page_title: Ludwig Philippson
hierarchical_section_title: Ludwig Philippson
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Ludwig Philippson
context_page_description: Ludwig Philippson was a German rabbi and author, the son of Moses Philippson, a printer, writer, teacher, translator, publisher and a member of Haskala, an intellectual movement dedicated to the modernisation of Jewish life and culture.
  Luwig published his first effort, a translation of the prophets Hosea, Joel, Obadiah, and Nahum, when he was fifteen years old.
  He was educated at the gymnasium of Halle where his older brother Phöebus was studying medicine.
  1839 saw him continuing his education at the University of Berlin with a major in classical philology. As scholarships were not available to Jews and the family had exhausted their funds on educating Phöebus in medicine, Ludwig supported himself by tutoring and by doing literary work.
  In 1830 he translated and annotated the works of two Judæo-Greek poets of Alexandria. A philological treatise on medical terms which revealed his qualities as a scholar, and his versatility was emphasized by the publication in 1832 of a vindication of Spinoza.
  After graduating the University of Berlin at the age of 22 in 1833, he was invited to be a preacher/rabbi for the Magdeburg Jewish congregation.
context_section_description: Ludwig Philippson (28 December 1811, at Dessau – 29 December 1889, at Bonn) was a German rabbi and author, the son of Moses Philippson, a printer, writer, teacher, translator, publisher and a member of Haskala, an intellectual movement dedicated to the modernisation of Jewish life and culture.
  Luwig published his first effort (published under his brother's name), a translation of the prophets Hosea, Joel, Obadiah, and Nahum, when he was fifteen years old.
  He was educated at the gymnasium of Halle where his older brother Phöebus was studying medicine.
  1839 saw him continuing his education at the University of Berlin with a major in classical philology. As scholarships were not available to Jews and the family had exhausted their funds on educating Phöebus in medicine, Ludwig supported himself by tutoring and by doing literary work (some which became published).
  In 1830 he translated and annotated the works of two Judæo-Greek poets of Alexandria. A philological treatise on medical terms (Hyle Anthropine, 1831, etc.) which revealed his qualities as a scholar, and his versatility was emphasized by the publication in 1832 of a vindication of Spinoza.
  After graduating the University of Berlin at the age of 22 in 1833, he was invited to be a preacher/rabbi for the Magdeburg Jewish congregation. He was to remain in Magdeburg for the next 28 years.
  After being introduced to the Wolffstein family of five daughters in Magdeburg, he married the youngest, Julianne Wolffstein, in 1836. They were to have 3 daughters: Johanna, Bertha (1839) and Rosalie (1840). A son, Emil, was born in 1843 but died later in 1845.
  In 1837 he founded the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums (subtitled “a non-partisan organ for all Jewish interests”) in order to promote the interests of Judaism. It was the longest continuously published Jewish newspaper in Germany. Allgemeine is “German Jewry’s most important newspaper,” and is one of the most frequently cited sources of nineteenth-century German Jewry.
  Allgemeine merged with the CV-Zeitung, the official publication of the Central Association of German Jews until the Nazis closed it down in November 1938 
  The content of Allgemeine would be Jewish enlightenment and reform, the place of Jews in society and their emancipation. However, after the 1871 unification of German states and the establishment of the second Reich, Allgemeine began to respond to the pernicious increase in anti-Semitism. Philippson would continue to edit that journal until his death in 1889.
  Two years later (1839) he began an annotated German translation of the Hebrew Bible, which he completed in 1853. It was yet another German-Jewish translation of the Bible, one of perhaps 20 dating back to the Moses Mendelssohn translation of 1780. The differences in the version created by Philippson was in that each page had the original Hebrew text in one column with a German translation in another column, each page contained a textual explanation, not only with a commentary on the biblical material but also a cultural commentary. Most notably in one version were illustrations by Gustave Doré with his English wood engravings - something shocking in a Hebrew Bible that forbids such images of animals, temples, pagan ruins and gods and much more.  In keeping with the philosophy of his father Moses Philippson, a committed member of the Jewish intellectual movement Haskala dedicated to overcoming Jewish ignorance and religious formalism, Luwig's intention was that the bible would help to extend the minds of the Jewish readers to a wider world of experiences, lands, history.
  Sigmund Freud’s father, Jakob, knew the Hebrew Bible by heart and was a life long student of the Talmud. He eventually became influenced by the Jewish Enlightenment and subscribed to the publications of Ludwig and Phöebus Philippson. He substituted his classic Hebrew Bible with the illustrated and annotated version of the Hebrew/German Ludwig Philippson’s Bible. This was the Bible he used to teach his son. When Freud was 35, his father had the Bible rebound and presented it to his son wi
caption: Ludwig Philippson.
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