KOBER, ADOLF

KOBER, ADOLF (1879–1958), Reform rabbi and historian. Kober was born in Beuthen, Upper Silesia, and he studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary and the University of Breslau. He served as rabbi at Wiesbaden (1908–18) and Cologne (1906–08, 1918–39). As historian of Rhenish Jewry, he organized the Jewish section for the exhibition celebrating the Rhineland's 1,000-year association with the German Reich in Cologne in 1925. With Bruno *Kisch, Kober was responsible for establishing the Juedisches Lehrhaus in Cologne in 1928; he also lectured on Jewish history at the Volkshochschule ("People's University") and the University of Cologne. In 1939 he emigrated to the United States, where in New York he formed a congregation of emigrants from Germany in association with the B'nai Jeshurun synagogue. Kober specialized in German-Jewish history and, in particular, the history of the Rhenish and Cologne Jews, basing his research on the scrupulous study of archival material. He wrote numerous studies on the history of the Jews in the Rhineland, among them Grundbuch des Koelner Judenviertels (1920) and Cologne (Eng. trans. by S. Grayzel, 1940). He also published many articles in this field. In the U.S. he worked as a research fellow of the American Academy of Jewish Research.

bibliography:

Z. Asaria (ed.), Juden in Koeln (1959), index; G. Kisch, in: hj, 21 (1959), 149–50; G. Kisch (ed.), Das Breslauer Seminar (1963), 413f. (incl. bibl.).