Leopold Auerbach (lawyer)

Leopold Auerbach (* 1847 in Breslau in Prussia (now in Poland ), † October 1, 1925 in Berlin ) was a German lawyer and historian.

Life

Although Auerbach's work has received a lot of international attention to this day, little is known about his life. Nothing is known about his family, just as little about his childhood and youth. He studied in Leipzig , probably law, history and oriental studies, and received his doctorate in 1870 under Heinrich Leberecht Fleischer with a thesis on the history of the development of Jewish law.

Auerbach later worked as a legal historian in Berlin, where he continued to focus on the history of Jewish law and building bridges to Prussian law. Alongside Hirsch Baer Fassel , Zechariah Frankel, Joseph Levin Saalschütz , Max Samuel von Mayer , Moses Bloch and others, he was one of the most important scholars of the 19th century who dealt scientifically with the history of Jewish law and thus paved the way for the The law of the modern state of Israel.

Auerbach was an influential proponent of the reform and emancipation of Judaism in the 19th century and a Jewish apologist who was looking for strategies to pave the way for German Judaism to move into the modern age and to counter anti-Semitism from the Jewish side. He advocated that Jews should actively seek converts and facilitate the conditions for converting to Judaism in order to contradict widespread arguments that Judaism was a self-contained, exclusive people. In 1890, Auerbach published a passionate but also controversial appeal that German Jews should organize. In it he also spoke out in favor of " mixed marriage "; H. for marriage between Jewish and non-Jewish spouses.

Nothing is known about his late life.

Works

• Outline of the history of the development of Jewish law. Dissertation, Leipzig 1870. Published under the following title:
• The Jewish Code of Obligations according to the sources and with special consideration of Roman and German law. First volume: Outline of the history of the development of Jewish law. The nature of the obligation. Heymann, Berlin 1870 ( digitized in the Bavarian State Library ).
• The new German Reich and its constitution. Springer, Berlin 1871. ( Digitized in the Bavarian State Library ).
• Memories of the Secret Government Councilor Dr. Stieber : from the papers he left behind. Engelmann, Berlin 1884 ( digitized in the Central and State Library Berlin ).
• Judaism and its confessors in Prussia. Mehring, Berlin 1890.
• How can the baiting of Jews be successfully combated? In: On the agenda. Contributions to the clarification of public opinion, Volume 3, Berlin 1893, p. 6 f ( digitized version in the Frankfurt University Library )

Individual evidence

1. ^ Leopold Auerbach; Abraham M. Fuss (editor): The Jewish Code of Obligations [reprint of the 1870 edition], Gedera (Israel) 1976.
2. ↑ Dr. Leopold Auerbach died . In: Wiener Morgenzeitung . Issue 2381, October 9, 1925, p. 6 ( online [accessed on March 18, 2020] Goethe University Library, Frankfurt).
3. ↑ Jewish teaching and teachers . In: Menorah . Issue 11, November 1925, pp. 226 ( online [accessed on March 18, 2020] Goethe University Library, Frankfurt).
4. ^ Leopold Auerbach in the catalog of the Library of Congress .
5. ^ Holger Preißler: The Leipzig orientalist Heinrich Leberecht Fleischer. In: Stephan Wendehorst (Ed.): Building blocks of a Jewish history of the University of Leipzig. P. 266, footnote 82.
6. ^ Menachem Elon: The Sources and Nature of Jewish Law and its Application in the State of Israel, Part III. In: Israel Law Review, Volume 3, Issue 3, July 1968, p. 416.
7. ↑ Kevin Macdonald: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism, Long Beach, 2004, p. 235. ISBN 1-4107-9260-9 ( online by archive.org ).
8. ^ Alan T. Levenson: Jewish reactions to intermarriage in nineteenth century Germany. UMI, Ann Arbor, 1990, pp. 15-16 & pp. 99-100. ( online at OHIOlink )