Güdemann, Moritz

Austrian rabbi; born at Hildesheim, Germany, Feb. 19, 1835. He was educated at Breslau (Ph.D. 1858), and took his rabbinical diploma (1862) at the Jewish Theological Seminary of that city. In the latter year he was called to the rabbinate of Magdeburg; in 1866 he went to Vienna as preacher, where he became rabbi in 1868, and chief rabbi in 1890. Güdemann has especially distinguished himself by his investigations into the history of Jewish education and culture. He has published: "Die Geschichte der Juden in Magdeburg," 1865; "Die Neugestaltung des Rabbinenwesens," 1866; "Sechs Predegten," 1867; "Jüdisches im Christenthum des Reformationszeitalters," 1870; "Jüdisches Unterrichtswesen Während der Spanisch-Arabischen Periode," 1873; "Religionsgeschichtliche Studien," 1876; "Gesch. des Erziehungswesens und der Kultur der Abendländischen Juden," 3 vols., 1880-88; "Nächstenliebe," 1890; "Quellenschriften zur Gesch. des Unterrichts und der Erziehung bei den Deutschen Juden," 1894; "Das Judenthum in Seinen Grundzügen und nach Seinen Geschichtlichen Grundlagen Dargestellt," 1902; "Das Judenthum im Neutestamentlichen Zeitalter in Christlicher Darstellung," 1903. In his "Nationaljudentum" (Vienna, 1897) he wrote against the tendencies of Zionism to lay more stress on the national than on the religious character of Judaism, for which he was severely attacked by the friends of the Zionist movement. As far back as 1871, however, he had strongly protested against the proposal of the Jewish community of Vienna to strike from the prayer-book all passages referring to the return of the Jews to the Holy Land (compare his sermon "Jerusalem, die Apfer und die Orgel," 1871), and had even gone so far as to threaten to resign from the board of trustees if his protest should remain unheeded.

Moritz Güdemann.S. L. B.