Solomon Löwisohn ( yi, שלמה לעוויזאהן, translit=Shelomoh Levizohn, ; 1788 or 1789 – 27 April 1821) was a Hungarian '' Maskilic''

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems ( oral or wri ...

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...

, grammarian, and linguist.

Biography

Solomon Löwisohn was born into a prominent

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

family in

Moor Moor or Moors may refer to: Nature and ecology * Moorland, a habitat characterized by low-growing vegetation and acidic soils. Ethnic and religious groups * Moors, Muslim inhabitants of the Maghreb, Iberian Peninsula, Sicily, and Malta during ...

, Weißenburg County. His father, himself a proficient Talmudist, taught the boy until he was fifteen years old. Since there was no Jewish school in the village, he sent him to Moor's Capuchin school to study German and arithmetic. The boy showed unusual talents; by the age of 13, he had already completely mastered the 24 books of the ''

Tanakh The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
'' occasional poetry Occasional poetry is poetry composed for a particular occasion. In the history of literature, it is often studied in connection with orality, performance, and patronage. Term As a term of literary criticism, "occasional poetry" describes the wo ...

. In 1809 he went to study at the

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and List of cities in the Czech Republic, largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 milli ...

yeshivah A yeshiva (; he, ישיבה, , sitting; pl. , or ) is a traditional Jewish educational institution focused on the study of Rabbinic literature, primarily the Talmud and halacha (Jewish law), while Torah and Jewish philosophy are stud ...

'' with his relative Moses Saphir, and between 1813 and 1815 studied

Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigra ...

at the University of Prague. Löwisohn soon became closely associated with the '' Maskilic'' circle of Baruch and Judah Jeitteles. His first major work, a dialogue on Hebrew grammar between David Kimḥi and Joel Brill entitled ''Siḥah be-ʻolam ha-neshamot'', was published in 1811. In 1814, he accepted the position of corrector at the printing establishment of Anton Edler von Schmid in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, but gave up his post in 1820. He quickly became physically and mentally ill, and succumbed to his ailments in his hometown in April 1821, at the age of 32.

Work

Löwisohn's other works include ''Meḥkere erets,'' on the

topography Topography is the study of the forms and features of land surfaces. The topography of an area may refer to the land forms and features themselves, or a description or depiction in maps. Topography is a field of geoscience and planetary sc ...

of the

Tanakh The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
'' Mishnah The Mishnah or the Mishna (; he, מִשְׁנָה, "study by repetition", from the verb ''shanah'' , or "to study and review", also "secondary") is the first major written collection of the Jewish oral traditions which is known as the Oral Tor ...

. Further, he translated and annotated the '' Maḥzor'', and part of the ritual for

Tisha B'Av Tisha B'Av ( he, תִּשְׁעָה בְּאָב ''Tīšʿā Bəʾāv''; , ) is an annual fast day in Judaism, on which a number of disasters in Jewish history occurred, primarily the destruction of both Solomon's Temple by the Neo-Babylonian E ...

(1819). His most important works are ''Melitsat Yeshurun'' (1816), an analysis of the poetics of the Bible, and ''Vorlesungen über die neuere Geschichte der Juden'' (1820), of which the first volume only was published.

Bibliography

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lowisohn, Solomon 1788 births 1821 deaths 19th-century Hungarian historians 19th-century Hungarian Jews 19th-century Hungarian poets Austro-Hungarian Jews German-language writers Grammarians of Hebrew Hebrew–German translators Hebrew-language poets Hebrew-language writers Hungarian expatriates in Austria Hungarian expatriates in the Czech lands Hungarian Jews Hungarian male poets Jewish grammarians Jewish historians Jewish Hungarian writers Jewish linguists Jewish poets Jewish translators People from Mór People of the Haskalah