Louis Loewe
Louis Loewe (born June 24, 1809 in Zülz , † November 5, 1888 in London ) was an orientalist .
Life
Louis Loewe first studied at the yeshivot in Lissa and Pressburg and later specialized in oriental languages at the University of Vienna and the University of Berlin .
In 1833 he moved to London. At the suggestion of the learned August Friedrich, Duke of Sussex , and several leading French and English orientalists, Loewe decided in 1837 to go on an expedition to Egypt. In preparation for this, he intensified his Egyptological studies and learned the Nubian and Ethiopian languages . On this trip he deciphered several inscriptions on the banks of the Nile , in Thebes , Alexandria , Cairo and other places. From Egypt he moved on to Palestine , where he was attacked by insurgent Druze in Safed , who destroyed 13 of his notebooks that were already scheduled for publication. For a short time he stayed in Nablus , where he studied the customs of the Samaritans . In Damascus he acquired a valuable collection of rare old coins. In Constantinople he studied the customs of the Karaites and acquired numerous rare books and manuscripts of this religious group. His impressions of this trip were published in a number of letters in the weekly Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums in 1839 .
From 1839 he accompanied Moses Montefiore on all his travels and acted as his interpreter and secretary in all oriental languages, including Hebrew , and as an assistant in his public activities. At the time of the Damascus affair around 1840, he accompanied Montefiore, Adolphe Crémieux and Salomon Munk on a trip to Egypt and Turkey to intervene on behalf of the persecuted Jews. Thanks to his command of Arabic, the firm was modified by Muhammad Ali so that the word “pardon” was replaced by “honorable acquittal”. Loewe accompanied Montefiore on trips to Russia in 1846 and 1872 and on five trips to Palestine.
On his return to London in 1839, the Duke of Sussex proposed the post of director of the Oriental section of his library; he held this post for about 15 years. From 1856 to 1858 he was headmaster of the Jews' College , a Jewish school in London. In 1861 he founded a school for Jewish boys in Brighton , which attracted students from all over the world. From 1869 until his death he was director of a theological seminary in Ramsgate , which was founded in 1869 by Moses Montefiore and named after its founder and his wife Jehudit ( Ohel Moshe ve-Jehudit ). Loewe published the diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore (2 volumes, 1890), an (English) introduction to the Egyptian language (1837) and a dictionary of the Circassian language (1854).
literature
- Encyclopedia Judaica , Vol. 11, pp. 448-449
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Louis Loewe at the Oxford Center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Loewe, Louis |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Orientalist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 24, 1809 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Zülz |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 5, 1888 |
| Place of death | London |