3/5 | Birthday of Rosa Luxemburg
Today in Yiddishkayt… March 5 Birthday of Rosa Luxemburg, Revolutionary Philosopher Rosa Luxemburg was born on March 5, 1871 in Zamość, the youngest of five children. Her family lived near the old market square, not far from the home of Y.L. Peretz. She became politically active at a young age and while she finished the gymnasium in Warsaw at the top of her class, she was denied a medal because of her “oppositional attitude toward the authorities.” In 1889, she moved to Zurich where she met exiled Russian revolutionaries and her partner, Leo Jogiches, with whom she...
Read More1/25 | Birthday of Emil Ludwig
Today in Yiddishkayt… January 25 Birthday of Emil Ludwig, German Writer Emil Ludwig was born Emil Cohn on January 25, 1881 in Breslau (today Wrocław, Poland). The son of a Jewish ophthalmologist, Ludwig studied law but chose to pursue a career in writing. At first he wrote plays and novels and also worked as a journalist, moving to Switzerland in 1906. During World War I he worked as a foreign correspondent for the Berliner Tageblatt in Vienna and Istanbul. Although Ludwig converted to Catholicism as a young man, he renounced his conversion following the murder of German foreign...
Read More1/21 | Birthday of Moses Hess
Today in Yiddishkayt… January 21 200th Birthday of Moses Hess, Radical Thinker Two hundred years ago today Moses Hess was born in Bonn, (his given name was Moïses as Bonn was then part of the First French Empire), at Judengasse 807. He had a traditional Jewish education, but learned French and German as well. After leaving the University of Bonn, Hess moved to Cologne and founded what was perhaps the first socialist journal. His ideas on collectives and community as well as on Jewish life would later be developed by his colleagues Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels into Communism....
Read More1/17 | Birthday of Carl Laemmle
Today in Yiddishkayt… January 17 Birthday of Carl Laemmle, Movie Mogul Carl Laemmle was born in Laupheim, Württemberg, on January 17, 1867, one of the four surviving children (out of 12) of Julius and Rebekka Lämmle. Shortly after his bar mitzva, Laemmle was apprenticed to a family for three years to earn some money and after his apprenticeship, headed off to join his brother in the U.S. Laemmle worked as a sales clerk and a farmhand before establishing himself as a bookkeeper in the Midwest (in Oshkosh and then Chicago), a job he kept for 20 years. Inspired by the moving pictures he...
Read More12/23 | Birthday of Friedrich Wolf
Today in Yiddishkayt… December 23 Birthday of Friedrich Wolf, German Jewish Writer The leading leftist playwright in pre-World War II Germany Friedrich Wolf was born today, December 23, 1888 in Neuwied, Germany. Wolf studied medicine and became a physician until he was jailed as a conscientious objector during the First World War. From his very first drama, including Poor Conrad, produced in 1924, Wolf brought contemporary social problems and the struggle of the working class to the stage. In 1928, Wolf famously proclaimed “Kunst ist Waffe (Art is a weapon)!” and his...
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