Callenberg, Johann Heinrich°

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CALLENBERG, JOHANN HEINRICH°

CALLENBERG, JOHANN HEINRICH ° (1694–1760), German Protestant theologian and Orientalist; educated at Halle, where from 1727 (and as professor from 1735) he taught theology and Oriental languages. Being strongly concerned to missionize the Levant, he specialized in Arabic, but he also founded at Halle, in 1728, an Institutum Judaicum (absorbed into the Francke educational establishments in 1791) for the training of missionaries. He also ran (at his own expense) a Hebrew and Arabic press. From this emanated his brief introduction to Judeo-German (1733), a short Yiddish dictionary (1736; reprinted 1966 with an afterword by H.P. Althaus), and Yiddish editions of Psalms (1742), Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Lamentations, and Daniel (1745–46), these books including texts of importance to conversionists.

bibliography:

Nouvelle Biographie Universelle, 8 (1854), 201–3; Richter, in: Saat auf Hoffnung (1868), 242–6. add. bibliography: adb, 3 (1876), 707–8; ndb, 3 (1957), 96; H.K. Rengstorf and S. Kortzfleisch, Kirche und Synagoge, 2 (1970), 104–16; C. Clark, The Politics of Conversion: Missionary Protestantism and the Jews in Prussia 1728–1941 (1995), 47–77.

[Raphael Loewe]

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