Max Wiener

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Max Wiener (born April 22, 1882 in Opole , Upper Silesia ; died June 30, 1950 in New York ) was a German rabbi , philosopher and theologian. Along with Leo Baeck, he was considered the most important representative of liberal Judaism in Germany .

Life

Youth and career as a rabbi in Germany

Wiener was one of four children of the leather goods dealer Isidor Wiener and his wife Amalie, née Marcus. He grew up in a family that was traditionally Jewish but also committed to German education. His grandfather was the rabbi Adolph Wiener (1812–1895), a student of Akiba Eger .

His hometown Opole has a Jewish history that goes back to the Middle Ages. The modern community developed into an outpost of liberal Judaism in Upper Silesia.

With Leo Baeck (1873-1956), the outstanding figure of German liberal Judaism, Wiener met for the first time in 1897, when he became a rabbi in Opole and Wiener was his pupil in religious instruction at the grammar school there. A friendly and later also a collegial relationship developed between the two, which was to last until Wiener's emigration to the USA in 1939.

After graduating from high school in Opole, Wiener studied from 1902 at the conservative Breslau rabbinical seminar , the Jewish-theological seminar Fraenkelscher Stiftung , and the liberal school for the science of Judaism in Berlin . At the same time, he took philosophy and psychology at the respective universities.

Wiener received his doctorate in 1906 at the University of Breslau on "JG Fichte's doctrine of the nature and content of history". In 1907 he was ordained a rabbi.

At the intercession of Leo Baeck, Wiener became his assistant in Düsseldorf in 1908 . Wiener was primarily responsible for religious instruction there.

On April 19, 1912, Max Wiener received his first full rabbinical position in the liberal community of Stettin . In 1916, Wiener founded a parish newspaper there, primarily to reach parishioners who did not attend his services.

From July 1917, Max Wiener worked as a front rabbi in the First World War . At the front he wrote regular reports to his congregation, which were printed in the congregation journal. After the war he first returned to Szczecin, continued to devote himself to his community obligations and intensified his scientific studies in the second half of the twenties.

On Shavuot in 1926, Wiener was introduced to his new office as a Berlin rabbi. He also owed this position to Leo Baeck's intercession. In his Berlin position, Wiener was primarily involved in educational work: he led adult education for the Berlin communities and organized series of lectures. In addition, in the late twenties he accepted an appointment as "student chaplain" at the University of Berlin . Wiener thus became the first (and before the war only) German student rabbi.

From 1936 to 1939, Vienna was a board member of the Kulturbund Deutscher Juden .

Scientific career

An application for the Hermann Cohen chair for Jewish philosophy at the Berlin “ Lehranstalt ” in 1912 was still unsuccessful, not least because of a report by Cohen, in which the latter attested him “a questionable philosophical immaturity”. But in the summer semester of 1924 he was able to work there for the first time as a university lecturer as a substitute for the philosopher Julius Guttmann .

In the winter semester 1928/29 he taught on behalf of the Bible professor Harry Torczyner (later Naftali Herz Tur-Sinai) and in the following winter semester again in philosophy on behalf of Julius Guttmann.

In the following years Wiener worked on his habilitation thesis The Jewish Religion in the Age of Emancipation , with which he hoped to gain a professorship for philosophy at the University of Berlin. This seemed to be very positive about Wiener’s aspirations. However, the “ seizure of power ” by the National Socialists and with it the exclusion of Jewish lecturers from the universities destroyed all hopes and plans in this direction.

Again, it was the Berlin University for the Science of Judaism that Wiener called and still enabled him to work as a full lecturer. After Julius Guttmann's emigration to Palestine in 1935, Wiener was appointed his successor and from the winter semester 1935/36 he held the chair in the department of “Jewish Philosophy of Religion and Ethics” until his own emigration in 1939.

Emigrant in America (1939–1950)

Wiener's further life is overshadowed by his emigration to the USA and the associated cultural differences, which he was never able to completely overcome.

Due to an invitation from the director of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati , Julian Morgenstern, Wiener managed to leave Germany a few days before the outbreak of the Second World War . He reached New York on September 5, 1939. However, Wiener's hope of being hired as a full faculty member in his fields of Bible or philosophy at the Hebrew Union College was quickly dashed. Instead, he was only offered to hold preparatory courses in Mishnah and Talmud , and when the philosophy professor there, Zwi Diesdruck , died in 1940 , Wiener was not offered his position.

In 1941 the college placed him in a rabbinical position in Fairmont , a small town in West Virginia . Wiener was very dissatisfied with his new congregation, it seemed to him "uncultivated" and "uneducated".

It wasn't until 1943 that Wiener found a place where he was needed. Hugo Hahn found him a job as a special rabbi and responsible for educational work in his “Habonim” community in New York . It was a German liberal refugee community where he gave lectures, courses and church services on the high holidays.

From 1949 to 1950, Vienna was President of the Theodor Herzl Society of the Zionist Organization of America.

Max Wiener died in New York on June 30, 1950 at the age of 68.

His son Theodore Wiener passed the rabbinical exam at the Hebrew Union College Cincinnati and became a librarian at the Library of Congress.

