Raphael Löwenfeld

Raphael Löwenfeld

Raphael Löwenfeld (born February 11, 1854 in Posen ; † December 28, 1910 in Charlottenburg ) was a Slavist , founded the Berlin Schiller Theater, one of the first venues for the Volksbühne movement, and was a proponent of German-Jewish assimilation .

Life

Raphael Löwenfeld's parents were the school director Viktor Löwenfeld and his wife Henriette nee. Zadek. He grew up with three sisters and his twin brother, the later historian Samuel Löwenfeld , in Posen. After studying philology and obtaining his doctorate in 1877, he was lecturer for Russian language and literature at the University of Wroclaw.

The writing Schutzjuden oder Staatsbürger. Published anonymously by Raphael Löwenfeld in 1893 . The main impetus for founding the Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith (CV), of which he was a member of the board for several years, came from a Jewish citizen .

Löwenfeld and others founded the Schiller-Theater AG in Berlin-Charlottenburg in 1893/94 , as a non-profit stock corporation with the aim of giving low-income access to stage art. The Schiller Theater, of which he was also the first director, opened with Schiller's robbers . The program also included Ibsen , Hauptmann and, above all, Tolstoy , whom Löwenfeld had been one of the first to translate into German since 1891 and made known in the German-speaking world through a biography (1892). Raphael Löwenfeld provided literary and musical evenings, chamber music events and inexpensive theater subscriptions. He published the magazine Die Volksunterhaltung (1898–1906) and introduced informative programs instead of mere theater slips.

Löwenfeld was married to Ida, geb. Rothstein. The marriage resulted in three children: Eva (* 1895), later a singer; Otto (* 1898), later a lawyer and Heinrich (* 1900), later a psychoanalyst.

The doctor Rahel Straus b. Goitein was the daughter of Raphael Löwenfeld's sister Ida.

Fonts

• Protective Jews or Citizens? From a Jewish citizen [d. i. Raphael Löwenfeld]. 3rd edition increased by votes from the press and letters from the public. Schweitzer & Mohr, Berlin W. 1893, urn : nbn: de: hebis: 30-180013765008 .
• Conversations about and with Tolstoy  - Internet Archive (1901)
• Leo N. Tolstoy: His life, his works, his worldview  - Internet Archive (1901)

literature

• Julius Bab : Löwenfeld, Raphael . In: Jewish Lexicon . Founded by G. Herlitz and B. Kirschner. Jewish publishing house, Berlin 1929, Volume III, Sp. 1233.
• Peter G. Crane: Raphael Löwenfeld: Leo Tolstoy's First Biographer. Remarks Presented at Iasnaia Poliana, September 30, 1998 . In: Tolstoy Studies Journal . Volume X, 1998, pp. 1-19.
• Franz Menges:  Löwenfeld, Raphael. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 15, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-428-00196-6 , p. 90 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Löwenfeld, Raphael . In: German Biographical Encyclopedia . Saur, Munich / Leipzig 1996, volume 6.
• Löwenfeld, Raphael. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 16: Lewi – Mehr. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-598-22696-0 , pp. 110-119.
• Hans Aschenbrenner: January 1st, 1907: The curtain rises for the first time in the Charlottenburg Schiller Theater . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 1, 1997, ISSN  0944-5560 , p. 48-51 ( luise-berlin.de ).
• Löwenfeld, Raphael . In: Theodor Westrin (Ed.): Nordisk familjebok konversationslexikon och realencyklopedi . 2nd Edition. tape 17 : Lux-Mekanik . Nordisk familjeboks förlag, Stockholm 1912, Sp. 312-313 (Swedish, runeberg.org ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Raphael Löwenfeld in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Adele Schreiber: The Berlin Schiller Theater as a social institution . In: Zentralblatt für Volksbildungswesen , 3/12, 1903, pp. 177-184