Salomon, Gotthold

First German Sermon.

German rabbi; born Nov. 1, 1784, at Sondersleben, Anhalt; died Nov. 17, 1862, in Hamburg. His first teacher in Bible and Talmud was his uncle R. Meister Heinemann. In 1800 he went to the school of R. Joseph Wolf at Dessau. In 1801 he became tutor in the Kalman family, and in the following year was appointed teacher at the Jewish Free School, subsequently called "Franzschule für Hebräische und Deutsche Sprache," where he had as colleagues David Fränkel and Moses Philippson. He delivered his first public discourse, "Ueber die Entfaltung des Inneren Lebens Durch die Sprache," in 1806, on the occasion of a school examination. It was printed in the periodical "Sulamith," which Salomon was then editing, and of which six volumes appeared. In 1815 he was invited to deliver a sermonat the Beer private synagogue at Berlin. It should be noted that he devoted much time to the study of the sermons of famous contemporary Christian preachers, which influenced considerably his own homiletic methods. In 1818 he was called as preacher to the newly founded congregation at Hamburg, as associate to Eduard Kley. In 1822 he visited Copenhagen, where he preached with great success; but he declined a call to that city. In 1835 he engaged in polemics with the theologian Hartmann of Rostock, who publicly opposed the emancipation of the Jews, Salomon answering with his "Briefe an Hartmann." In 1837 he issued the "Deutsche Volks- und Schulbibel für Israeliten" with the assistance of Isaac Noah Mannheimer and with the financial support of the Hamburg philanthropist Solomon Heine, uncle of Heinrich Heine. In 1841 the famous temple controversy ("Tempelstreit") arose in Hamburg on the occasion of the publication of Salomon's prayer-book, which was put under the ban by Ḥakam Isaac Bernays. To this period belongs his defense of the Jews against Bruno Bauer. Between 1843 and 1845 he took part in the rabbinical conferences at Leipsic, Brunswick, Frankfort-on-the-Main, and Breslau. In 1843 he celebrated his twenty-fifth anniversary as preacher at Hamburg, and soon after dedicated the new temple in the Poolstrasse. He resigned his office in 1858.

Gotthold Salomon.Works.

Salomon, who was one of the most eloquent Jewish preachers of the nineteenth century, was often invited to deliver discourses in various cities, e.g., in London, Frankfort, Vienna, and Prague. Aside from his polemical writings, a great number of sermons and liturgical poems which were included in the hymnal of the Hamburg Temple, Salomon published: a German translation, with notes, of the Minor Prophets (1806); a translation, with notes, of the "Shemonah Peraḳim" of Maimonides (1809); "Selimas Stunden der Weihe," a devotional book for young women; and a monograph on the occasion of the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Moses Mendelssohn (1829).

Bibliography:

  * Phoebus Philippson, Biographische Skizzen;
  * Kayserling, Bibliothek Jüdischer Kanzelredner;
  * D. Leimdörfer, in Allg. Zeit. des Jud. 1902.



S. D. L.