Max Eschelbacher

Max Eschelbacher ( January 14, 1880 in Bruchsal - April 20, 1964 in London ) was a lawyer , rabbi and author .

family

Max Eschelbacher was the son of Rabbi Josef Eschelbacher (1876-1916) and Ernestine, née Benario (1858-1931). His grandfather Leopold Benario (1822–1906) ran his parents' manufactured goods business and became deputy mayor of Wertheim . In 1906 he married his cousin Bertha, the daughter of the Heilbronn rabbi Ludwig Kahn . With her he had three sons and a daughter: Joachim Leo (1911–1958), Hermann (later Herbert) Friedrich (1912–2005), Josef Ludwig (1919–1968) and Maria Hanna Eschelbacher (nanny; later Nancy Wolfson, b. 1921).

Life

Eschelbacher studied law at the University of Munich and completed his studies with the doctorate to Dr. iur. from. After completing his legal clerkship, he began his legal career at the district court of Nauen near Berlin. When they tried to force him to work on Shabbat , he decided to become a rabbi and gave up his position. After training as a rabbi, he took up his first position in his native Bruchsal in 1906 and moved to Freiburg im Breisgau in 1910 . In 1912 he succeeded Leo Baeck at the Jewish community in Düsseldorf . His numerous publications on important issues of the time testify to a conservative point of view. During the November pogroms on November 10, 1938, he was arrested and sent to the Düsseldorf police prison. Eschelbacher, who wrote a comprehensive report on the events, was able to emigrate to England at the end of January 1939. After 1945 he visited Germany again and again and held services on the high Jewish holidays in the resurrected Jewish communities in Düsseldorf, Hamburg and Berlin. Max Eschelbacher died in London in 1964 at the age of 84.

Works (selection)

• The Right to Company Contributions , 1902
• A new book about the history of the German Jews , in: Ost und West , Illustrierte monthly for modern Judaism, 4th year, issue 3 (March 1904), pp. 170-178
• The Talmud as a means of education , in: Yearbook for Jewish History and Literature, Vol. 13, 1909
• The youngest picture of Judaism , in: "Ost und West", 11. (December 1911), pp. 1041-1052
• Mixed marriages , in: "Ost und West", 17 (March / April 1917), pp. 74-88
• "East Jewish Proletarians in Germany", Der Jude 9 (1918/1919), pp. 512-532
• On the history of the biblical-Talmudic marriage law , in: Monthly for History and Science of Judaism 65, 6, 1921, pp. 299–322
• The guilds and those outside , Der Jude 1921/22, pp. 76–90
• The socialism of old Judaism , Der Jude 1924, pp. 89–112
• The Jewish Law , Der Jude, Sonderheft 4, 1927, pp. 58–66
• Jüdische Weltanschauung , in: Zedakah , H. 3, July 1928, p. 46
• The Düsseldorf synagogue community 1904–1929 . Festschrift for the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the synagogue, Düsseldorf 1929
• The German Jew and the German State , Der Morgen, VIII, 6th issue, February 1933, pp. 405-413
• The tenth November 1938. With an introduction about Rabbi Max Eschelbacher and the November pogrom in Düsseldorf ed. by Falk Wiesemann , Klartext , Essen 1998 ISBN 3-88474-724-X

literature

• Herbert Ashbrook: Memories of the school days in Düsseldorf. In: Festschrift of the municipal Görres-Gymnasium . Düsseldorf 1995, pp. 153-157.
• Jürgen Stude: History of the Jews in Bruchsal . Publications on the history of the city of Bruchsal, vol. 23, Verlag Regionalkultur, Ubstadt-Weiher 2007 ISBN 978-3-89735-441-8 , p. 117.
• Falk Wiesemann : Rabbi Dr. Max Eschelbacher and his report on the November pogrom 1938 , in: Bastian Fleermann / Angela Genger (eds.): November pogrom 1938 in Düsseldorf. Food 2008.
• Bastian Fleermann: “… the best rabbinate in Germany.” Biographical sketches of the Düsseldorf rabbis from 1706 to 1941, in: Düsseldorfer Jahrbuch 81, 2011, pp. 111–175.

Web links

• Literature by and about Max Eschelbacher in the catalog of the German National Library

Remarks

1. ↑ later change of the name to Herbert Ashbrook
2. ↑ s. previous note