Die Franckeschen Stiftungen beteiligen sich am Gemeinschaftsprojekt des AsKI.
TSURIKRUFN! 1700 years of Jewish life in Germany
Project
To mark the anniversary year »1700 Years of Jewish Life in Germany«, the Association of Independent Cultural Institutes (AsKI) has launched a portal entitled “Tsurikrufn” – the Yiddish word for ‘remembering’. For this collaborative digital project, the member institutes have opened their archives and tell impressive stories of Jews who are connected to their houses and their contributions to culture in Germany.
The Francke Foundations remember two personalities: Isaak Wetzlar (1685/90–1751) and Ludwig Philippson (1811–1889).
Isaak Wetzlar was an educated Jewish merchant from Celle. In 1748/49, he wrote a religious-ethical reform treatise in Yiddish entitled ‘Libes Briv,’ in which he incorporated theological concepts and ideals of Pietist piety and lifestyle. In this treatise, Wetzlar addressed his Jewish brothers and sisters, levelled sharp social criticism and called for religious renewal and reform of Jewish society. What is unusual is that Wetzlar cites devout Christians as role models for his fellow Jews to emulate. Isaak Wetzlar had become acquainted with August Hermann Francke's Pietist reform ideas through the writings of the Institutum Judaicum and in personal conversations with the travelling workers of the Halle Institute. Although he clearly distanced himself from their missionary intentions, he was open to the central principles and ideas of Pietist theology and integrated them into his own Jewish-influenced ideas.
As a rabbi and writer, Ludwig Philippson advocated for the rights of Jews with his humanitarian and liberal ideas and contributed significantly to their legal status in Prussia. Among his most significant achievements are the translation of the Hebrew Bible and the founding of the Israelite Bible Institute. Philippson was editor of the »Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums« (General Newspaper of Judaism), which was considered the mouthpiece of the Jewish reform movement. At the age of 15, Philippson was the first Jewish student to be admitted to the Latin School of the Francke Foundations. In his memoirs, »Aus meiner Knabenzeit« (From My Boyhood), he vividly describes his admission to the Francke Foundations, his time at the Latin secondary school there, and his impressions of the city of Halle in the 1820s. In all his later fields of activity, Philippson represented a middle ground between the traditional views of orthodox Jewish circles, which completely rejected the integration of Jews into the developing bourgeois society, and advocates of radical reforms, who sought complete modernisation and sought to break with all outdated traditions. He combined progressive, liberal ideas in the struggle for the emancipation and legal equality of Jews with conservative restraint on individual religious issues.
