Moritz Steinschneider
Moritz Steinschneider | |
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Born | |
Died | 24 January 1907 | (aged 90)
Moritz Steinschneider (
Education
Moritz Steinschneider was born in
At the age of six Steinschneider was sent to the public school, which was still an uncommon choice for Jews in the Austro-Hungarian empire at the time; and at the age of thirteen he became the pupil of Rabbi Nahum Trebitsch, whom he followed to Mikulov, Moravia in 1832. The following year, in order to continue his Talmudic studies, he went to Prague, where he remained until 1836, attending simultaneously the lectures at the Normal School.
In 1836 Steinschneider went to Vienna to continue his studies, and, on the advice of his friend Leopold Dukes, he devoted himself especially to Oriental and Neo-Hebrew literatures, and most particularly to bibliography, which would become his principal focus. His countryman Abraham Benisch and Moravian Albert Löwy also were studying there at the time. In Lowy's room in 1838 they inaugurated among intimate (and lifelong) friends, a proto-Zionist society called "Die Einheit". The society's objective was to promote the welfare of the Jewish people, and in order to realize this objective, they advocated the settlement of Palestine by Austrian Jews. Their objective however, had to be kept secret for fear it would be put down by the government; England became regarded as the country likely to welcome the new movement. In 1841 Lowy was sent to London as an emissary of the Students' Jewish National Society;[1] Benisch also arrived in England the same year. Somewhat abandoned, Steinschneider would later withdraw from the society completely in 1842, viewing the scheme as impractical compared to his studies.
As a Jew on the continent, Steinschneider was prevented from entering the Oriental Academy; and for the same reason he was unable even to obtain permission to make extracts from the Hebrew books and manuscripts in the Imperial Library, Vienna. In spite of these drawbacks he continued his studies in
University career
For political reasons he was compelled to leave Vienna and decided to go to Berlin; but, being unable to obtain the necessary passport, he remained in
Having at length secured the necessary passport, Steinschneider in 1839 proceeded to Berlin, where he attended the university lectures of
On 17 March 1848 Steinschneider, after many difficulties, succeeded in becoming a
In 1850 he received from the
His field of activity
He chose fields far removed from that of theology proper, e.g.,
One of his most important original works is Die Hebräischen Übersetzungen des Mittelalters und die Juden als Dolmetscher: Ein Beitrag zur Literaturgeschichte des Mittelalters; meistenteils nach Handschriftlichen Quellen, (The Hebrew Translations of the Middle Ages and the Jews as Interpreters: a contribution to the literary history of the Middle Ages, mostly according to handwritten sources) published in Berlin, 1893, planned in 1849. While writing on Jewish literature for Ersch and Gruber's Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste (1844–47), he became conscious of the lack of sources on the influence of foreign works on Jewish literature. He determined to supplement the monographs of Huet, Jourdain, Wüstenfeld, and Johann Georg Wenrich on the history of translations by one having the Neo-Hebrew literature as its subject. In 1880 the Institut de France offered a prize for a complete bibliography of the Hebrew translations of the Middle Ages; Steinschneider for some time had tried to raise money for his work on translations, and his associates in Paris, especially Ernst Renan and Hartwig Derenbourg, were able to convince the Institut to devote the annual prize to that topic. Shortly thereafter, the Institut de France offered the prix Brunet for a work on the translations into Arabic from the Greek, which Steinschneider also won, but he used the prize money from both awards to prepare the German enlarged version of the first French Mémoire, which he self-published in 1893; he then published several articles based on the second Mémoire.
Steinschneider wrote with ease in German, Latin, French, Italian, and Hebrew; his style was not popular, intended only "for readers who know something, and who wish to increase their knowledge"; but, curiously enough, he did not hesitate to write, together with
A revision, English translation, and updating of the Hebrew Translations of the Middle Ages is currently under publication. Two volumes have already been published.*
Works
The following is a list of the more important independent works of Steinschneider, arranged in chronological order:
- 'Etz Chayyim, Ahron ben Elias aus Nikomedien des Karäer's System der Religionsphilosophie, etc., edited together with Franz Delitzsch. Leipzig, 1841.
