Lazar Gulkovich

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Lazar Gulkowitsch (born December 20, 1898 in Zirin near Novogrudok , Russian Empire ; died July 1941 in Tartu (Estonia)) was a Russian-German Judaist ( philologist ) who worked at the University of Leipzig from 1924 to 1933 and from 1934 to 1940 taught at the University of Tartu . He dealt mainly with Hasidism , Kabbalah , the history of late Judaism, the Hebrew language and with the Jewish philosophers Maimonides and Spinoza .

Live and act

1898 to 1932

Lazar Gulkowitsch was born the son of a Jewish merchant. He attended school in Baranovichi , where he also in Hebrew and Talmud was taught, and from 1911 to 1915, the Talmudic school in Minsk, before he in the evening class of Russian grammar school in 1918 in Mykolaiv stored High School prepared.

On the night of November 15-16, 1917, the Bolsheviks also took power in Belarus . On February 18, 1918, Minsk was occupied by German troops. As a result of the Treaty of Versailles , the German army had to withdraw from Belarus and the Bolsheviks returned to Minsk again. That is why Gulkowitsch left his homeland with the aim of starting his studies in Germany. However, he changed his original plan and went to Virbalis in Lithuania . From there he made contact with the University of Königsberg , where he began studying the fields of Old Testament , philosophy and medicine in the summer of 1919 with the permission of the German government . The Old Testament scholar Max Löhr (1864–1931) was one of his teachers.

Lazar Gulkowitsch was born on 22 October 1922 with a thesis on "The Nature and Origin of Kabbalah " Dr. phil. did his doctorate and then continued his medical studies, as he intended to practice the medical profession for a living. His scientific interests, however, were in philological questions and the spiritual-historical foundations of Judaism. He did not complete his medical studies, although he submitted his medical dissertation on March 26, 1924 .

At this point in time, he had already received an offer from the Saxon Ministry of National Education to work as a lecturer for late Hebrew, Jewish- Aramaic and Talmudic science at the University of Leipzig. Gulkowitsch accepted the offer and received German citizenship as early as April 1924 as a result of his employment. This quick naturalization was unusual, as Jews who immigrated from Eastern Europe often had to wait many years for German citizenship.

The Free State of Saxony wanted to defuse the cultural contrast that was evident in the 1920s between the immigrant Jews from the East, some of whom were supporters of Hasidism, and the local, predominantly liberal Jews. For this reason, the Free State was ready to support scientific research on the Jewish religion at the University of Leipzig. Lazar Gulkowitsch began teaching at the theological faculty, where he first introduced the various Jewish faiths to his students. On June 22, 1925, he applied to the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Leipzig to qualify for a habilitation in late Hebrew religious history. The Faculty of Theology agreed to this plan, but the Faculty of Philosophy refused to approve it and instead proposed a habilitation on the subject of the Science of Late Judaism . After approving reports from the theologian Hans Haas (1868-1934), but also after objections by the orientalist August Fischer (1865-1949), Gulkowitsch received his venia legendi for the philosophy faculty at the end of 1926 .

Thereupon Lazar Gulkowitsch began on February 24, 1927 with his lecture on “Rational and Mystical Elements in the Jewish Religion” . In his research he tied in with Franz Delitzsch (1813–1890), whose work at the University of Leipzig had established its good reputation in Old Testament and rabbinical research. On August 5, 1932, the Saxon government appointed Gulkowitsch as associate professor for the science of late Judaism at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Leipzig, thereby placing the teaching and research of the post-biblical history of religion on a philological basis.

1933 to 1941

On October 7, 1933, the National Socialists revoked Gulkowitsch's license to teach. On February 14, 1934, they revoked his naturalization. Anticipating this, Gulkowitsch had already left for Estonia in January 1934 with his wife Frieda Rabinowitz, whom he had married in Leipzig .

The Leipzig Rabbi Felix Goldmann (1882–1934) had established contacts with the University of Tartu (Dorpat) in Estonia, which on January 24, 1934 led to Gulkowitsch's appointment as a full professor by the Council of the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Tartu. The confirmation of this appointment by the Estonian Prime Minister Konstantin Päts (1874–1956) happened coincidentally on the day of Gulkovich's expatriation from Germany.

