קהילת יהודי מארבורג, גרמניה

MARBURG, MARPUCH

שמות משפחה נובעים מכמה מקורות שונים. לעיתים לאותו שם קיים יותר מהסבר אחד. שם משפחה זה הוא מסוג השמות הטופונימיים (שם הנגזר משם של מקום כגון עיירה, עיר, מחוז או ארץ). שמות אלו, אשר נובעים משמות של מקומות, לא בהכרח מעידים על קשר היסטורי ישיר לאותו מקום, אבל יכולים להצביע על קשר בלתי ישיר בין נושא השם או אבותיו לבין מקום לידה, מגורים ארעיים, אזור מסחר או קרובי משפחה.

מרבורג הוא שמה של עיירב בהסן, גרמניה,תחילתה של הקהילה היהודית במקום הזה מתועדת בראשית המאה ה-14; והוא גם שמה הגרמני של העיר מאריבור בסלובניה; היישוב היהודי במקום מתועד במאה ה-12.

מרבורג מתועד כשם משפחה יהודי עם הרב אנשל מרפורג אשר חי במאה ה-15.

מרפוך מתועד כשם משפחה יהודי עם הרופא אהרון מרפוך באיטליה במאה ה-17. אישים מוכרים שנשאו את שם המשפחה היהודי מרבורגב כוללים את הרופא האוסטרי אואט מרבורד (1948-1874).

MARBURGER, MARPURGER

שמות משפחה נובעים מכמה מקורות שונים. לעיתים לאותו שם קיים יותר מהסבר אחד. שם משפחה זה הוא מסוג השמות הטופונימיים (שם הנגזר משם של מקום כגון עיירה, עיר, מחוז או ארץ). שמות אלו, אשר נובעים משמות של מקומות, לא בהכרח מעידים על קשר היסטורי ישיר לאותו מקום, אבל יכולים להצביע על קשר בלתי ישיר בין נושא השם או אבותיו לבין מקום לידה, מגורים ארעיים, אזור מסחר או קרובי משפחה.

מרבורג הוא שמה של עיירב בהסן, גרמניהתחילתה של הקהילה היהודית במקום הזה מתועדת בראשית המאה ה-14; והוא גם שמה הגרמני של העיר מאריבור בסלובניה; היישוב היהודי במקום מתועד במאה ה-12. כשם משפחה יהודי, מרבור מתועד בשנת 1445 עם אהרון פון מרבורג; ובמאה ה-15 עם הרב אנשל מרםורג.

מרפוך מתועד כשם משפחה יהודי עם הרופא אהרון מרפוך באיטליה במאה ה-17. פירוש הסופית הגרמנית / יידיש "-אר" הוא "מ-", "מוצאו מ-". מרפורגר, שפירושו "ממרבורג" בגרמנית, מתועד בשנת 1715 עם יעקובוס מרפורגר.

ספורטאים יהודים ונוצרים בתחרות ספורט,
מרבורג, גרמניה, 1931.
(המרכז לתיעוד חזותי ע"ש אוסטר, בית התפוצות,
באדיבות מר. אליעזר כץ)

Hans-Joachim Schoeps (1909-1980), historian and philosopher, born in Berlin, Germany, son of a physician. He became professor and chair of religious and intellectual history at the University of Erlangen, Germany. Schoeps studied religion, history and literature at the universities of Berlin, Marburg, Heidelberg and Leipzig.

Schoeps had a difficult childhood during World War I and afterwards, like many other Germans yearned for a genuine Teutonic response to the challenges of the modern era, a commitment to the group over the individual and a belief in the need for strong charismatic leadership. Deeply attached to Prussian values he felt at home in the nationalistic youth groups of the day. Many Jews in the Weimar Republic agreed with him - they were motivated by a desire for acceptance, to be 'more German than the Germans' as well as by a feeling of genuine pride in their fatherland and its achievements. And if some 'right wing' racist elements did not wish to accept 'un-German' Jews into their movement, then Schoeps was ready to form his own 'parallel' movement for the Jewish youth who shared his views.

