Principal investigator: Tamás Turán

Participants: Kinga Dévényi (Library of the HAS, Keeper of Oriental Collection)

Funding agency: Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

 

Research questions and objectives:

Immanuel Löw (1854-1944) and Ignaz Goldziher (1850-1921) were towering figures of Hungarian Neolog Judaism and of Jewish scholarship (see, e. g., T. Turán and C. Wilke, eds., Modern Jewish Scholarship in Hungary – the "Science of Judaism" Between East and West. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2016; T. Turán, "Goldziher and Jewish Scholarship in Light of His Correspondence with Immanuel Löw and Michael Guttmann" In: H.-J. Becker et al. eds., Building Bridges: Ignaz Goldziher and His Correspondents. Islamic and Jewish Studies around the Turn of the Twentieth Century. Leiden: Brill, 2024, 347-368). A rabbi in Szeged, Löw was one of the most acclaimed scholars of Semitic philology and Jewish folklore; Goldziher, a professor at the University of Budapest, is recognized as one of the founders of the academic study of Islam and Arabic literature. Their correspondence (I work on its publication with Kinga Dévényi), is a unique testimony to the legacy of Jewish studies in Hungary: it documents their friendship, scholarly collaboration, overlapping scholarly networks, and ambiguous relationship to the Hungarian Neolog establishment.