Samuel Stone Heart
Samuel Steinherz (born December 16, 1857 in Güssing , Austrian Empire ; died December 16, 1942 in the Theresienstadt ghetto ) was an Austrian-Czechoslovak historian and university lecturer in Prague .
Life
Steinherz came from a middle-class Jewish family and attended high school in Graz . In 1896 Steinherz married Sophie Kestel, who was eight years his junior and with whom he had five children:
- Rudolf Steinherz ( * 1901)
- Otto Steinherz (1903 – after 1941 Lodz concentration camp )
- Anna Steinherz (1897–196 9) ⚭ Artur Winternitz (1893–1961)
- Antonie (1899–1943 in Auschwitz concentration camp)
- Irene (1900–43 in Auschwitz concentration camp)
academic career
After graduating from high school in 1875, Steinherz began to study German , history and classical philology at the University of Graz . 1882 in Graz as Dr. phil. doctorate , took Steinherz to 1885 a course on paleography and diplomacy at the Vienna Institute for Austrian Historical Research . His research focus in those years was the relationship between Ludwig I of Hungary and Charles IV , which is why he also traveled to Budapest and Venice for research purposes .
On his return in 1887, Steinherz hoped for an early habilitation , which, however, had to be postponed for eight years due to misunderstandings. Steinherz used the time to study law , which he completed in 1894 with the Dr. jur. completed. Specializing in the diplomacy of the Holy See , he began parallel to his studies to work on the nunciature reports for the years 1560–65 on behalf of Theodor von Sickel in Rome and other European cities. With the edits and the critical examination of Austrian history, he won the esteem of the old Austrian historians. 1895 Stone heart finally got the teaching license of Austrian history , which in 1898 on medieval studies has been extended.
Worked at the Charles University in Prague
In 1901 Steinherz was appointed associate professor at Charles University in Prague , where he was given a full professorship for historical auxiliary sciences (1908) and for Austrian history (1915). He was a member of the Association for the History of Germans in Bohemia and had been a member of its board since 1904.
Uninterested in current affairs, he suddenly found himself a citizen of the First Czechoslovak Republic after the collapse of the Habsburg Empire ; In his lectures , however, he continued to devote himself exclusively to the history of Austria-Hungary .
In 1922 Steinherz was elected rector of the university and did not renounce the office, as is usual with Jewish professors, because he felt himself to be German. His inaugural address appeared at the end of the year in the report submitted by Robert Mayr-Harting on the academic year 1921-22 .
"I am a German through my parents, through upbringing and schooling, have always known myself as such, and have never given the slightest reason to doubt my Germanness."
Regardless of the fact that Steinherz perceived himself to be German, there were anti-Semitic student protests , house occupations and increasingly louder demands for a numerus clausus for Jewish students. Responsible for the protests, which later became known as the Steinherz Affair, was the German-Aryan student body , an alliance of German national and Christian social students. Under increasing pressure, Steinherz offered his resignation in February 1923, which was never answered by the then Minister of Education, Rudolf Bechyně , and was therefore effectively rejected. Steinherz took leave of absence until the protests subsided. Since a second resignation request was not approved either, Steinherz finally let his office rest.
The Jews in Prague and Bohemia, who until then had felt part of the German culture and nation, felt strongly unsettled by the extent of the protests. Steinherz himself turned to the history of the Jews in the Middle Ages , especially during the Crusades , with the support of the Lodge Praga of the Jewish community B'nai B'rith .
At the age of 71, Steinherz retired from university in 1928. In the same year he was elected chairman of the new Society for the History of Jews in the Czechoslovak Republic , edited its nine yearbooks , which appeared from 1929 to 1938, and was its director until the Society was dissolved in 1940.
Deportation, death and survival
When the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was established by the National Socialists as a new administrative unit in 1939 , this meant Steinherz's exclusion from all scientific organizations. At the beginning of July 1942 Steinherz was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto with his wife and daughters Antoine and Irene . Despite his increasing blindness, Steinherz still held lectures there on the history of the Bohemian Jews. Steinherz died in Theresienstadt on his 85th birthday.
The Samuel Steinherz Foundation has existed in Nuremberg since 2008 . At the end of November 2012 the conference Avigdor, Beneš, Gitl - Jews in Bohemia and Moravia in the Middle Ages took place in Brno in memory of Samuel Steinherz .
Honor
In front of the Samuel Steinherz House in Graz Finkengasse 4 with apartments for students, which was largely completed in June 2020, a lighted stele from the Moses Mendelssohn Foundation provides information about his life.
Fonts (selection)
- The Italian policy of King Ludwig I of Hungary in the years 1342 - 1352. Dissertation, University of Graz, 1881 (handwritten)
- The nuncios Hosius and Delfino , 1560–1561 (1897)
- Letters from Archbishop of Prague Anton Brus von Müglitz, 1562–1563 (1907)
- Documents on the history of the great occidental schism 1385–1395 (1932)
- Nunciature reports from Germany: Nuncio Delfino, 1560–1565 , 3 vols. (1897–1914)
- The Jews in Prague - Pictures from their Millennial History (1927)
editor
- Yearbook of the Society for the History of the Jews in the Czechoslovak Republic , 9 volumes 1929–1938, reprint: Textor Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 3-938402-02-4
literature
- Gerhard Oberkofler : Stone Heart Samuel. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 13, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 2007–2010, ISBN 978-3-7001-6963-5 , p. 188.
- Peter Arlt: Samuel Steinherz, 1857–1942, historian. A rector between the two fronts , in Monika Glettler, Alena Mísková (ed.): Prager Professoren, 1938–1948: Between Science and Politics . Essen 2001, pp. 71-104
- Gerhard Oberkofler : Samuel Steinherz (1857-1942) - Biographical sketch about an old Austrian Jew in Prague . Studien-Verlag 2008. GoogleBooks
- Alexander Koller: Samuel Steinherz as researcher and editor of papal nunciature reports, in: Helmut Teufel / Pavel Kocman / Milan Řepa (eds.), “Avigdor, Benesch, Gitl”. Jews in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia in the Middle Ages, Essen 2016, pp. 403–414.
Web links
- Literature by and about Samuel Steinherz in the catalog of the German National Library
- Daniel Polakovič: Samuel Steinherz (YIVO)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Gerhard Oberkofler: Steinherz, Samuel (1857–1942), historian . In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815-1950 . tape 13 . Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 2008, p. 188 , doi : 10.1553 / 0x00284e3b .
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Robert Luft: Steinherz, Samuel . In: New German Biography (NDB) . tape 25 , 2013, p. 200–201 ( deutsche-biographie.de ).
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Daniel Polakovič: Steinherz, Samuel. In: The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 2010, accessed April 22, 2020 .
- ↑ Renate Hennecke: Review of Oberkofler's book (PDF; 1.5 MB)
- ↑ Samuel Steinherz: A dispute about the Salzburg Dompropstei (1385-1390) . In: Robert Mayr-Harting (Ed.): Report on the academic year 1921-22 . Prague 1922, p. 13–34 ( historical-kommission-muenchen-edUNGEN.de [PDF]).
- ^ Government of Middle Franconia ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Stone Heart, Samuel |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Austrian medievalist and university lecturer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 16, 1857 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Gussing |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 16, 1942 |
| Place of death | Theresienstadt ghetto |