Siegmund Kaznelson

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Siegmund Kaznelson (born May 17, 1893 in Warsaw , Russian Empire ; died March 20, 1959 in Jerusalem ; also Siegmund Katznelson ) was a lawyer, editor, author and publisher who emerged as a Zionist activist and in particular German Judaism since the emancipation period in his main work Jews in the German cultural sector (1934) documented.

Life

Siegmund Kaznelson's father was a district doctor in Bobruisk and died in Warsaw in 1895. The mother moved to Gablonz , where Kaznelson graduated from high school in 1911. He had been a staunch Zionist since high school and had contact with Robert Weltsch at a young age , whose older sister Lisa he later married. In 1911 both went to the 10th Zionist Congress in Basel , in 1913 he and Lisa were at the Zionist Congress in Vienna. Weltsch convinced Kaznelson of the need to learn Hebrew .

Kaznelson began to study law at the German University of Prague . From 1913 to 1917 he was also editor of the Zionist weekly magazine Die Selbstwehr and from then on wrote primarily under the pseudonym "Albrecht Hellmann". Since he was not drafted as a stateless person during the First World War , he was able to continue studying in addition to his journalistic work and received his doctorate in Prague at the end of 1918 .

In 1920 he moved to Berlin . There he was editor of the monthly Der Jude published by Martin Buber . The magazines published by Gottfried Selig from 1768 to 1772 and from 1832 by Gabriel Riesser had the same name, but were designed completely differently. In Berlin, Kaznelson also became director of the Jewish publishing house , which he led to success with ambitious book projects. The five-volume Jewish Lexicon , the twelve-volume Talmud edition of Goldschmidt and Dubnow's ten-volume world history of the Jewish people should be mentioned here. In 1931 he founded a subsidiary of the Jewish publishing house in Palestine , The Jewish Publishing House Ltd.

In 1937 he emigrated to Jerusalem. From 1939 to 1940 he was the administrator of the of Robert Weltsch published weekly in Paris appearing World Jewish-Rundschau (JWR). The JWR was produced in Jerusalem, printed in Paris and from there distributed in over 60 countries until the paper was discontinued in May 1940. The predecessor of the JWR was the Berlin Jüdische Rundschau , which was banned in 1938 . The JWR was for a time the most important mouthpiece of German Zionism and a forum for collecting and supporting the scattered Jewish emigrants, designed by former representatives of the Zionist Association for Germany and editors of the Jüdischen Rundschau who emigrated to Palestine .

plant

Biographical manual on German Judaism

History of origin

Kaznelson's collection of Jews in the German Cultural Sector, which was completed at the end of 1934 and was conceived with apologetic intent and in defense of Jewish honor, is still of great value today . The book was based on an idea by Leopold Ullstein (1906–1995) in 1933. Ullstein was a younger member of the well-known newspaper and book publishing family and at the time a partner of the Rowohlt publishing house . He had worked out a draft for the book, handed over the processing of the individual subject areas to various employees and had approached Kaznelson in his capacity at the time as director of the Jewish publishing house. Kaznelson was convinced of the concept and immediately offered his cooperation.

How little Kaznelson had detached himself from the racial doctrine and its conclusions given by the National Socialist terminology is shown in his foreword to the 1st edition: The criterion that was considered to be decisive for the inclusion and selection of the personalities named in this work was not the mere denominational affiliation, but the racial affiliation that is now valid and legally established in Germany. The book therefore includes Jews as well as ethnic Jews in the scope of its considerations .

The book was banned by the Secret State Police in Berlin "to restore public security and order" and the existing copies were confiscated. The reason was as follows: “When reading the work, the impartial reader must get the impression that all of German culture up until the National Socialist Revolution was supported only by the Jews. The reader gets a completely wrong picture of the real activity, especially the corrosive activity of the Jews in German culture. In addition, well-known Jewish smugglers and speculators are presented to the reader as victims of their time and their dirty work is glossed over. In this regard I refer to page 170 and in particular to page 175 (Rotterdam brothers). Furthermore, Jews who are sufficiently well known as enemies of the state (Lassalle, Hilferding, Georg Bernhardt, Leopold Schwarzschild and others) are portrayed as outstanding carriers of 'German culture'. "

After the end of the Third Reich , the second edition of the book was published in 1959 as an encyclopedic handbook of German Jewry, which covers the period from emancipation to 1933. In the foreword written by Richard Willstätter for the first edition, it says: The present work seeks to paint a true historical picture of the part that German Jews played in the cultural achievements of their fatherland in the period from "Nathan the Wise" to their loss had equality .

The second edition, which Kaznelson could no longer complete himself, had a preliminary remark by Robert Weltsch . The third and final edition appeared in 1962 under the auspices of Weltsch.

Siegmund Kaznelson had given more than twenty years of his life for this work - for what he himself called the “final balance sheet of German Jewry” after the war.

The book has been carefully edited and, apart from minor errors, is very reliable.

Co-author

The book edition from 1959 is divided into 45 sections, each of which is responsible for a different author besides Kaznelson himself.

Beethoven research

After the Second World War , Kaznelson contributed significantly to the research of Beethoven's Immortal Beloved and the Distant Beloved , whose identity, long controversial in music literature, he stated with Josephine Brunsvik and Rahel Varnhagen . This work was originally intended as the first volume of a comprehensive work to be entitled The Walking Secret with the subtitle Facts and Prophecies from the Age of Jewish Emancipation .

Fonts

  • Siegmund Kaznelson (ed.): Jews in the German cultural area. A compilation with a foreword by Richard Willstätter , Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag 1934
    • 2nd, greatly expanded edition, 1959
    • 3rd edition with additions and corrections, 1962
  • Beethoven's distant and immortal lover . Zurich 1954
  • Siegmund Kaznelson (ed.): Jewish fate in German poems . 1959 (anthology)
  • The Palestine problem and its solution - a new scheme
  • The walking secret. Facts and Prophecies from the Age of Jewish Emancipation
  • Zionism and the League of Nations
  • Jewish fate in German poems. A final anthology

literature

  • Kaznelson, Siegmund. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 13: Jaco-Kerr. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-598-22693-4 , pp. 343-347.
  • Anatol Schenker: The Jewish publishing house 1902–1938. Between departure, flowering and destruction . Niemeyer, Tübingen 2003, ISBN 3484651415 , passim, in particular pp. 263-280
  • Kaznelson, Siegmund. In: Encyclopaedia Judaica , 1972, Volume 10, Sp. 860

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Tables of contents from the first edition 1916/1917 on the website of the Institute for Text Criticism, Heidelberg
  2. ↑ Thomas von der Osten-Sacken: Rise and fall of a Zionist newspaper. The Jüdische Welt-Rundschau . haGalil.com
  3. ↑ Avraham Barkai , Paul Mendes-Flohr : Departure and Destruction: 1918–1945 (= German-Jewish history in modern times. Vol. 4). Munich 1997, p. 189
  4. ^ Letter from the Secret State Police Office dated February 5, 1934, reference number Stapo.6.36 00 /223.34.
  5. ↑ Walter Abendroth: Late identification. Solved riddles about Beethoven's life. Die Zeit, March 11, 1954
personal data
SURNAME Kaznelson, Siegmund
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Katznelson, Siegmund
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli editor, publisher, Zionist, historian
DATE OF BIRTH May 17, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Warsaw
DATE OF DEATH March 20, 1959
Place of death Jerusalem