor a “light figure of liberal Reform Jewry” in this way. Also on the initiative of the Friends of the Liberal Synagogue Darmstadt eV, two memorial plaques in honor of the first rabbi of the Liberal Synagogue were unveiled on November 8, 2013, the day before the 75th anniversary of the Darmstadt November pogroms. On the one hand, the wall of a hospital building on Julius-Landsberger-Platz is now adorned with an aluminum relief by the sculptor Gerhard Roese, which he created as a homage to Rabbi Julius Landsberger on behalf of the Liberal Synagogue Friends' Association. The association also donated a second plaque “The future needs memories: Homage to Rabbi Dr. Julius Landsberger ”, on which the vita and a historical lithograph of the Torah scholar can be found. The Friends of the Liberal Synagogue had collected over 6000 euros for both memorial plaques for two years. Numerous citizens, but also public institutions and foundations, took part in this charity fundraising campaign. With the support of the Friends of the Liberal Synagogue, the Darmstadt filmmaker Florian Steinwandter-Dierks also produced a documentary film The Liberal Synagogue: When Stones Cry Out of the Wall - The Future Needs Memory (30 min., 2013), in which Julius Landsberger plays a key role.

Final resting place

Rabbi Julius Landsberger found his final resting place in the Jewish cemetery in Darmstadt-Bessungen.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Babinger, Franz 1988: Julius Landsberger (1819–1890). Liberal rabbi and orientalist, in: Franz, Eckhart G. (ed.): Juden als Darmstädter Bürger, Darmstadt 1988.
  2. ↑ Cf. Martin Frenzel (editor): An ornament of our city. History, present and future of the Liberal Synagogue Darmstadt. Justus-von-Liebig-Verlag, Darmstadt 2008.
  3. ↑ In various sources, such as the NDB (cf. Klaus Siebenhaar:  Landsberger, Hugo. In: Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB). Volume 13, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-428-00194-X , p. 518 ( Digitalisat ).) And the DBE, there is an indication that the writer Hugo Landsberger (1861 – after 1935), pseudonym Hans Land , is said to have been a son of Julius Landsberger. This statement is incorrect; Hugo Landsberger's father was another rabbi Julius Landsberger (1821-1894).
  4. ^ Franz Babinger: Julius Landsberger (1819-1890), liberal rabbi and orientalist. In: Jews as citizens of Darmstadt. Edited by Eckhart G. Franz, Darmstadt 1984, p. 233f.
  5. ↑ Gruner, Paul Hermann: Lichtgestalt des Reformjudentums, in: Darmstädter Echo of November 10, 2011
  6. ↑ Darmstädter Tagblatt: Double homage to Rabbi Julius Landsberger from November 14, 2013
  7. ↑ See also the homepage of the Liberal Synagogue Friends' Association
  8. ^ Paul Hermann Gruner: Filming as honorary office: Documentation about the Liberal Synagogue. dated March 21, 2013.
  9. ^ Homepage of the Friends of the Liberal Synagogue Darmstadt
personal data
SURNAME Landsberger, Julius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German orientalist, rabbi
DATE OF BIRTH August 10, 1819
PLACE OF BIRTH Zülz , district of Neustadt OS
DATE OF DEATH March 3, 1890
Place of death Berlin