Gulkowitsch experienced six fruitful years of work in Tartu; he published most of his writings during these years. He gave his lectures in German; His listeners were mainly - but not only - Jews expelled from Germany. As a professor of Jewish studies, he followed the methodological approaches of Karl Lamprecht (1856–1915) and Simon Dubnows (1860–1941), who used language and language development as a source for researching history. He examined the formation of abstract terms in the history of Hebrew language and concluded from this that changes at the word and concept level are related and that the development of abstracts arises from everyday language. In this way he became a pioneer of conceptual history - forgotten after his death . In 1936, he invited the Slavicist Leopold Silberstein , who had been expelled from Berlin and who was also interested in linguistic and conceptual history, to give lectures at the University of Tartu and arranged for him to do lectures .

On the occasion of the 800th birthday of the Jewish-Arab scholar Maimonides (1135-1204), Gulkowitsch gave a lecture, which was followed by several guest lectures abroad, for example in Sweden in 1938 at Uppsala University , in Great Britain in 1939 at Cambridge University and in the USA. After the annexation of the rest of Czechoslovakia on March 15, 1939, Gulkowitsch tried to get a visa for himself and his family in Great Britain and the USA, but in vain. Since he did not receive a residence permit, he returned to his wife and two young daughters in Estonia at the end of 1939 - after the Hitler-Stalin pact .

The invasion of the Red Army ended Estonian independence in August 1940. The Soviets closed the Seminary for Jewish Studies, Lazar Gulkovich lost his job at the university. When his savings were exhausted, the unemployed scholar asked the rector of the University of Tartu on January 6, 1941 to be allowed to continue his studies. It is not certain to what extent the University of Tartu supported Gulkovich in the following weeks. His personal file was closed on April 30, 1941.

After Hitler's Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the Wehrmacht moved into Tartu on July 10, 1941. Lazar Gulkowitsch and his family were murdered by German associations on July 9, 1941.

Publications (selection)

  • Hasidism - the history of religion examined , Eduard Pfeifer publisher, Leipzig 1927
  • The formation of abstract terms in the history of Hebrew language , Eduard Pfeiffer Verlag, Leipzig 1931, pp. 5–132.
  • Rational and Mystical Elements in Jewish Teaching . In: Acta et commendationes universitatis Tartuensis , Series B: Humaniora, Vol. XXXVII.1, Tartu 1935, pp. 1-24.
  • Development of the term Hàsìd in the Old Testament . In: Acta et commendationes universitatis Tartuensis , Series B: Humaniora, Vol. XXXII.4, Tartu 1934, pp. 5-38.
  • The essence of Maimonidic teaching . In: Acta et commendationes universitatis Tartuensis , Series B: Humaniora, Vol. XXXVII.2, Tartu 1935, pp. 1-24.
  • The formation of the term Hàsìd . In: Acta et commendationes universitatis Tartuensis , Series B: Humaniora, Vol. XXXVII.2, Tartu 1935.6, pp. 7-104.
  • For the foundation of a conceptual historical method in linguistics . In: Acta et commendationes universitatis Tartuensis , Vol. XLI.1, Tartu 1937, pp. 1-234.
  • The charisma of prayer in the rain according to the Talmudic tradition . A contribution to the collection of religious popular life in the time of Jesus. In: Acta et commendationes universitatis Tartuensis , Series B: Humaniora, Vol. XLVI.4, Tartu 1939, pp. 1-50.
  • The cultural-historical image of Hasidism . In: Acta et Commentationes Universitatis Tartuensis, Series B: Humaniora, Vol. XLIII.3, Tartu 1938.
  • The basic ideas of Hasidism as the source of its fate. A contribution to the problem of idea and life . In: Acta et Commentationes Universitatis Tartuensis, Series B: XLII.1, Tartu 1938.
  • The formation of the term Hàsìd II. In: Acta et Commentationes Universitatis Tartuensis, Series B: Humaniora, Vol. XLVI.5., Tartu 1940., pp. 7–53.
  • Hasidism as a cultural-philosophical problem . In: Acta et Commentationes Universitatis Tartuensis, Series B: Humaniora, Vol. XLVI.6, Tartu 1940, pp. 7-118.

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. According to the current Julian calendar, the revolution in Belarus began on the night of November 2-3, 1917.
  2. Ernst Müller: Latency and Explication. Language is always the last resort: The Talmud researcher Lazar Gulkowitsch developed the method of a conceptual history with which he corrected the progressive prejudices of the history of religion. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of July 12, 2017, p. N3.
  3. Urmas Nömmik: Lazar Gulkowitsch and the Seminary for Jewish Science at the University of Tartu (Part II) . In: Judaica Kt. 62 (2006) . tape 62 (2006) , pp. 42 .