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Philippson

PHILIPPSON, German-Jewish family of prominent rabbis, scholars, educators, journalists, doctors, bankers, and scientists. Their family tree goes back to 16th-century Poland, where *Joshua Hoeschel ben Joseph (c. 1578–1648) had been chief rabbi of krakow. His great-grandson was the Talmud scholar Jacob Joshua *Falk (1680/81–1756), chief rabbi of Berlin, Metz, and Frankfurt/Main, who strongly opposed the Shabbatean movement. After 1750, the family settled in Arnswalde (Neumark, Prussia). Falk's grandson, the Talmud scholar Reb Phoebus (Philipp) Moses Arnswald (d. 1794), moved to Sanderslebens (Anhalt-Dessau) upon his marriage, earning his living as a peddler. His children were the first to change "Phoebus" into the German "Philipp" and called themselves Philippson.

Arnswald's son MOSES (ben Uri Phoebus) Philippson (1775–1814) received an Orthodox upbringing in Halberstadt, Brunswick, and Frankfurt/Main and, from 1790, became a tutor in Bayreuth and later Burgkunstadt. He was attracted to the works of Moses *Mendelssohn and German literature. In 1799, he was appointed teacher at the newly founded Freischule at Dessau. In order to supplement his meager income he began printing books and selling them at fairs; among them were various sermons and translations from the Bible, a Hebrew reader "Kinderfreund" (1808), the renewed *Me'assef (1808–12), then edited by Shalom *Cohen, and other ventures. He died of typhus, aged 39, before completion of his Hebrew-German and German-Hebrew dictionary, leaving behind four small children: Phoebus (1), Johanna, Ludwig (2), and Julius (3).

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

G. Salomon, Lebensgeschichte des Herrn Moses Philippsohn (1814); Ph. Philippson, Biographische Skizzen, 1 (1864); M. Kayserling, Ludwig Philippson (1898); M. Philippson, in: JJGL, 14 (1911), 84–108; J.C. Dornfeld, in: CCARY, 21 (1911); J. Feiner, Ludwig Philippson (1912); Wininger, 5 (1930), 17–25; Festschrift… A. Philippson (1930); Biographie Coloniale Belge, 3 (1952); J. Rosenthal, in: S. Federbush (ed.), Hokhmat Yisrael be-Ma'arav Eiropah, 1 (1958), 399–408; J. Philippson, in: LBIYB, 7 (1962), 95–118; E.G. Lowenthal, in: LBI Bulletin, 8 (1965), 89–106. ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: J. Philippson, in: H. Liebeschütz and A. Paucker (eds.), Das Judentum in der Deutschen Umwelt, 1800–1850 (1977), 243–91; E. Friesel, in: LBIYB, 31 (1986), 121–46; H.O. Horch, in: LBI Bulletin, No. 86 (1990), 5–21; G. von Glasenapp, in: A.B. Kilcher (ed.), Metzler Lexikon der deutsch-jüdischen Literatur (2000), 459–61; A. Mehmel, A. Brämer, I. Fischer, in: NDB, 20 (2001), 395–401.


Sources: Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2007 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved.