George Y. Kohler Ludwig Philippson on Biblical Monotheism: Jewish Religious Philosophy between Mendelssohn and Hermann Cohen The Rabbi, scholar, novelist, Bible commentator, and newspaper editor Ludwig Philippson (1811 – 1889) was arguably the most seminal intellectual of German Jewry throughout the better part of the nineteenth-century. Often underestimated today, if not ignored, Philippson was active in so many fields of modern Jewish thought and culture that hardly anyone interested in Judaism at that time could avoid being confronted with his opinions and public statements.¹ As the philos- opher Hermann Cohen put it: “There was no event, no trouble or hope that moved German Jewry, without that everyone was first waiting for a reaction from this man—and the waiting was never in vain: his word was always coura- geous, clear and without ambiguity.”² Born in 1811 into a family of rabbis, Philippson belonged to the first gener- ation of rabbis to study at a German university. During his years at the University of Berlin, he showed such an outstanding talent as a philologist that a successful academic career was likely waiting for him—but Philippson was unwilling to pay the price of baptism, still required for Jews in nineteenth-century Germany.³ Like so many other young Jewish scholars, he resigned to become a community rabbi, assuming a rabbinical post in 1834 in Magdeburg. But soon, “the whole of Ger-  On Philippson, see Meyer Kayserling, Ludwig Philippson. Eine Biographie (Leipzig: Mendels- sohn, 1898); Josef Bass, “Ludwig Philippson—Eine literar-historische Würdigung zur Hundert- jahrfeier seines Geburtstages,” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 56 No. 3/4 (1912): 218 – 49; Johanna Philippson, “The Philippsons, a German-Jewish Family 1775–1933,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 7 (1962): 95 – 118; Johanna Philippson, “Ludwig Phil- ippson und die Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums,” in Das Judentum in der deutschen Umwelt 1800 – 1850, eds. Hans Liebeschütz and Arnold Paucker (Tübingen: Mohr, 1977), 243 – 91; Hans Otto Horch, “‘Auf der Zinne der Zeit’—Ludwig Philippson, der ‘Journalist’ des Reformjuden- tums,” Bulletin des Leo Baeck Institutes 86 (1990): 5 – 21; Sebastian Bauer, “Jüdische Geschichtss- chreibung zwischen Reform und Orthodoxie. Die Positionen von Ludwig Philippson und Marcus Lehmann,” Medaon—Magazin für jüdisches Leben in Forschung und Bildung 9 (2015): 1– 16, 16.  Hermann Cohen, “Über die Bedeutung einer philosophischen Jugendschrift Ludwig Philip- psons” [from 1831], in Ludwig Philippson, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, vol. 2 (Leipzig: Fock, 1911), 459 – 86, 461; and again in Hermann Cohen, Kleinere Schriften, vol. 4. 1907– 1912, ed. Hart- wig Wiedebach (Hildesheim: Olms, 2009), 565 – 604.  Hermann Cohen still praised Philippson as a philologist in 1911 in the above-mentioned essay in footnote 2. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110554618-011 Authenticated | george.kohler@gmail.com author's copy Download Date | 8/16/19 8:47 AM