- Die Fremdsprachlichen Elemente im Neuhebräischen. Prague, 1845.
- Imre Binah: Spruchbuch für Jüdische Schulen, edited together with A. Horwitz. Berlin, 1847.
- Manna (adaptations of Hebrew poetry from the eleventh to the thirteenth century). Berlin, 1847.
- Jüdische Literatur, in Ersch and Gruber, "Encyc." section ii, part 27, pp. 357–376, Leipzig, 1850 (English version, by William Spottiswoode, Jewish Literature from the Eighth to the Eighteenth Century, London, 1857; Hebrew version, by Wilna, 1899).
- Catalogus Librorum Hebræorum in Bibliotheca Bodleiana. Berlin, 1852–60.
- Die Schriften des Dr. Zunz. Berlin, 1857.
- Alphabetum Siracidis ... in Integrum Restitutum et Emendatum, etc. Berlin, 1858.
- Catalogus Codicum Hebræorum Bibliothecæ Academiæ Lugduno-Batavæ (with 10 lithograph tables containing specimens from Karaite authors). Leiden, 1858.
- Bibliographisches Handbuch über die Theoretische und Praktische Literatur für Hebräische Sprachkunde. Leipsic, 1859 (with corrections and additions, ib. 1896).
- Reshit ha-Limmud, a systematic Hebrew primer for D. Sassoon's Benevolent Institution at Bombay. Berlin, 1860.
- Zur Pseudoepigraphischen Literatur, Insbesondere der Geheimen Wissenschaften des Mittelalters. Aus Hebräischen und Arabischen Quellen. Berlin, 1862.
- Alfarabi des Arabischen Philosophen Leben und Schriften, etc. St. Petersburg, 1869.
- Die Hebräischen Handschriften der Königlichen Hof- und Staatsbibliothek in München (in the "Sitzungsberichte der-Philosophisch-Historischen Klasse der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in München"). Munich, 1875.
- Polemische und Apologetische Literatur in Arabischer Sprache Zwischen Muslimen, Christen und Juden. Leipzig, 1877.
- Catalog der Hebräischen Handschriften in der Stadtbibliothek zu Hamburg. Hamburg, 1878.
- Die Arabischen Übersetzungen aus dem Griechischen. Berlin, 1889–96.
- Die Hebräischen Übersetzungen des Mittelalters und die-Juden als Dolmetscher, etc. Berlin, 1893.
- Moritz Steinschneider. The Hebrew Translations of the Middle Ages and the Jews as Transmitters. Vol. I. Preface. General Remarks. Jewish Philosophers. Springer Dordrecht, 2013. Vol. II. Encyclopedias. Logic, Christian Philosophers.Springer, Dordrecht, 2022. (Vol. I edited by Charles Manekin, Y. Tzvi Langermann, and Hans Hinrich Biesterfeldt; vol. II edited by Charles H. Manekin and Hans Hinrich Biesterfeldt.)
- Verzeichniss der Hebräischen Handschriften der Königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin. Part i, Berlin, 1897; part ii, ib. 1901.
- Die Arabische Literatur der Juden. Frankfurt am Main, 1902.
