Paul Lazarus (Rabbi)

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Paul Pinchas Lazarus (born October 30, 1888 in Hamborn , † January 1, 1951 in Haifa ) was a German rabbi who worked in Wiesbaden from 1918 to 1938 .

Live and act

Paul Lazarus was the youngest son of the preacher and teacher Raphael Lazarus and the wife Betty geb. Reading seat. After attending school in Cologne and Göttingen and graduating from high school at the Friedrichsgymnasium in Kassel , Lazarus studied from 1907 at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau . Besides Jewish religion he studied history and philosophy at the Universities of Breslau , Marburg and Erlangen , where he in 1912 with a thesis on the Council of Basel to the Dr. phil. received his doctorate . In 1915 he passed the rabbi exam in Breslau and obtained the rabbinical diploma. From September 1, 1914, he was second rabbi alongside Dr. Salomon Samuel and religion teacher in Essen .

As early as August 1914 he registered as a war volunteer and became a gunner in the foot artillery . At the same time he declared his willingness to take on a field rabbi . Since he was already a soldier and not yet a community rabbi, he was only used as a field rabbi in Macedonia from December 1916 to August 1918 . There he met Franz Rosenzweig in Üsküb in 1917 , with whom he developed a friendship with an exchange about literature and the Jewish educational problem. In January 1918 he received the Iron Cross 2nd Class and the Knight's Cross of the Imperial Austrian Order of Franz Joseph with war decorations . At the end of his service in Macedonia, he applied for a transfer or leave of absence because of his poor health. In June and July 1918 the Essen community complained about it, and in July 1918 the Jewish community in Wiesbaden .

In 1918 Paul Lazarus succeeded Adolf Kober, who had been appointed to Cologne, as rabbi of the Wiesbaden (liberal) Jewish community. There he was city and district rabbi until his retirement in October 1938.

In 1921 he founded a teaching house in Wiesbaden with the help of Franz Rosenzweig . Rosenzweig had founded the Free Jewish Teaching House in Frankfurt as early as 1920 ; the two knew each other from Lazarus' work as a field rabbi. In 1925 he married Jadwiga Walfisz; they had two daughters, Hanna (born 1927, died 1998) and Hava (born 1930, died 1998). Hava Lazarus-Yafeh became Professor of Islamic Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and published numerous books and articles on the relationship between Muslims, Jews and Christians.

Lazarus' activities during his time in Wiesbaden were varied: he founded a home for the elderly and a school in 1936, was a member of the presidium of the Association of Liberal Rabbis Germany and President of the Nassau Lodge , was very involved in youth work and wrote articles for the German Encyclopaedia Judaica .

Since Lazarus suffered from diabetes from 1922 on , he was retired at the age of 49 in October 1938 - a few weeks before the November pogroms in 1938 . In February 1939 he emigrated with his family to Palestine , where he worked in Haifa in adult education and until 1950 as a rabbi for the immigrant community of Bet Yisrael .

Publications

  • The Basel Council. Its appointment and management, its structure and its official organization , historical studies, booklet 100, Berlin 1912 (publisher: Matthiesen, Husum)
  • Something about the Spaniards in Serbia , Macedonia , Bulgaria , in In the German Empire. Journal of the Central Association of Citizens of the Jewish Faith , No. 1, 1919, pp. 22–30
  • History of the Nassau Lodge 1890–1930 . Self-published by the Nassau Lodge, Wiesbaden 1930
  • The Jewish Community in Wiesbaden 1918 - 1942. A memory book . New York 1949

literature

  • Schlomo Friedrich Rülf (Ed.): Paul Lazarus Memorial Book. Contributions to the appreciation of the last generation of rabbis in Germany. Jerusalem Post Press, Jerusalem 1961
  • Support group for the Active Museum of German-Jewish History in Wiesbaden: Encounters I… making people aware of the loss - About the life of the Jewish community in Wiesbaden and the construction of the synagogue on Michelsberg, Ed .: Paulgerd Jesberg, Editor: Dorothee Lottmann-Kaeseler, Wiesbaden 1988 ; Texts and a. by Paul Lazarus, Lothar Bembenek
  • Biographical Handbook of Rabbis , ed. by Michael Brocke and Julius Carlebach , Part 2: The Rabbis in the German Empire 1871–1945, 2 volumes, here: Volume 2, pages 369–370, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2009
  • Franz Menges:  Lazarus, Paul. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 14, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-428-00195-8 , p. 13 ( digitized version ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sabine Hank: "... stand available as a chaplain" - Rabbis at War - Paul Lazarus , Kalonymos 17 (2014), Heft 2, pp. 1–5.
  2. ↑ See Leo Baerwald: Paul Lazarus - His life and work in Germany , in: “Gedenkbuch”, pp. 11–20, and the biographical supplement to “Encounters 1/88”.
  3. ↑ See Ignaz Maybaum: Franz Rosenzweig and the German rabbis , in: “Gedenkbuch”, pp. 154–160.
  4. ↑ His successor until March 1940 was Dr. Bruno Finkelscherer (1906–1943), followed by Hansjörg Hanff (1915–1942).
  5. ↑ Online under Compact Memory
personal data
SURNAME Lazarus, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lazarus, Paul Pinchas (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Israeli rabbi
DATE OF BIRTH October 30, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamborn
DATE OF DEATH January 1, 1951
Place of death Haifa