Saul Ascher
Saul Ascher ( born February 6, 1767 in Berlin, † December 8, 1822 in Berlin) was a German writer, translator and bookseller.
Life
Born as Saul ben Ansel Jaffe, he was the first child of Aaron Dykes (* 1749 in Frankfurt (Oder )) and the bank broker Ansel Jaffe (* 1745, Berlin).
Little is known about his education. Secured Tolerably seem secondary school studies in Landsberg on the Warta River in 1785. Saul married on June 6, 1789 in Hanover Spaniards Rachel (* 1763 in Bielefeld ), the daughter of Nathan Spaniard, who was the head of the Ravens Berger Landjudenschaft. On October 6, 1795, was born as an only child, the daughter Wilhelmine.
On April 6, 1810 Ash was arrested in Berlin, dismissed on political pressure on April 25 again. On 6 October, he was awarded the University of Halle in absentia of the doctoral degree, at the same time was Chancellor Hardenberg proceedings in Berlin reflected.
1812, the year of death of the father, Asher received the citizenship letter. Ash stepped forward in 1816 in the reform- oriented Jewish Society of Friends.
In the book burning at the Wartburg festival was also Ascher's publication "The Germanomania " burned on 18 October 1817.
In October 1822 ill Saul Ascher; on December 8, 1822, he died of " exhaustion ".
Activity
Ash had an extensive circle of friends. A close friend he was with the Swiss Heinrich Zschokke, later with Salomon Maimon, Johann Friedrich Cotta and Marx's teacher Eduard Gans since the end of 1789. In his death in 1822 visited him Heinrich Heine. Throughout his life Ash was heavily attacked, as a Jew, theorist and writer. However, it has never spared even his enemies. After the death of his wife in 1815 was reputed to him to be a nerd. Leopold Zunz remarked in 1818, Ash was an enemy of all fanaticism, against the Deutschtümler, his moral character is not appreciated.
Saul Ascher was literary prolifically. With him three activity areas are to be separated: Author, translator, editor / publisher. The full scope of his work has until now only been inadequately.
Ash was an early active as a publisher. He had successively and in parallel several publishers under different names. His own writings also appeared often anonymously or under a variety of pseudonyms.
Ash was a staff member and correspondent of different magazines, so Berlinischen monthly, Berlinisches Archives of time and taste, Eunomia, General Literary Journal hall, morning paper for educated levels of Cotta, Miscellen for the latest world news of Zschokke, Journal de l'Empire. As a journalist, he delivered a partly texts appropriate to his rank as a thinker, but on the other hand, pure day products.
Ash had founded at least two magazines and even marketed with some success. In 1810, a politically very difficult for Ascher year, he brought out the world and Zeitgeist, which was published until 1811 in six issues. Here to have several authors, among them ashtray itself in 1818 and in 1819 moved and he wrote alone, The Falcon, a more theoretical - critical organ, published by the also six books.
Teaching
In his first publication comments on the Civic Improvement of the Jews Asher emphasized alleged special Jewish character traits did not go back to a predisposition, but to the centuries of persecution and discrimination. The fate of the Jewish nation he remarks: suppression produced pusillanimity of spirit, contempt suppresses every germ of morality and education; Tracking every germ of morality. No nation is more persecuted and despised as the Jewish.
Unlike other Jewish writers, with the Edict of Emperor Joseph II associated reforms - and thus included the general obligation for military service - greeted, Ascher turned against one to be made by Jews military service.
Due to the factual division of the Jewish nation into rich and poor, the haves and would redeem the sole burden should be passed on to the poor. Only a leading end complete equality of Jews will draw a general consent also to the state by itself.
1792 appeared Leviathan or about religion in consideration of Judaism, a religion criticism, in the ashtray between disclosed and to aspiring religion of reason and an externalized " machine-like " ritual law differed.
In his 1794 pamphlet published Eisenmenger the Second Ash polemic against Fichte's anti-Semitic remarks, which he gave the name of the then known Jews enemy Johann Andreas Eisenmenger, the author of the pamphlet is discovered Judaism. With Fichte, who had called for cutting off heads of Jewish and putting others, a new phase of anti-Semitism could be observed, the lead held religious now political arguments against the Jews into the field. Ash pleaded for the emancipation and pointed to the confessions bridging members, veiled in the revelations of truths.
1799 his writing was ideas for natural history of political revolutions by the censors banned on the grounds that to overthrow the existing state constitution aimed highly culpable intent. Under a different title, the description of humanity's path was released to a higher and worthier Community 1801. His revolutionary- progressive ideal Ascher saw initially in the Prussian state, then realized in the political system of Napoleon. The Empire was without a particular nationalism and intolerance laid the foundations for a more harmonious world order.
1809 Ash translated the Scriptures The Negroes of the fighter for the emancipation of the Jews Henri Grégoire, a work for all, " which ... defend the cause of the unfortunate blacks and mulattos ."
1811 described Ash the circumstances of the arrest of the anti-reform politicians Finckenstein and Marwitz, after which the press was told that this Article of a completely uneducated Jewish instructor, named Saul Ascher, stems, who had been a year ago ... handed over to the city prisons, and, as it turns out, is only released too early from it.
In the same year Ash described the Berlin romantic - nationalist Christian- German dinner party, which has a membership of Jews or Jewish -Russians excluded in principle in their club statute. He brought with regard to anti-Semitic publications Clemens Brentano the fear expressed that come Indians, Mohammedans, Chinese and unbelieving barbarians at the turn of the dam of the Philistines and Jews now ...
