25 November 2020. Jewish Agency and Austrian Culture in Nineteenth-Century Jerusalem
In 1856, the Lämel-School was set up in Jerusalem as the first modern Jewish school in the city. According to the wish of the donator Elise Herz-Lämel (1788-1868), it should provide modern education to citizens of the Habsburg Monarchy in the Holy City. Elise Herz-Lämel chose the well-known writer and secretary of Vienna’s Jewish community Ludwig August Frankl (1810-1894) to implement the project. Frankl thus embarked on a lengthy journey to the Middle East. An analysis of Frankl’s different missions serves to illustrate the ambivalent position of Jews – as the European Orientals – in the Orient as well as Jewish commitment to academic, social, and cultural projects of Austrian society before the era of legal emancipation.
ZOOM lecture: please click here
(Youtube Channel Center for Israel Studies Vienna)
About the speaker:
Dr Louise Hecht: historian; doctorate summa cum laude in Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, habilitation in Jewish cultural history at the Paris Lodron University of Salzburg, research assistant at the University of Potsdam. Research focus: Central European Jewish history since the 18th century. Publications include Ein jüdischer Aufklärer in Böhmen (2008) and the edited volume Ludwig August Frankl (1810-1894): Eine jüdische Biographie zwischen Okzident und Orient (2016).
