Joel Bri’l Loewe: The Breslau School Reports in Context (1791-1801)
General Education and History of Education
Final Report Abstract
The research project focused on the Berlin-born Jewish scholar Joel Bril or Joel Löwe (1761– 1802), as he called himself in his German publications, a central figure of the Haskalah. The main topic of the project was the time he spent in Breslau (1791–1802). In his function as the head of the Jewish Königliche Wilhelmsschule (Royal Wilhelm School), Bril/Löwe not only wrote several school programs with scholarly treatises on various topics, he also published an elementary grammar of Hebrew and a translation of the five books of Moses “for beginners”. Moreover, Löwe contributed numerous articles to various periodicals, including Johann Gottfried Eichhorn’s Allgemeine Bibliothek der biblischen Literatur, Joachim Heinrich Campe’s Beiträge zur weitern Ausbildung der deutschen Sprache, the Schlesische Provinzialblätter and the Hebrew journal Hameʾassef, whose Breslau edition (1794–1797) he published together with his friend Aaron Wolfssohn. His many publications in Hebrew and German proved Bril/Löwe to be a scholar with a wide range of interests and public engagement, to whom the title “Professor” was awarded by the provincial government of Breslau. His areas of interest included Hebrew studies (philology, exegesis, biblical studies, Kabbalah) and German linguistics (grammar, linguistic criticism, semantics). The project consisted of compiling a comprehensive historical-critical edition of Bril’s/Löwe’s Breslau writings and documents on the early history of the Wilhelmsschule. In the resulting book publication, this edition of rare historical prints and archival sources is supplemented with contextualising contributions by scholars from various disciplines. By providing a comprehensive exploration and contextualisation of Bril’s/Löwe’s activities in Breslau, the volume achieves three main goals. Firstly, the edition makes Löwe’s writings from this period, before all but inaccessible, available and thus provides a basis for their appreciation. Secondly, from the perspective of educational history, it sheds light on the early history of a school that deserves increased attention as the second modern educational institution of the Haskalah in Prussia after the Berlin Jüdische Freischule (Jewish free school). Thirdly, as the scientific essays in the section of contributions show, the volume offers numerous points of reference for research into the history of humanities at the end of the eighteenth century, particularly in the fields of grammar and linguistics, biblical research and translation as well as education and pedagogy. The edition was published as part of the publication series Jüdische Bildungsgeschichte in Deutschland (Waxmann Publishing). As an additional outcome of the project, a special issue of Aschkenas. Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kultur der Juden has been published in June 2024, containing several thematically expanded articles on the political, social, publicist and literary context of the “Haskala in Breslau”.
Link to the final report
https://doi.org/10.21248/gups.96679
Publications
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Aschkenas. Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kultur der Juden, Band 34, Heft 1 (2024): Themenheft „Haskala in Breslau“ (154 S.)
Uta Lohmann & Kathrin Wittler (Hg.)
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Joel Bril Löwe in Breslau. Die Schulprogramme und andere Schriften im Kontext (1790–1802). Unter Mitarbeit von Rainer Wenzel und Lisa Trzaska (Jüdische Bildungsgeschichte in Deutschland, Band 11). Münster und New York: Waxmann Verlag, 2024 (859 Seiten). [ISBN 978-3-8309-4881-0 (Print-Version), 978-3-8309-9881-5 (E-Book)]
Uta Lohmann & Kathrin Wittler (Hg.)
