Robert Raphael Geis

Robert Raphael Geis (born July 4, 1906 in Frankfurt am Main ; died May 18, 1972 in Baden-Baden ) was a German Judaist and rabbi .

Life

Robert Raphael Geis grew up as the son of Moritz Geis and his wife Sittah, nee Stern, in a wealthy, assimilated family. From 1916 he attended grammar school in Frankfurt. From 1925 to 1932 he studied at the University for the Science of Judaism in Berlin and in the meantime also at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau . He also studied history, philosophy and German at the universities of Berlin, Breslau and Cologne. He was in close contact with his teacher Leo Baeck and with the circle around Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig .

In addition to his Judaism, Robert Raphael Geis felt connected to German culture and studied German history intensively, initially with Friedrich Meinecke , then in Breslau with Johannes Ziekursch, whom he then followed to Cologne to do his doctorate on The Fall of Imperial Chancellor Caprivi . In 1930 he earned his doctorate.

In 1932 he became a youth rabbi in Munich . After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists, there was a hard argument with his community board when they demanded that Geis bury the urns of Kurt Eisner and Gustav Landauer secretly and without naming the graves somewhere on the cemetery wall . In 1933, on the occasion of one of his Advent sermons against anti-Semitism , Cardinal Faulhaber invited Geis to move into the church with him.

Geis became second city rabbi in Mannheim , in 1937 regional rabbi in Kassel and was formally chief rabbi of Hesse until 1939 . In November 1938 he was taken to the Buchenwald concentration camp deported . After presenting his exit papers, he was able to escape to Palestine in February 1939 .

After the war he was rabbi in England , Switzerland ( Zurich , since 1947) and in the Netherlands ( Amsterdam , since 1949). From 1952 to 1956 he was state rabbi for Baden in Karlsruhe , since 1969 honorary professor at the Duisburg University of Education , and in 1971 at the University of Göttingen .

His humanity and his exemplary behavior in every respect soon earned him the honorary name Aba Geis . In 1970 he received the Buber Rosenzweig Medal .

Works

• Hermann Cohen's concept of patriotism , 1942
• Men of Faith in the German Resistance , Frankfurt am Main 1959 (together with Oskar Hammelsbeck and Oskar Simmel)
• On the Unknown Judaism , Freiburg im Breisgau 1961
• Attempts to understand. Documents of Jewish-Christian encounters from the years 1918-1933 , Munich 1966 (as publisher together with Hans-Joachim Kraus)
• God's minority. Contributions to Jewish theology and the history of Jews in Germany , Munich 1971

literature

• Desider Stern : Works by authors of Jewish origin in German. A bio bibliography. 2nd revised and significantly expanded edition. B'nai B'rith, Munich 1969.
• Walter Tetzlaff: 2000 short biographies of important German Jews of the 20th century. Askania-Verlags-Gesellschaft, Lindhorst 1982, ISBN 3-921730-10-4 .
• Dietrich Goldschmidt , Ingrid Ueberschär (ed.): Suffering from the unredeemed world. Robert Raphael Geis 1906–1972. Letters, speeches, essays. Kaiser, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-459-01568-3 .
• Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945. Edited by the Leo Baeck Institute, Jerusalem. Saur, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 .
• Julius H. Schoeps (Ed.): New Lexicon of Judaism. Bertelsmann-Lexikon-Verlag, Gütersloh et al. 1992, ISBN 3-570-09877-X .
• Robert Jütte : The emigration of the German-speaking "Wissenschaft des Judentums": the emigration of Jewish historians to Palestine 1933 - 1945 . Stuttgart: Steiner 1991, pp. 193-195

Web links

• Literature by and about Robert Raphael Geis in the catalog of the German National Library
• Estate in the Leo Baeck Institute, New York