Besides a great number of contributions, in widely differing forms, to the works of others (see Steinschneider Festschrift, pp. xi–xiv), the following independent essays of Steinschneider deserve special mention:
- "Ueber die Volksliteratur der Juden", in R. Gosche's Archiv für Literaturgeschichte, 1871:
- "Constantinus Africanus und seine arabischen Quellen", in Virchows Archiv für pathol. Anatomie, vol. xxxvii;
- "Donnolo: Pharmakologische Fragmente aus dem 10. Jahrhundert", ib.;
- "Die Toxologischen Schriften der Araber bis zum Ende des XII. Jahrhunderts", ib. lii (also printed separately);
- "Gifte und Ihre Heilung: Eine Abhandlung des Moses Maimonides", ib. lvii;
- "Gab Es eine Hebräische Kurzschrift?" in Archiv für Stenographie, 1877 (reprint of the article "Abbre viaturen", prepared by Steinschneider for the proposed "Real-Encyclopädie des Judenthums", see above);
- "Jüdische Typographie und Jüdischer Buchhandel" with D. Cassel, in Ersch and Gruber, Encyc. section ii, part 28, pp. 21–94;
- "Die Metaphysik des Aristoteles in Jüdischer Bearbeitung", in the Zunz Jubelschrift, 1886;
- "Jehuda Mosconi", in Berliner's Magazin, 1876;
- "Islam und Judenthum", ib. 1880;
- "Ueber Bildung und den Einfluss des Reisens auf Bildung" (two lectures delivered in the Verein Junger Kaufleute; reproduced in the Virchow-Wattenbach "Sammlung Gemeinverständlicher Wissenschaftlicher Vorträge", 1894);
- "Lapidarien: Ein Culturgeschichtlicher Versuch", in the Kohut Memorial Volume, 1896;
- "Jüdisch-Deutsche Literatur", in Neuman's Serapeum, 1848–49;
- "Jüdisch-Deutsche Literatur und Jüdisch-Deutsch", ib. 1864, 1866, 1869;
- articles on Arabia, Arabic, Qur'an, the Muslim religion, and Muslim sects in the second edition (1839–43) of Pierer's Universallexikon;
- "Letteratura Italiana dei Giudei", in Il Vessillo Israelitico, 1877–80;
- "Letteratura Anti-giudaica in Lingua Italiana", ib. 1881–83;
- "Zur Geschichte der Übersetzungen aus dem Indischen in's Arabische", in Z. D. M. G. 1870–71;
- "Hebräische Drucke in Deutschland", in Ludwig Geiger's Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland, 1886–92;
- "Abraham Judaeus-Savasorda und Schlömilch's Zeitschrift für Mathematik und Physik, 1867;
- "Abraham ibn Ezra", ib. 1880.
Characteristic is Steinschneider's philosophic testament in the preface to his Arabische Literatur der Juden, in which he who laid the main foundation of the study of Jewish literature and history did not hesitate, at the age of eighty-six, to formulate an agnostic profession de foi.
References
Citations
- ^ Nahum Sokolow, History of Zionism: 1600–1918, Chapter 40, (1919)
Sources
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Isidore Singer (1901–1906). "Steinschneider, Moritz". In Singer, Isidore; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.
- Constantin von Wurzbach: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich. Vienna 1856–1891.
- Henry Samuel Morais, Eminent Israelites of the Nineteenth Century, Philadelphia, 1880;
- Keneset Yisrael (year-book), 1886;
- Abraham Berliner, Catalogue of Steinschneider's Works, 1886;
- Meyer Kayserling, in Allg. Zeit. des Jud. 27 March 1896;
- G. A. Kohut, Bibliography of the Writings of Prof. M. Steinschneider, in Festschrift zum 80sten Geburtstage Steinschneider's, 1896
- idem, in The American Hebrew, 1896.
External links
- Encyclopaedia Judaica (2007) entry on "Steinschneider, Moritz" by Menahem Schmelzer and Gregor Pelger (2nd ed.).
- Literature by and about Moritz Steinschneider in University Library JCS Frankfurt am Main: Digital Collections Judaica
- Descendants of Rabbi Gabriel Steinschneider
- Biography of Moritz Steinscheider
- Digitized works by Moritz Steinschneider at the Leo Baeck Institute, New York
- Hebraeische Bibliographie (B93), a digitized periodical edited by Steinschneider, at the Leo Baeck Institute, New York(in German)