Joel Bri’l Loewe: The Breslau School Reports in Context (1791-1801)

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The research project focuses on the work of the Jewish Enlightener Joel Löwe (Hebrew Joel Bri'l, 1762-1802) in the last decade of his life in Breslau. Löwe was appointed head teacher and member of the board of directors of the newly founded Jewish Wilhelm School in Breslau at the end of 1790 and exerted a decisive influence on the local Enlightenment discourse in the following years. His work is to be reconstructed through the historical-critical edition of the school programme writings published between 1791 and 1800 and other texts by Löwe from his time in Breslau. With the edition of these writings, an important part of the work of a central figure of the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskala) will be made accessible for the first time. In addition, the project provides new insights into the context of the first decennium of the school in terms of ideas, language, culture, knowledge and social history, which is of great importance for German-Jewish educational history. The school programmes, which are to be edited as part of the project, were used as invitations to the annual public examinations of the Wilhelm School. They contain not only reports concerning the running of the school, but also scholarly essays on various topics from Löwe's pen, with which he, as head teacher, proved his diverse and widely spread research interests as an educator, linguist, Bible exegete and historian. By means of the publication form as a school programme, he not only integrated his reflections on German grammar, on the translation and exegesis of the Hebrew Bible as well as on educational policy issues into the classroom, but also communicated them to the local and national public. The source value of Löwe's rare school programme writings for the Haskalah in Prussia and for Löwe's work biography is very high. Today, they are only preserved in bibliographically insufficiently recorded individual prints in a few libraries worldwide. With this edition, they are made accessible as a book publication - based on a completely preserved collection of the Wrocław University Library - and additionally supported by an index of persons and subjects as well as by scholarly commentaries. A comprehensive bibliography of Löwe's works will complete the edition. Historical overview contributions on Löwe's fields of knowledge (grammar and linguistics, Bible translation and Bible exegesis, educational policy, pedagogy and more) will ensure a multidisciplinary contextualisation of the writings.The school programme writings will also be made available as high-resolution and searchable scans in Open Access via the online portal Fachinformationsdienst Jüdische Studien (www.jewishstudies.de): The Digital Collections Judaica provide online access to the sources, and detailed bibliographic information is recorded in the database Library of the Haskala (www.haskala-library.net).