Principal investigator: Tamás Turán

Participants: Kinga Dévényi (independent researcher)

 

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, 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.