Maurice Ascher

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Maurice Halevi Ascher (born June 24, 1873 in Saint-Imier , Canton Bern ; died April 28, 1965 in Bnei Berak , Israel ) was a Swiss writer and teacher .

Life

Maurice Ascher's parents were the businessman Theodor David Ascher and Caroline Weill. He attended school first in Cormondrèche and Neuchâtel and then the Hirsch Realschule in Frankfurt am Main . He broke off a commercial apprenticeship, then continued his self-taught education, graduated from high school and then studied in Bern and Hamburg , first two semesters of medicine and then philosophy. In 1899/1900 he received his doctorate in Bern with a thesis on the French philosopher Charles Renouvier . After studying philosophy, Ascher studied at the rabbinical seminary in Hamburg, where he became the favorite student of chief rabbi Markus Mordechai-Amram Hirsch.

Due to his talent for languages, Ascher became an embassy attaché to the Spanish embassy in Berlin. After that he was educator for the sons of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha for several years and during this time he undertook several long-distance trips, including to India. In 1904 he married Rifka Erlanger from Lucerne , with whom he had several children. In 1905 he founded an educational institute in Neuchâtel, in 1925 he moved the institute to Bex-les-Bains ( Bex ) in the canton of Vaud. In this boarding school with an attached farm, “every kind of preparation for all schools on the continent” as well as religious education, commercial subjects and sport, especially for “weak children and children in need of relaxation”, was offered.

As an author, Ascher appeared primarily as an author of educational-philosophical writings in which he took the standpoint of orthodox or neo-orthodox Judaism.

With his first novel Guilliver’s new journey , Ascher is also a representative of the German future novel . The novel tells a fantastic journey based on Jonathan Swift's utopian satire Gulliver's Travels . In Ascher, the protagonist Guilliver is not a seaman, but a contemporary airship who has to make an emergency landing on an island in the Atlantic, where he finds two very different countries separated by a river, namely the Risolia, inhabited by the cheerful, optimistic Risorists and that of the pessimistic Pleurists populated pleuresia. Guilliver is mainly in Risolia, which is described as a model utopian society in the form of an enlightened monarchy, with humor, a love of truth and relativism as central values. However, Guilliver is expelled from Paradise when he is caught telling a lie - he has kept silent about the fact that he is married “in order to find mercy with the female sex”. According to Nessun Saprà, the novel is "too harmless and naive to pass as a real utopian draft or satire."

Another fictional work by Ascher is the robinsonade The Jewish Robinson (1930). Here the first-person narrator does not end up on a lonely island, but ends up on a train around the world in New York , where he finds himself isolated by liberal or assimilated Jews as if on an island. The text contains longer discursive passages and reflections, which is why it can be seen as a mixture of narrative and treatise. It culminates in a sexual-ethical treatise that also contains an attack on Magnus Hirschfeld - as early as 1922, Ascher had published the relevant text Sexual Questions from the standpoint of Judaism .

Ascher died in Israel in 1965 at the age of 91.

bibliography

  • Renouvier and French Neo-Criticism. Dissertation. Sturzenegger, Bern 1900 (= Bern studies of philosophy and its history. XXII).
  • Excursions into the realm of spirit and soul. Concordia Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Berlin 1904.
  • From the cradle to the grave: forays into time and eternity. Max Spohr, Leipzig 1906.
  • No contradiction between Judaism, science and life! Neuchâtel & Berlin 1908.
  • So-called “liberal” and so-called “conservative” Judaism. Zurich 1911.
  • In the battles of knowledge. Delachaux & Niestlé, Neuchâtel 1912.
  • Guilliver's new journey. Concordia Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Berlin 1915.
    • English translation: Gulliver's New Travels. Tel Aviv 1940.
  • Oded, the book of peace. Neuchâtel 1916.
  • Family Faithful to Kings and the War. Ostheim, Zurich 1917.
  • Revelation in the light of Judaism and cannibalism. Neuchâtel 1919.
  • Letters on all sorts of things from the Jewish religion. Post Tenebras Lux, Neuchâtel 1919.
  • Sexual questions from the standpoint of Judaism. AJ Hofmann, Frankfurt a. M. 1922.
  • Excursions into the realm of spirit and soul. Concordia, Berlin [around 1928].
  • The Jewish Robinson. Bach, Bex 1930.
  • Contribution to overcoming crises (in the light of Judaism). Hofmann, Frankfurt a. M. 1931.
  • Providence, freedom, happiness. Bex around 1931.
  • In the face of death: isn't the soul starving too ?! Hermon, Frankfurt a. M. 1933.
  • Agriculture and Torah. Fiba-Verlag, Vienna 1935.

literature

Web link

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Vol. 1. Saur, Munich a. a. 1992, pp. 209-211.
  2. ^ Advertisement of the "Institute Dr. M. Ascher ” in the magazine Der Israelit of May 3, 1928, accessed on August 15, 2019.
  3. ↑ a b Annegret Völpel, Zohar Shavit: German-Jewish children's and youth literature: A literary-historical outline. Springer, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-476-05253-7 , p. 311 f.
  4. ↑ Nessun SAPRA: Encyclopedia of German Science Fiction & Fantasy 1870-1918. Utopica, 2005, ISBN 3-938083-01-8 , p. 35 f.
personal data
SURNAME Ascher, Maurice
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ascher, Moritz (alternative spelling); Ascher, Maurice Halevi (alternative spelling)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss writer and educator
DATE OF BIRTH June 24, 1873
PLACE OF BIRTH Saint-Imier , Canton of Bern
DATE OF DEATH April 28, 1965
Place of death Bnei Berak , Israel