Hamburg Stories Dr. Salomo A. Birnbaum
Universität Hamburg, Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1 (Foyer), 20146 Hamburg- Rotherbaum
Yiddish scholar and palaeographer Dr Salomo A. Birnbaum is seen as a pioneer of historical Yiddish linguistics. As such he made national and international academic history in the twentieth century. He held Yiddish seminars at Hamburg University from 1922 until 1933, when he was relieved of his teaching post and the pressure of the Nazi regime became too great for him to remain in Hamburg.
Salomo Birnbaum was born in Vienna in 1891, the eldest son of writer and Jewish thinker Nathan Birnbaum (1864-1937) and his wife Rosa Birnbaum, née Korngut (1869-1934). Many of his ancestors were rabbis in Poland, Galicia and Hungary. Like his father, Salomo grew up in Vienna as a native German speaker. As a secondary school pupil he began a comprehensive study of Yiddish, the language of his ancestors. By the time he was fifteen, a newspaper was publishing Yiddish texts he had translated into German.
Birnbaum served in the Austro-Hungarian army during the First World War from 1915. Shortly before the end of the war, he was wounded and began writing his dissertation in hospital in the autumn of 1918, before he had even begun his studies. Salomo Birnbaum left the army as a lieutenant and began his work on “The Hebrew and Aramaic element in the Yiddish language”, for which he was awarded his doctorate in Oriental Studies (in Vienna, Zurich, Berlin and Würzburg).
In the autumn of 1922, the future internationally renowned scholar began teaching Yiddish studies as part of the general lecture programme at Hamburg University, marking the beginning of Yiddish studies as an academic discipline.
Salomo Birnbaum had become an astute contemporary witness to Jewish life in Hamburg during the Weimar Republic and witnessed the escalation of the political situation. He experienced it first-hand when members of the Philosophy Faculty succeeded in preventing his habilitation twice.
When the national socialists came to power, Salomo Birnbaum fled from Hamburg to London, where he and his family settled.
Gaining a professional footing in Great Britain was not an easy task. Salomo taught Hebrew palaeography and Yiddish linguistics at London University, initially for a modest salary. In 1970, he and his wife Irene, along with their son David and his family, moved to Toronto, where their son Eleazar lived. From 1976, Birnbaum held an honorary professorship at Maimonides College in Toronto.
In 1986, Salomo Birnbaum was awarded an honorary doctorate in Hamburg. The 94-year-old accepted the honour in person, stepping onto German soil for the first time since his expulsion. His scholarly work came to an end with his death on 28 December 1989 in Toronto at the age of ninety-eight.
In 1995, six years after Birnbaum’s death, the Salomo-Birnbaum-Gesellschaft für Jiddisch e. V. was founded in Hamburg with the aim of fostering the study of the Yiddish language and Yiddish culture.
(This text is based on source texts from the Solomon Birnbaum Society)
