Tobias Kohen

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Tobias Kohen (1652-1729)

Tobias Kohen (born in Metz in 1652 ; died in Jerusalem in 1729 ) was a German-Polish doctor and writer. He later worked as a doctor in Constantinople, Venice and Palestine.

Life

His grandfather Eleazar Kohn was a doctor and came from Jerusalem, he settled in Kamjanez-Podilskyj (today: Ukraine). Tobias Kohen's father was also a doctor and was called Moses Kohn (born 1598; died May 10, 1659), he first settled in Narol - at that time a rich trading town in what is now Poland. He fled to France in 1648 when the city was sacked during the Khmelnytskyi Uprising , and then became a rabbi in Metz under the name Kohen-Nerol . After the early death of his father, his mother Feige (died 1666) married the Worms rabbi Samson Bacharach (born 1607; died 1670) in 1663 . The young Tobias then went back to Poland to study the Talmud . The Ottoman-Polish War 1672–1676 let him go to the University of Padua to study medicine . In 1678 he came to Germany with a fellow student Gabriel Felix Moschides for further training.

Here he was sponsored by Elector Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg. This caused Tobias Kohen and his friend Gabriel to be enrolled as medical students at the University of Frankfurt an der Oder . He later returned to Padua to do his doctorate there, as that was not yet possible for Jews in Frankfurt and in all of Germany at that time. After that, settled in Constantinople.

Here he became the personal physician of the Tatar prince Selim Girig Khan and the sultans Mehmed IV , Suleiman II , Ahmed II , Mustafa II and Ahmed III. In 1724 he went to Jerusalem, where he died in 1729.

Trivia

According to their own report, Kohen and Moschides were the first two Jewish students at a German university. Selma Stern  described Kohen as one of the most important Jewish scholars of  early modern  Prussia .

Works

Cover photo by Ma'aseh Toviyyah showing the body as a house

He was the first to describe the Weichselzopf ( plica polonica ) and published the medical and scientific encyclopedia:

  • Ma'aseh Toviyyah (maazsa Tobia) 1707, Venice (Bragadini), Jeßnitz 1721, Benjacob 1853

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ "Records of the franklin family and collaterals" Google Books
  2. ↑ Bibliotheca Judaica: bibliographical manual comprising the printed works of Jewish literature including the writings published on Jews and Judaism, edited according to the author's alphabetical order, with a history of the Jewish bibliography and with ..., Volume 3. Google Books
  3. ↑ Guido Kisch: The Prague University and the Jews, 1348-1848 . Google Books
  4. ^ Mordechai Breuer, Michael Graetz: Tradition and Enlightenment. 1600-1780 . In: German-Jewish history in modern times . tape 1 . Beck, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-406-39702-6 , pp. 230 f .
  5. ↑ Selma Stern: The time of Friedrich Wilhelm I. In: The Prussian State and the Jews . tape 2.1 . Mohr, Tübingen 1962, p. 167 .
personal data
SURNAME Kohen, Tobias
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Polish doctor and writer
DATE OF BIRTH 1652
PLACE OF BIRTH Metz
DATE OF DEATH 1729
Place of death Jerusalem