Simon Deutsch

Simon Deutsch (Hebrew: שִׁמְעוֹן דויטש‎; c. 1822 – 24 March 1877) was an Austrian Jewish bibliographer, businessman, and revolutionary. He was an important member of the First International and a veteran of the Paris Commune.[2]

Simon Deutsch
Print of Simon Deutsch from Le Monde illustré, 10 June 1876.
Bornc. 1822 (1822)
Vienna, Austrian Empire
Died(1877-03-24)March 24, 1877 (aged 54)[1]
Constantinople, Ottoman Empire
Burial placePère Lachaise Cemetery

Biography

Simon Deutsch was born in Vienna in 1822 to parents from Nikolsburg, Moravia[3] He studied at the Nikolsburg yeshiva, and later completed courses in philosophy and pedagogy in accordance with an 1842 law aimed at modernising the Moravian rabbinate.[4]

As a young man he devoted himself to Hebrew studies in Vienna. He catalogued in collaboration with A. Kraft the Hebrew manuscripts in the possession of the Vienna Imperial Library, and published a medieval grammatical work in 1845. From 1844 to 1848, Deutsch was a contributor to Der Orient, a Leipzig-based German—Jewish weekly; and from 1846 to 1848, he wrote for Sonntagsblätter, a Viennese literary and cultural journal, founded and edited by Ludwig August von Frankl. Alongside writer Franz Gräffer, Deutsch co-published Jüdischer Plutarch in 1848, which contained biographies of prominent Jewish poets, painters, scientists, mathematicians, doctors, philosophers and educators.[3][5] That same year, he became a member of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft, one of the first scholarly associations to welcome Jews into its ranks.[4]

In 1848 Deutsch sided with the revolution, escaping after its collapse to France.[5] In Paris, through the assistance of Mme. Strauss, the friend of Börne, he entered upon a business career, in which he was successful. He assumed a prominent position in the Finance Department of the Paris Commune.[5] After the fall of the Commune in May 1871, Deutsch was denounced to the government as a Communist. He was arrested and imprisoned at Versailles, and only the efforts of Austrian ambassador Richard von Metternich saved his life.[4]

In 1875 Deutsch began publishing the Maḥberet of Menaḥem ben Saruq in fascicles with annotations and translations into Yiddish, based on a manuscript in the Imperial Library of Vienna, but the work was left incomplete.[6] Towards the end of his life Deutsch was a supporter of the Young Turks movement.[7] He died unexpectedly while in Constantinople on business, and was interred at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

References

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Singer, Isidore; Rhine, A. (1903). "Deutsch, Simon". In Singer, Isidore; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia. 4. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. p. 549.

  1. "Monsieur Simon Deutsch". Neue Freie Presse (in French). 4 (4525). Vienna. 15 April 1877. p. 13.
  2. Greenberg, Martin Harry (1979). The Jewish Lists: Physicists and Generals, Actors and Writers, and Hundreds of Other Lists of Accomplished Jews. Schocken Books. p. 43. ISBN 9780805237115.
  3. Gräffer, Franz; Deutsch, Simon (1975) [1848]. Jüdischer Plutarch oder biographisches Lexicon der markantesten Männer und Frauen jüdischer Abkunft (in German). Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag. p. 231. ISBN 978-3-487-05631-9. OCLC 2151644.
  4. Miller, Michael L.; Ury, S. (2016). Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism and the Jews of East Central Europe. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-69678-0. OCLC 1019601722.
  5. Miller, Michael L. (2010). "From liberal nationalism to cosmopolitan patriotism: Simon Deutsch and 1848ers in exile". European Review of History—Revue Européenne d'Histoire. 17 (3): 379–393. doi:10.1080/13507486.2010.481931. ISSN 1350-7486. S2CID 154815730.
  6. Brisman, Shimeon (2000). A History and Guide to Judaic Dictionaries and Concordances. Jewish Research Literature. 3. KTAV Publishing House. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-88125-658-1.
  7. Deschamps, Nicolas (1882). "Les sociétés secrètes et la société, ou, Philosophie de l'histoire contemporaine" (in French). Avignon: Seguin Fréres.
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