Works

  • The prophets' beliefs on morality . Berlin, 1909. (Writings of the Institute for the Science of Judaism. Vol. 1, No. 3/4.)
  • On the history of the religious enlightenment . In: Liberal Judaism . Vol. 3, 1911, pp. 13-15, 155-158, 207-210, 259-263, 274-278.
  • The religion of the prophets . Frankfurt, 1912. (Popular writings on the Jewish religion. Vol. 1, No. 1.)
  • On the history of the concept of revelation . In: Judaica. Festschrift for Hermann Cohen's seventieth birthday . Berlin, 1912 (reprint 1980), pp. 1-24.
  • Nationalism and Universalism among the Jewish Prophets . In: The Jewish will . Vol. 2, No. 4/5, 1920, pp. 190-200.
  • Jewish piety and religious dogma . In: Monthly for the history and science of Judaism (MGWJ) . Vol. 67, 1923, pp. 153-167, 225-244; Vol. 68, 1924, pp. 27-47. (Reprinted in: Kurt Wilhelm (Hrsg.): Wissenschaft des Judentums im Deutschen Sprachbereich . Tübingen, 1967, Vol. 2, pp. 679–735.)
  • Reason and revelation . In: The morning . Vol. 1, No. 3, 1925, pp. 253-267.
  • Faith in revelation in the light of biblical criticism [and] discussion . In: The First World Conference of Liberal Jews. Speeches - discussion - decisions . Berlin, 1926, pp. 27-32, 97-98.
  • The concept of religion and the peculiarity of the Jewish . In: The Jewish Idea and its Carriers. Contributions to the question of Jewish liberalism and nationalism . Berlin, 1928, pp. 23-26.
  • Tradition and Criticism in Judaism . In: Paul Tillich (ed.): Protestantism as criticism and design . Darmstadt, 1929, pp. 347-407.
  • Concept and task of Jewish theology . In: Monthly for the history and science of Judaism (MGWJ) . Vol. 77, 1933, pp. 3-16.
  • Jewish religion in the age of emancipation . Berlin, Philo 1933. (Reprint, with an afterword by Daniel Weidner : Berlin, Jüdische Verlagsanstalt 2002.)
  • Philosophy of Religion and Religion . In: Monthly for the history and science of Judaism (MGWJ) . Vol. 83, 1938. (Unpublished. First printed: Tübingen, 1963, pp. 568–581.) (Publications of the Leo Baeck Institute.)
  • Outline of a Jewish theology . In: Hebrew Union College Annual (HUCA) . Vol. 18, 1943, pp. 353-396.
  • Abraham Geiger and liberal Judaism. The challenge of the nineteenth century . New York, Jewish Publication Society of America 1962. (Important works by Geiger, compiled and provided with a biographical introduction by Wiener. Originally a German manuscript, but the book was never published in German.)

literature

  • Markus Brann : History of the Jewish Theological Seminary (Fraenckel'sche Foundation) in Breslau. Festschrift for the 50th anniversary of the institution. Breslau 1904, p. 201.
  • Salomon Wininger : Great Jewish National Biography. Volume VI, Chernivtsi 1932, p. 279.
  • Magnus Davidsohn : A great one in Israel . In: General Jewish weekly newspaper . Vol. 5, No. 19, 1950, p. 6.
  • Hans Liebeschütz : From Georg Simmel to Franz Rosenzweig. Studies on Jewish thinking in the German cultural sector . Tubingen, 1970.
  • Hans Liebeschütz: Max Wiener's reinterpretation of liberal Judaism . In: Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook (LBIY). Vol. 5, 1960, pp. 35-57.
  • Pinchas E. Rosenblüth: Law religion as a positive term. Max Wiener's understanding of the Torah . In: Peter von der Osten-Sacken (Ed.): Loyalty to the Torah. Contributions to the middle of the Christian - Jewish conversation. Festschrift for Günther Harder on his 75th birthday . Berlin, 1979, pp. 101-107.
  • Robert S. Schine: Jewish Thought adrift. Max Wiener (1882–1950) . Atlanta, 1992. (Brown Judaic Studies, Vol. 259.)
  • Robert S. Schine: "German Judaism" - "Jewish Germanness". The path of Max Wieners (1882–1950) . In: Trumah . Vol. 3, 1992, pp. 129-149.
  • Daniel Weidner: Max Wiener. Secularization and the Problem of Jewish Philosophy . In: Transversal . Vol. 6, No. 1, 2005, pp. 41-63.
  • Entry WIENER, Max, Dr. In: Michael Brocke and Julius Carlebach (editors), edited by Katrin Nele Jansen with the assistance of Jörg H. Fehrs and Valentina Wiedner: Biographisches Handbuch der Rabbis. Part 2: The rabbis in the German Empire, 1871–1945. K G Saur, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-5982487-4-0 , No. 2671, pp. 651 ff.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Report of the University for the Science of Judaism (BHWJ) . Vol. 27, 1909, p. 9.
  2. ^ Jacob Peiser: History of the synagogue community in Stettin . Stettin, 1935, p. 59.
  3. ↑ Hans Liebeschütz: From Georg Simmel to Franz Rosenzweig. Studies on Jewish thinking in the German cultural sector . Tübingen, 1970, p. 176.
  4. ^ Robert S. Schine: Jewish thought adrift. Max Wiener (1882–1950) . Atlanta, 1992, p. 12.
  5. ^ Alfred Jospe: A Profession in Transition. The German Rabbinate 1910–1939 . In: Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook (LBIY) . Vol. 19, 1974, p. 58.
  6. ↑ The report is printed by Robert S. Schine: Jewish thought adrift . P. 181f.
  7. ↑ See the reports of the university for the respective years.
  8. ^ Schine: Jewish thought adrift . P. 167 f. and 168, footnote 6.
  9. ^ Schine: Jewish thought adrift . P. 171.
  10. ^ Schine: Jewish thought adrift . P. 172.
personal data
SURNAME Wiener, Max
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German rabbi, philosopher and theologian
DATE OF BIRTH April 22, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Opole , Upper Silesia
DATE OF DEATH June 30, 1950
Place of death new York