Ismar Elbogen (1874 – 1943) kwam als eerste met een monografie over Spinoza's TIE
Een voetnoot bij een mooi gedeelte in een tekst van Pierre-François Moreau, “Spinoza’s reception and influence”, het 10e en laatste hoofdstuk van Don Garrett (Ed.) The Cambridge Cmpanion to spinza (1996), over de invloed die Schopenhauers lezing van de TIE op latere lezers had, bracht mij tot dit blog. Die voetnoot (nr. 21) luidt: “The first work completeley devoted to the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect was Elbogen 1898, but all the great Spinzoa scholars of the end of the nineteenthand beginning of the twentieth century devoted a chapter to it.” Dit deed me dus op zoek gaan naar deze Ismar Elbogen, ‘ein deutsch-jüdischer Gelehrter und Rabbiner,’ belangrijk lid van de Lehranstalt für Wissenschaft des Judentums te Berlijn, waaraan hij van 1902 – 1933 les gaf. Het bovenvermelde werk was zijn dissertatie:
Ismar Elbogen, Der Tractatus de intellectus emendatione und seine Stellung in der Philosophie Spinozas. Breslau: Preuss und Jünger, 1898 – in 2015 gedigitaliseerd op archive.org
Op de laatste bladzijde staat zijn levensbeschrijving in eigen bewoordingen afgedrukt:
Ismar Elbogen received his Ph.D. after attending both Breslau University and the Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau. From 1899-1902, Elbogen served as a lecturer in history and Bible exegesis for the Collegio Rabbinico Italiano, in Florence, Italy.
In 1904, Elbogen returned to Berlin to become professor of history and Bible exegesis at the Höchschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums. The Höchschule was one of the most well-known and respected rabinnical training schools in Europe. In 1919, Elbogen was given the title of professor by the Prussian government. Elbogen observed the rise of anti-Semitism in his native land and in 1931 wrote a letter to a national conference of Jewish leaders describing the discrimination and subjugation of Jews. He sent his children away- his daughter to Palestine and his son to the United States. Elbogen himself left Germany in 1938 with a joint appointment to four United States Jewish universities (Dropsie College, Hebrew Union College, Jewish Institute of Religion, Jewish Theological Seminary), acknowledging that Jewish culture was no longer possible under the Nazi regime in Germany.
Elbogen was strongly committed to the Jewish lay community. He belonged to the Union of Prussian Jewish Communities and the B'nai B'rith. Elbogan was also an early intellectual leader of the World Union for Progressive Judaism.
Elbogen was a noted scholar in many fields of study, but was particularly known for his contributions to the history of Jewish liturgy. His Der jüdische Gottesdienst in seiner geschichtlichen Enwicklung (1913) remained a standard work twenty years later. He wrote several volumes supplementing the Graetz history on German Jewry for the Jewish Publication Society of America. Elbogan also wrote several individual community histories. He edited the Encyclopaedia Judaica and the Germania Judaica.
Ismar Elbogen died suddenly on 1 August 1943. He married Regina Klemperer (sister of conductor Otto Klemperer) and had two children: Herman Z. Elbogen and Shoshanah Rosenberg. [van hier]
Elbogen schreef verder niets meer over Spinoza en ontwikkelde zich meer en meer tot historicus van het jodendom.
Michael Brenner schreef een interessant artikel, “An Unknown Project of a World Jewish History in Weimar Germany: Reflections onJewish Historiography in the 1920s” [In: Modern Judaism, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Oct., 1993), pp. 249-267]. This article is mainly concerned with a project that never materialized yet deserves attention: a plan for the writing of a twelve-volume History of the Jews from the Earliest Times until the Present Age, to be edited by the German-Jewish historian Ismar Elbogen during the late 1920s.
Van uitvoering van dit plan is het dus niet gekomen, maar wel schreef Elbogen een aanvulling op de vele geschiedenisdelen van Graetz:
ELBOGEN, Ismar, Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland. -Berlin : Lichtenstein, 1935. - 319 p. Dit werd enige jaren later vertaald in het Engels:
ELBOGEN, ISMAR. A Century of Jewish Life. Translated by MOSES HADAS. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, I944. 682 pages text+I32 pages notes, Index, and Bibliography. "Ismar Elbogen: An Appreciation," by ALEX- ANDER MARX, xi-xx pages.
Het korte review van SIDNEY S. TEDESCHE in The Journal of Religion, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Apr., 1945), p. 152, spreekt hierover veel waardering uit:
It is easily understood why this monumental authoritative work is dedicated to the Dropsie College, the Hebrew Union College, the Jewish Institute of Religion, and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. No greater, more objective, or more thorough scholar could have been found than the lovable Ismar Elbogen, who recently passed on. Dr. Elbogen has taken over the loom of history from the period immediately after the Damascus Blood Accusation (I840) and the Breslau Conference of I846, where Graetz ended his great work, and has woven a tapestry of the last fateful one hundred years. Dr. Elbogen's survey is based on the thesis that "optimism, idealism and liberalism built up a world and made space for the Jews (I848-I880). Pessimism, materialism and nationalism undermined that world (I88o-1914) and headed Europe along with its Jews to destruction (1914-I939). We are now standing at a turning point which is to determine whether the world is to be delivered wholly to the powers of destruction or to be built up anew upon a foundation of justice." Here is the romantic record of a people whose fate is inextricably woven with that of all ofher peoples; for the welfare of society depends on the welfare of each entity in the family of nations.
Through a study of Israel's great galaxy of men of genius like Gabriel Riesser, Sir Moses Montefiore, Baron Maurice de Hirsch, Ahad Ha'Am, Theodore Herzl, Louis Marshall, Rabbi Leo Baeck, and others "who nameless and humble the straight hard pathway trod," we have a complete picture, not only of individuals, but of the bewildering maze and vagaries of Jewish life, literature, tendencies, and motifs. Dr. Elbogen gives a sane, well-balanced, sympathetic appreciation of divergent viewpoints on almost all controversial questions, such as Zionism, Nationalism, American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Conference, educational trends, liberal and conservative tendencies. Here is a mine of authoritative and completely documented information.-.
_______________________
Bronnen
de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ismar_Elbogen
Voor zijn genealogie: zie hier
Guide to the Ismar Elbogen Collection, 1842-1974 - Leo Baeck Institute New York
Ismar Elbogen Papers [met biografie boven deels overgenomen]
Ismar Elbogen, 1874-1943 : a bibliography.- [S. 1.] : [s.n.], 1946. - p. 69-94.
Guy Miron, The Waning
of Emancipation: Jewish History, Memory, and the Rise of Fascism in Germany,
France, and Hungary. Wayne State University Press, 2011
Heeft in hoofdstuk 2 een interessante tekst over Elbogen – books.google
John M. Spalek, Sandra H. Hawrylchak, Guide to the Archival Materials of the German-speaking Emigration to the United States after 1933, Volume 2. Walter de Gruyter, 1992 – books.google
Catherine Epstein, A Past Renewed: A Catalog of German-Speaking Refugee Historians in the United States After 1933. Cambridge University Press, 1993 – books.google Hier overzicht van zijn belangrijkste publicaties.
Andreas Gotzmann & Christian Wiese (Ed.), Modern Judaism and Historical Consciousness:
Identities, Encounters, Perspectives. BRILL, 2007
Chapter 13: Histgoriography in a cultural Ghetto. Jewish historians in Nazi Germany. Gaat uitgebreid
in op Elbogen – books.google
Eerste foto van: Vanderbilt's Judaica Collection : 70 Years in the Making [cf.]
Laatste foto van hier