Schoeps' "Deutsche Vortrupp" ("Jewish Vanguard") was such a movement and he tried desperately to negotiate with the Nazis to have it recognized and accepted, and so prepare for the day when Nazi anti-Semitism was abate sufficiently to allow Jews to enter the German 'community of the people'. In the meantime he refused to contemplate either opposition to Nazism or emigration. His solution was to show the Nazis that he and his group were ready to be Germans to the end and on one occasion, when criticised by English Jewish groups, he stated that “we will not be released from our oath of loyalty to the 'volk' and Fatherland even if injustice is committed against us”. He was not only regularly rebuffed by the Nazis, he was interrogated and arrested by the Gestapo on several occasions.

He finally concluded that he had to leave the country. He tried to find work outside Germany, but on account of his opinions no institution was willing to offer him employment. His attempts to flee became increasingly desperate. Finally in 1938, shortly after Kristallnacht, a Nazi acquaintance arranged for him to able to obtain a seat on an aircraft leaving for Sweden, where his parents had earlier sought refuge. For the duration of the war he remained in exile in Sweden where he was considered an outcast, regarded as an "antidemocratic" and "nationalistic German".

In 1946 Schoeps returned to Germany where he was accepted to join the staff of the University of Marburg. Later he started to teach at the University of Erlangen, first as a lecturer, then as an associate professor. He was later appointed professor and chairman of the Seminar for Early Modern History at the University of Erlangen.

Schoeps, both of whose parents had been murdered by the Nazis, had not basically changed his extremely conservative political views, was convinced that in order to ensure its survival and future greatness the monarchy should be restored in Germany. In 1951 he lobbied for the reestablishment of historical Prussia. Schoeps wrote numerous studies of religious history and philosophy of Judaism. In 1969 he was awarded the "Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation Award". Schoeps' Institute for Religion and Intellectual History at the University of Erlingen, which was originally established as an act of reparation, ceased to function after a time and was converted into a concordat Chair.

His works include "A History of Jewish Philosophy of Religion in Modern Times" (1935), "Judeo-Christian religious debate in the 19th Century" (1937), "Great religious founders and their teachings" (1950), "The other Prussia" (1952), "Religions. Nature and History" (1961), "It was Prussia" (1964), "Jewish Christianity" (1964), "Prussia. History of a State" (1965), "The forgotten God. Franz Kafka and the tragic position of the modern Jew" (2006).

Hermann Cohen (1842-1918) Philosopher. The son of a cantor in Koswig, he received a Jewish and general education and studied at the University of Berlin where he fell under the influence of Kantian philosophy. Invited to teach at the University of Marburg, he was soon a full professor. He married the daughter of the famous composer of cantoral music, Louis Lewandowski. Cohen taught in Marburg until 1912 and was an outstanding figure in Jewish intellectual life. He founded a group of philosophers known as the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism, which advocated a radical idealism rooted in reason. His early writings on Judaism advocated assimilation but from the 1890s he developed a warm commitment and after his retirement, when he moved to Berlin, he became deeply involved in Jewish thought and wrote a work which deeply influenced, among others, Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Buber.

Isaac (Isaak) Breuer (1883-1946), lawyer and leader of the German Orthodoxy, born in Papa, Hungary (then part of Austria-Hungary), where his father, Solomon Breuer was rabbi. Breuer was taken as a child to Frankfurt am Main, where he studied in the yeshiva founded by his father. Breuer studied law and philosophy at the Universities of Strasbourg, France, and Marburg, Germany. He practiced as a lawyer and became involved in communal life, becoming a leader of Agudat Israel.

While rejecting secular Jewish nationalism, he advocated reconstruction activities in Eretz Israel. In 1936 he settled in Jerusalem where he headed the Poalei Agudat Israel movement. A prolific author, his writings developed the religious thought of his grandfather, Shimshon Rafael Hirsch. Breuer's early works were in German but after settling in the Land of Israel, wrote in Hebrew.

