03:14:13


[Login]   
[Book List]  
 
Bidding Information
Lot #    18471
Auction End Date    7/10/2007 11:27:24 AM (mm/dd/yyyy)
          
Title Information
Title (English)    Constitution
Title (Hebrew)    קאנשטיטוציאן
Author    [Community - Only Ed. - Unrecorded]
City    Offenbach
Publication Date    1804
          
Collection Information
Independent Item    This listing is an independent item not part of any collection
          
Description Information
Physical
Description		    Only edition. 14 ff., 166:98 mm., wide margins, usual light age and damp staining, plate, printed on heavy stock, some blue-tinted paper. A very good copy bound as issued.
          
Paragraph 1    The Ludwig August Frankl copy with his plate on title verso. Ludwig August Frankl-Hochwart (1810–1894), Austrian poet, secretary of the Vienna Jewish community, and founder of the Laemel School in Jerusalem. Born in Chrast, Bohemia, Frankl was one of the first Jews to attend a Bohemian secondary school. He also received a sound Jewish education under his relative, Zacharias Frankel. Although he studied medicine at Vienna and Padua, he devoted himself mainly to literature. The patriotic flavor of Frankl's first collection of ballads, Das Habsburgerlied (1832), brought him a reward from Emperor Francis I. It was followed by Morgenlaendische Sagen (1834), a volume of poems on Jewish themes, and by the epic Christoforo Colombo (1836), for which he was made an honorary citizen of Genoa, the explorer's birthplace. In 1838 Frankl was appointed secretary and archivist of the Vienna Jewish community. The post enabled him to publish various works of Jewish interest, including a history of the Jews in Vienna (1853), but he really made his name as editor, from 1842, of the Sonntagsblaetter, which brought him into the circle of Austria's literary elite. In later years he was to publish studies of such of his new acquaintances as the dramatist Franz Grillparzer and the poet Nikolaus Lenau, but he also encouraged new writers, notably Moritz Hartmann and Leopold Kompert. His use of the elegant Sonntagsblaetter in support of the 1848 Revolution led to the paper's eventual suppression. During the Revolution Frankl served as an officer in the students' legion and achieved fame with his revolutionary lyric Die Universitaet, the first uncensored Austrian publication, which was circulated in half-a-million copies and was set to music no less than 28 different times: Frankl later edited the works of the revolutionary writer Anastasius Gruen (1877), and their correspondence was published by Frankl's son, Lothar. As the representative of Elisa Herz, Frankl went to Jerusalem in 1856 and, in memory of her father, founded the Laemel School, which offered Jewish children a secular, as well as a religious, education. This aroused violent opposition on the part of the ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazi community, whose rabbinate placed Frankl under the ban of excommunication. He described his experiences in Erez Israel in Nach Jerusalem (2 vols., 1858–60), which gives a valuable picture of the Jewish inhabitants of Jerusalem in the mid-19th century. The book was translated into Hebrew and other languages, and appeared in English as The Jews in the East (1859). A third volume, Nach Aegypten, appeared in 1860. Other works of Jewish interest are Frankl's Elegien (1842), Rachel (1842), Libanon (1855), and Ahnenbilder (1864). In 1876 he founded the Vienna Jewish Institute for the Blind, his philanthropic endeavors being rewarded with ennoblement as Ritter von Frankl-Hochwart. His memoirs appeared posthumously in 1910.
          
Detailed
Description		    Charter, rules, and regulations of the Frankfurt am Main Benevolent Society whose goal it was to care for the aged, sick and poor. The obligation to help the poor and the needy and to give them gifts is stated many times in the Bible and was considered by the rabbis of all ages to be one of the cardinal precepts (mitzvot) of Judaism. The Rambam states: "In every town where there are Jews they must appoint 'charity wardens' [gabba'ei zedakah], men who are well-known and honest that they should collect money from the people every Sabbath eve and distribute it to the poor.… We have never seen or heard of a Jewish community which does not have a charity fund" (Maim. Yad., Mattenot Aniyyim 9:1–3).

Every large community had a number of charitable societies, and even associations designed mainly for mutual aid, religious, and other purposes made charity one of their functions. Charitable associations imposed admission fees on new members, weekly dues, fees for burial or other services, fines for infringement of rules, honors auctioned in the house of prayer, charges for listing and reading of the names of deceased relatives at memorial services, special assessments at banquets or family celebrations, payment on conferment of honorary titles such as haver and morenu among Ashkenazi Jews, and many others.
          
Reference
Description		    EJ
        
Associated Images
3 Images (Click thumbnail to view full size image):
  Order   Image   Caption
  1   Click to view full size  
  
  2   Click to view full size  
  
  3   Click to view full size  
  
  
Listing Classification
Period
19th Century:    Checked
  
Location
Germany:    Checked
  
Subject
History:    Checked
  
Characteristic
Blue Paper:    Checked
First Editions:    Checked
Language:    Judeo-German
  
Manuscript Type
  
Kind of Judaica