Salomon, Gotthold
SALOMON, GOTTHOLD
SALOMON, GOTTHOLD (1784–1862), German preacher and reformer. After receiving a thoroughly Orthodox education, at the age of 16 Salomon was sent to Dessau, where he was influenced by modern trends. He then became a teacher and preached his first sermon there in 1806. A frequent contributor to *Sulamith, he also vigorously answered the antisemitic writings of the professors C.F. *Ruehs and J.F. *Fries in 1817 (in 1843 he answered Bruno *Bauer). Two years later he was called to the pulpit of the Hamburg Reform temple, where he collaborated with E. *Kley. His reputation as a preacher had been established by a collection of sermons (Auswahl mehrerer Predigten, 1816), the first of a voluminous series. Salomon's sermons, modeled, like those of other preachers, on Protestant examples, were praised by his contemporaries, notably H. *Heine. When in 1841 Isaac *Bernays banned the prayer book he had composed, Salomon defended his position in the subsequent fierce controversy (Das neue Gebetbuch…, 1841). He vigorously supported the rabbinical assemblies of the mid-1840s in Brunswick, Frankfurt, and Breslau.
bibliography:
G. Salomon, Selbst-Biographie (1863); P. Philippson, Biographische Skizzen, 2 (1866); B. Italiener, in: Festschrift zum 120…. Bestehen des israelitischen Tempels in Hamburg (1937), 17–24; A. Altmann, in: Studies in Nineteenth-Century Jewish Intellectual History (1964), index.