His publications include "Lehre, Gesetz und Nation" ("Teaching, Law, and Nation"); "Die Welt als Schoepfung und Natur" ("The World as Creation and Nature"); "Kampf um Gott" ("Fight for God"); "Das Judenproblem; Messiasspuren" ("The Jewish Problem", 1921), in opposition to political Zionism, and expressing his religious ideal of Jewish restoration. In 1939 he contributed a chapter, "Challenge to Israel," to Leo Jung's "Judaism in a Changing World".

Breuer was a member of the Kant Society

Isaac Ruelf (1831-1902), rabbi and Zionist, born in Rauisch-Holzhausen near Marburg, Germany. He was ordained a rabbi in 1857 and received his secular education from the universities of Rostock and Marburg, receiving a Ph.D. degree. He then became rabbi in Memel and in this post engaged in relief work for Russian Jewry and immigrants from eastern Europe. In 1883 he wrote a treatise Arukhat Bat Ami which anticipated the ideas of political Zionism. With the rise of Herzl he joined the Zionist movement, attending the first five Zionist Congresses. He spent his last years in Bonn, actively working for the dissemination of Zionism in Germany. Ruelf wrote a number of philosophical works.

Salomon Herxheimer (1801-1884), rabbi, born in Dotzheim near Wiesbaden, Germany. At the age of 13 he entered the yeshiva in Mainz, also studying secular subjects. From 1818 to1824 he was a private tutor at Herborn and then attended the universities of Marburg and Goettingen. He was appointed religious instructor in Eschwege where he became district rabbi in 1830. Later Herzheimer was rabbi of Anhalt-Bernburg. He was a supporter of moderate Reform and an advocate of confirmation. He encouraged the development of agriculture among Jews and supported Jews living in Eretz Israel. His writings include a translation of the Bible into Germany, with commentary, a popular work of religious instruction, and a Hebrew grammar.

Ernst Hellinger (1883-1950), mathematician, born in Striegau, Silesia, Germany (Strzegom, Poland). He grew up in Breslau (now Wroclaw) and then studied at the Universities of Heidelberg, Breslau and Goettingen where he earned a doctorate in 1907. He became a lecturer at the University of Marburg, Germany, in 1909, and then at the University of Frankfurt am Main, in 1914, holding that position until 1933. Following the rise to power of the Nazis, he was expelled from Frankfurt University in 1936. Two days after the Pogrom Night in November 1938, he was arrested and detained for after six weeks. His immigration to the United States was made possible only through the intervention of his sister, who had already emigrated. In his final years, Hellinger taught at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. For him, there was no longer any question of returning to Germany.

In Goettingen he worked primarily on integral equations and on questions that had developed from this work. The article he wrote with Otto Toeplitz, Integralgleichungen und Gleichungen mit unendlich vielen Unbekannten ("Integral equations and equations with an infinite number of unknowns"), published in Enzyclopedie der Mathematischen Wissenschaften in 1027, summarized what was then known in this area, including an account of new methods of functional analysis.

Kurt Wilhelm Sebastian Hensel (1861-1941), mathematician, best known for his theory of p-adic numbers, born in Koenigsberg, Germany (now Kaliningrad, Russia) into Jewish families that converted to Christianity: his paternal grandparents were the painter Wilhelm Hensel and his wife the composer Fanny Mendelssohn. In 1870 the family moved to Berlin. Hensel studied at the Universities of Bonn and Berlin earning a PhD in 1886. He became a lecturer and then an associate professor at the University of Berlin, working there until 1901, when he became a professor at the University of Marburg, serving in this position until 1930. Hensel created an arithmetic theory of algebraic function fields which was presented for the first time in summary form in Theorie der algebraischen Funktionen ("Theory of algebraic functions", 1902), a monograph co-authored by Georg Landsberg. The theory of p-adic numbers was published in 1908. His works include Theorie der algebraischen Zahlen (1908), and Zahlentheorie (1913). In 1917 he served as President of the German Association of Mathematicians. Hensel died in Marburg.