AKADEMIE FUER DIE WISSENSCHAFT DES JUDEN-TUMS

AKADEMIE FUER DIE WISSENSCHAFT DES JUDEN-TUMS , academy founded in Berlin in 1919 for the furtherance of Jewish scholarship and the encouragement of young scholars and the publication of their work. The idea of such an academy had been mooted by Franz *Rosenzweig in his seminal open letter ("Zeit ist's," 1917; "It is time" in On Jewish Learning (1965)) to his teacher Hermann *Cohen, who took it up enthusiastically. The academy was to be in two parts: an academy in the accepted sense, with members and corresponding members, and a research institute which, by giving grants to younger scholars, would enable them to pursue their work in the various divisions of study, such as Talmud, history, Hebrew literature and language, philosophy, Kabbalah, economics, etc. From the original plan, only the research institute materialized; its first director was E. *Taeubler, who was succeeded by Julius *Guttmann. The academy made itself responsible for a number of publications, such as the continuation of Theodor and Albeck's edition of Genesis Rabbah (1912–32, repr. 1965), Hermann Cohen's Juedische Schriften (3 vols., 1924) and his philosophical writings (2 vols., 1928), and a bicentenary edition of the works of Moses *Mendelssohn, which was planned for 16 volumes, but only seven appeared (1929–38). The academy's Korrespondenzblatt with annual reports appeared from 1919 to 1930. For some time the academy also shared responsibility for the Zeitschrift fuer Demographie und Statistik der Juden. A Festschrift was published in 1929 to celebrate its tenth anniversary. Its work came to an end in 1934.

bibliography:

Guttmann, in: Festgabe zum zehnjaehrigen Bestehen der Akademie… (1929), 3 ff. add. bibliography: D. Myers, in: huca, 63 (1992), 107–44; M. Brenner, The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany (1996).

[Alexander Carlebach]