The Germanomania
With the defeat of Napoleon, the German - nationalist anti-French and anti-Semitic Volkstumsideologie won with the spokesmen Ernst Moritz Arndt and Friedrich Ludwig Jahn influence. In the journalistic controversy Saul Ascher reached in 1815 with his book Germano mania:
You need the crowd to also capture it for a view or doctrine to inspire, seek; around the fire to get the enthusiasm, fuel must be collected, and in the handful of Jews our German maniacs want to lay down the first bundle Reiser to the spread of fanaticism.
Germany, as Ash continued, has not weakened due to harmful influences from abroad, but because it had withdrawn from the impulse of the French Revolution from the beginning. The idea of a beginning united humanity he saw in the Holy Alliance realized. The requirement of the anti-Semitic historian Friedrich Rühs to exclude Jews because of a lack of honor from the participation in the war state, he commented on the fact that Germany's armies documents in the struggle against France, before even the Jews ... took part in it, whereas they remained ... victorious, when the Jews ... were with them in rank and file.
The student and Jahn henchman Hans Ferdinand Massmann organized the reaction of wähnenden attacked " German maniacs " on the Wartburg festival on 18 October 1817 in the form of a recall is to end Luther fact, 300 years ago, book burning. It was the " Germanomania " along with other writings and symbols in front of 500 students fraternity with a reputation woe to the Jews, so as to hold on to their Judaism and deride our folklore and Germanness. burned.
His view of the events of the book burning took Ascher 1818 together in Scripture The Wartburg celebration in which he pointed a reversal of the Lutheran intention as an irrational aberration at the fellow sheep Tern. He called explicitly to police action to suppress German nationalist thought. Also called Saul Ascher 1818 a state censorship decree in Frankfurt Bundestag.
As a summary of his thoughts can be wrote his 1819 writing understand the German Geistesaristokratismus. Starting from the ideal of the French Revolution came to Germany 's role to complete this. Germany offers makings of a disintegrating nationalism in favor of a gradually progressive, unifying cosmopolitanism.
Aftermath
Effect History Ascher has lagged significantly behind other contemporary representatives of emancipation. In his " Harzreise " reported Heinrich Heine from him. Ironically, he describes Ash as "reason doctor" and makes him appear as a ghost after his death, in the " witching hour " to prove the non-existence of ghosts seeking using the teachings of Kant. At the same time explains Heine but also, Ash had influenced him in his development. The German scholar Reinhold Steig (1901 Stuttgart ) deals in his book " Heinrich von Kleist Berlin fights " one-sided and distorting with Ash and his confrontations with Kleist.
Walter grave was the first, in 1977, being based on a dissertation by Fritz Pinkuss from 1928, Ash extensively represented in an essay. Peter Hacks It has also been to a political classification and assessment effort ashtray in two writings that have been grouped under the title " ashtray against Jahn " in 1989 and 1990. An important role as a counter-figure to Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim plays Ash in the context of recent research on the relationship between romanticism and anti-Semitism (see " Literature " the study of Puschner ).
In his two-part essay, " The Falcon " has André Thiele, most recently (2008) reprinted in his collection "A World in shards ", presented the groundwork for a comprehensive biography of Asher, and a bibliography of primary title, against the titles known to date about 50 % is extensive.
For 2010, two new editions of works by Saul Ascher's are announced, a one-volume selection from the work in Böhlau Verlag, Bonn, and the first volume of a comprehensive work edition published by André Thiele, Mainz. In January 2010 we launched a website that deals exclusively with Saul Ascher.
Works
Writings
- Leviathan or about religion in consideration of Judaism (1792 )
- Eisenmenger the Second (1794 )
- Philosophical sketches of the natural history of the origin, progress, and decline of social orders (1801 )
- Oriental Paintings ( 1802)
- Ideas for the natural history of political revolutions (1802 )
- Cabinet Berlinischer Karaktere (1808 )
- Napoleon or the progress of the Government (1808 )
- Rousseau and his son (1809 )
- Historical and romantic Groups ( 1809)
- Novels, short stories and fairy tales (2 vols, published 1810)
- Bagatelles from the realm of poetry, criticism and humor (2 vols, published 1810-1811 )
- The dethronement of Alfonso, king of Portugal ( 1811)
- The Germanomania (1815 ) online
- Idea of a free press and Censurordnung (1818 )
- The Wartburg celebration (1818 )
- View of the future fate of Christianity (1819 )
Translations
- Henri Grégoire, The Negro. A contribution to the State and anthropology. (1809 )
- Auguste Lambert, Praxède or the French Werther. (1809 )
- Charles Ganilh, studies on the systems of political economy. (1811, anonymous)
- Auguste Lambert, enthusiasms of love. (1816 )
- V. Bernard Mandeville, Fable of the Bees. (1818 comments )
Expenditure postmortem
- Ideas for the natural history of revolutions, Kronberg / Ts. 1975
- 4 pamphlets, Berlin and Weimar in 1990
- Selected Works. By Renate Best, Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-412-20451-8 ( includes four texts)
- Factory output. Theoretical writings, Volume 1: pamphlets, eds André Thiele, Mainz 2010, ISBN 978-3-940884-27-5 ( includes seven essays )