Majer Balaban

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Majer Balaban (around 1910)

Majer Balaban ( Meir Balaban , Majer Samuel Bałaban , Meyer Samuel Balaban ; * February 20, 1877 in Lemberg , Austria-Hungary ; † December 26, 1942 in the Warsaw Ghetto ) was the founder of modern Jewish historiography in Poland . He was the first historian to use Christian, Jewish and Polish sources as well as rabbinic responses for his studies.

Balaban taught at various Jewish schools in Galicia and taught Jewish history at Warsaw University from 1928 and was a co-founder of the Institute for Jewish Studies in Warsaw.

Life

Majer Balaban's grave in the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw

Majer Bałaban was born in Lviv into a respected but poor Jewish family. He attended a German-speaking middle school and also took classes in a Jewish school. He began to study law in 1895, but had to break off his studies for financial reasons and taught in the Baron Hirsch schools. In 1900 he resumed his studies in Lviv and studied history with Ludwik Finkel, the editor of Kwartalnik Historyczny , where Balaban published from 1903. In 1904 he submitted his dissertation on the Jews of Lemberg at the turn of the 16th to the 17th century, which was published in 1906 under the title Żydzi lwowscy na przełomie XVIgo i XVIIgo wieku . After that he taught in middle schools. During the First World War he served as a chaplain in the Austrian army.

Balaban published hundreds of works in Polish, German, Russian, Hebrew and Yiddish, of which about 70 were source-oriented historical works, numerous magazine articles on the history of Polish Jewry, about 150 articles for the Jewrejska Enzyklopedja and studies on the Synod of four countries for eleven-volume Russian history of the Jews (1914). He was an active Zionist and wrote editorials for the Zionist weekly Wos'chod and taught religion at various Jewish schools in Galicia. From 1918 to 1920 he was head of the Jewish University in Czestochowa , from 1920 to 1930 director of the Tachkemoni Rabbinical Seminary in Warsaw . In 1924 he published a scientific and literary magazine, Nowe Życie . From 1928 he taught at the University of Warsaw , where he became assistant professor in 1936.

Balaban died in the Warsaw Ghetto and found his final resting place in the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw.

Works (selection)

Street named after Majer Balaban in Cholon, Israel
Year of publication known
  • The Jews in Lviv at the turn of the 16th to the 17th century , 1906
  • The Jewish city of Lublin , 1919
  • History and literature of the Jews , 1924/1925, 3 vols.
  • Cultural monuments of the Jews in Poland , 1929
  • The history of the Jews in Krakow and Kazimierz 1304-1868 , 1931-1936, 2 vol.
  • Le-Toledot ha-Tenu ach ha-Frankit , 1934–1935, 2 vols.
Without a year
  • History of the ritual murder charges
  • Heart Homberg
  • Constitutional history of the Jews in Poland

literature

Web links

Commons : Meir Balaban  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Robert Moses Shapiro: Bałaban, Majer. In: The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe (online edition). Retrieved November 23, 2011 .
personal data
SURNAME Balaban, Majer
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Jewish historian
DATE OF BIRTH February 20, 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH Lwów
DATE OF DEATH December 26, 1942
Place of death Warsaw Ghetto