Prussia
Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an ...
– September 24, 1964 in
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian language, Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second- ...
Marburg
Marburg ( or ) is a university town in the German federal state (''Bundesland'') of Hesse, capital of the Marburg-Biedenkopf district (''Landkreis''). The town area spreads along the valley of the river Lahn and has a population of approxima ...
and Halle. He attained his doctorate in 1898. His dissertation on the
Samaritan Pentateuch
The Samaritan Torah ( Samaritan Hebrew: , ''Tōrāʾ''), also called the Samaritan Pentateuch, is a text of the Torah written in the Samaritan script and used as sacred scripture by the Samaritans. It dates back to one of the ancient versio ...
was supervised by . Kahle worked as a
Lutheran
Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Cathol ...
philology
Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...
in
Cairo
Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the Capital city, capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, List of ...
, between 1908 and 1918. In 1918, he was promoted to a full professorship (
Ordinary professor
Academic ranks in Germany are the titles, relative importance and power of professors, researchers, and administrative personnel held in academia.
Overview
Appointment grades
* (Pay grade: ''W3'' or ''W2'')
* (''W3'')
* (''W2'')
* (''W2'', ...
Friedrich Schwally
Friedrich Zacharias Schwally (10 August 1863 – 5 February 1919) was a German Orientalist with professorships at Strasbourg, Gießen and Königsberg. He held the degrees of PhD, Lic. Theol., Dr. Habil., and the Imperial honour of the Order of th ...
. In 1923, he switched to Bonn University, where he developed the Eastern Studies curriculum by adding a Chinese and a
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
class.
After his wife helped a Jewish neighbor whose shop was ransacked during the
Kristallnacht
() or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom(s) (german: Novemberpogrome, ), was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's (SA) paramilitary and (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation fro ...
of 1938, Kahle's family was persecuted by the Nazis. This drove him to immigrate to the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
where he joined the
University of Oxford
, mottoeng = The Lord is my light
, established =
, endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019)
, budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20)
, chancellor ...
in 1939, having been dismissed from his university post in
Bonn
The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ru ...
, owing in great part to the fact that he had a Polish rabbi (
Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg
Rabbi Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg (1884–1966) was an Orthodox rabbi, posek ("decisor" of Jewish law) and rosh yeshiva. He is best known as the author of the work of responsa ''Seridei Eish''.
Weinberg was considered a genius in his time - with m ...
) as an assistant. At Oxford he gained two further doctorates. During this period at Oxford he suffered the personal tragedy of his son Paul's early death.
Kahle returned to Germany after the war, where he pursued his research as professor emeritus. His principal academic renown is as editor of the
Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia
The Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, abbreviated as BHS or rarely BH4, is an edition of the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible as preserved in the Leningrad Codex, and supplemented by masoretic and text-critical notes. It is the fourth edition in ...
Ibn Warraq
Ibn Warraq is the pen name of an anonymous author critical of Islam. He is the founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society and used to be a senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry, focusing on Quranic criticism. ...
Kohlhammer Verlag
W. Kohlhammer Verlag GmbH, or Kohlhammer Verlag, is a German publishing house headquartered in Stuttgart.
History
Kohlhammer Verlag was founded in Stuttgart on 30 April 1866 by . Kohlhammer had taken over the businesses of his late father-in-l ...
Schweich Lectures
Schweich is a town in the Trier-Saarburg district, in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is situated on the river Moselle, approx. northeast of Trier.
Schweich is the seat of the ''Verbandsgemeinde'' ("collective municipality") Schweich an der ...
for 1941) London: Oxford University Press 1947.
* ''Der hebräische Bibeltext seit
Franz Delitzsch
Franz Delitzsch (23 February 1813, in Leipzig – 4 March 1890, in Leipzig) was a German Lutheran theologian and Hebraist. Delitzsch wrote many commentaries on books of the Bible, Jewish antiquities, Biblical psychology, as well as a history of ...
.'' Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag 1961.
* ''Die Kairoer Genisa. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des hebräischen Bibeltextes und seiner Übersetzungen'', ed. by R. Meyer. Berlin 1962 (= ''The Cairo Geniza'', Oxford 21959).