Origin and Transformation: Salomon Maimon and German-Jewish Enlightenment Culture

Barnouw, Dagmar, Shofar

Salomon Maimon's Lebensgeschichte (1792) presents a strange and troubled man, a solitary wanderer between the darkness of Polish-Jewish superstition and the light of German-Jewish reason. When he arrived in Berlin in 1777, the 25 year-old Maimon had left behind his life in the shtetl with its great material and intellectual poverty and premature responsiblities. A rabbi and husband at age eleven, he had experienced the near total lack of interest in a larger world, of teachers and books that taught anything, the unquestioning authority of texts that were impenetrable to reason, the absence of thoughtful social -- not to mention political -- organization and conduct. In Berlin, he was to …

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Publication information: Article title: Origin and Transformation: Salomon Maimon and German-Jewish Enlightenment Culture. Contributors: Barnouw, Dagmar - Author. Journal title: Shofar. Volume: 20. Issue: 4 Publication date: Summer 2002. Page number: 64. © Not available. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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