Meyer Israel Bresselau

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Meyer Israel Bresselau (born April 25, 1785 in Hamburg ; died December 25, 1839 there ) was a Hamburg notary and leading representative of the Israelite Temple Association in Hamburg.

Live and act

During the French era , Bresselau was appointed a notary in 1811 . After 1814 he - like all notaries appointed by the French - initially remained in office. The council reappointed him and his fellow believer Abraham Meldola as a notary with the adoption of the new notarial order on February 23, 1816, although after the departure of the French as a Jew, he had the civil right, which according to the new notarial order was actually a prerequisite for appointment as a notary , had lost. He formed an office community with Meldola, who had been appointed imperial notary before the French era in 1782.

He was a member of the board of directors of the Temple Association, which had maintained a synagogue with Reformed prayer rules in Hamburg since 1818 . Together with Seckel Isaak Fränkel, he was the editor of the liturgical prayer book for the temple, Seder ha Avodah , Hamburg 1819. Bresselau justified himself against the criticism of this prayer book in Ueber the prayers of the Israelites in the national language . The prayer book took up earlier versions, among others by Eduard Kley . The usual passages aimed at the reconstruction of the Jerusalem temple did not appear in the temple service regulations or were replaced by reinterpretation of the German temple and justice for all peoples.

His work Ḥerev noqemet něqam běrît was the answer from the Elleh Devre ha-Berit collection , Altona 1819, which summarized the views of important Orthodox rabbis on the Hamburg temple reform. Bresselau's answer is 16 pages long and written in rhyming, biblical language and of a satirical character.

Bresselau was considered a good lawyer and expert on the Semitic languages , especially Hebrew. In 1824 Bresselau joined the Association for Culture and Science of the Jews with six other leading members of the Temple Association . He conducted an learned correspondence with its founder Leopold Zunz and owned a collection of Hebraica . He wrote a translation of the sayings of Ben Sirach from Syrian into Hebrew . In 1925 it was in manuscript in the city ​​library .

Memorial stone Meyer Israel Bresselau (4th from right),
Ilandkoppel Jewish Cemetery

At the beginning of 1840, the Chamber of Notaries handed over his notarial estate to his colleague Eduard Schramm , who shared with Bresselau's widow the income from mandates resulting from the inheritance takeover for the next ten years. Since there was no longer a Jewish notary after Bresselau's death, but the Supreme Court considered the demand of the Jewish community to appoint a notary familiar with Jewish customs, rituals and rights to be "noteworthy and therefore cheap", it applied to the council, that the notarial order should be relaxed so "that a member of the local German Israelite community is admissible as a notary or at least eligible for one of the notarial positions". Since the council also recognized the need for a Jewish notary, it initiated the change to the notary's regulations, and on September 25, 1840, Gabriel Riesser was admitted as a notary by the higher court after passing the notary's examination.

A memorial stone commemorates Meyer Israel Bresselau in the honorary complex in the “Grindelfriedhof” area of ​​the Ohlsdorf Jewish cemetery (Ilandkoppel) .

Works

  • Ḥerev noqemet něqam běrît. Dessau 1819.
  • Discussed the prayers of the Israelites in the national language, from the sources of the Talmud and from the later teachers of the law. 1819.
  • With SJ Fränkel: Order of public prayer for the Sabbath and festive days of the whole year, according to the use of the New Temple Association in Hamburg. Hamburg 1819.

literature

  • Encyclopaedia Judaica. Vol. 4, Jerusalem, 1971, p. 233.
  • Andreas Brämer : Judaism and religious reform. The Hamburg Israelitische Tempel 1817-1938. Dölling and Galitz Verlag, Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-933374-78-2 .
  • Michael A. Meyer : Answer to the modern. History of the reform movement in Judaism. Böhlau, Vienna, Cologne, Weimar 2000, ISBN 3-205-98363-7 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The chronicle of the notary's office in Bergstrasse.
  2. ^ Rainer Postel , Helmut Stubbe da Luz : The notaries Johann Heinrich Hübbe , Eduard Schramm , Gabriel Riesser , Hans-Harder Biermann-Ratjen . Edition Temmen , Bremen 2001, ISBN 3-86108-797-9 , page 33.
  3. ^ Hanns Günther Reissner: Eduard Gans. Tübingen, 1965. p. 63.
  4. ↑ Michael A. Meyer: Answer to the modern. Vienna 1988. pp. 91, 573.
  5. ^ Rainer Postel, Helmut Stubbe da Luz: The notaries Johann Heinrich Hübbe, Eduard Schramm, Gabriel Riesser, Hans-Harder Biermann-Ratjen. Edition Temmen, Bremen 2001, ISBN 3-86108-797-9 , p. 56.
  6. ^ Rainer Postel, Helmut Stubbe da Luz: The notaries Johann Heinrich Hübbe, Eduard Schramm, Gabriel Riesser, Hans-Harder Biermann-Ratjen. Edition Temmen, Bremen 2001, ISBN 3-86108-797-9 , p. 97.
  7. ^ Rainer Postel, Helmut Stubbe da Luz: The notaries Johann Heinrich Hübbe, Eduard Schramm, Gabriel Riesser, Hans-Harder Biermann-Ratjen. Edition Temmen, Bremen 2001, ISBN 3-86108-797-9 , p. 99.
personal data
SURNAME Bresselau, Meyer Israel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bresselau, Meir Israel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Notary and representative of Reform Judaism
DATE OF BIRTH April 25, 1785
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH December 25, 1839
Place of death Hamburg