SPANIER, ARTHUR

SPANIER, ARTHUR (1889–1944), German scholar and librarian. Spanier, who was born in Magdeburg, studied classical languages at the University of Berlin and Hebrew at the Lehranstalt fuer die Wissenschaft des Judentums (1908–13). In 1914–15 he worked as a school teacher in Berlin, and then served in the German army. After the war he resumed teaching, first in Berlin, and then in Koenigsberg. He was appointed a research fellow at the newly founded *Akademie fuer die Wissenschaft des Judentums in 1919–20. He received his Ph.D. in Freiburg/Breisgau in 1920. In 1921 he entered the service of the Prussian State Library, becoming head of the Hebraica and Judaica division in 1926, specializing also in the Armenian language. As a "non-Aryan" he was pensioned off in 1935. From 1937 he lectured at the *Hochschule fuer die Wissenschaft des Judentums. In 1938 he was taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, but was released, whereupon he immigrated to the Netherlands in 1939. He perished at *Bergen-Belsen.

Spanier's main scholarly interests and works were in Talmudics. He wrote Die Toseftaperiode in der Tannaitischen Literatur (1922), in which he suggested that Tosefta had its origin in marginal notes to the Mishnah; Die Massoretischen Akzente (1927); Das Berliner Baraita Fragment (1931); Zur Frage des Literarischen Verhaeltnisses zwischen Mischnah und Tosefta (1931).

bibliography:

E. Taeubler, in: hj, 7 (1945), 96; E.G. Lowenthal (ed.), Bewaehrung im Untergang (1965), 162ff. add. bibliography: W. Schochow, in: Mitteilungen der Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz 1 (1990), 36–38.

[Archive Bibliographia Judaica]