Hess, Michael
HESS, MICHAEL
HESS, MICHAEL (1782–1860), German educator. He was sent by his father, Rabbi Isaac Hess Kugelmann, to the yeshivah in Fuerth and later moved to Frankfurt o. M., where he was appointed as tutor to the son of Meyer Amschel *Rothschild in 1804. At the age of 24 he became headmaster of the recently founded Frankfurt Philanthropin school, a position he held until 1855. Influenced by the writings of Moses *Mendelssohn and an extreme advocate of *Reform, Hess gradually limited the time allotted for Jewish studies, claiming that religion should be the province of the home. Among his innovations were a girls' school, a kindergarten, confirmations, sermons, hymns, prayers in German, and a semi-religious Sunday school. In 1819 he vigorously opposed the erection of an Orthodox school; he attacked the school founded in 1853 by S.R. *Hirsch, who replied in 1854 in a scathing pamphlet entitled Die Religion im Bunde mit dem Fortschritt. Hess wrote pedagogic works and a history of the Philanthropin.
bibliography:
A. Galliner, in: ylbi, 3 (1958), 174–6; Festschrift zur Jahrhundertfeier der Realschule der israelitischen Gemeinde zu Frankfurt, 1 (1904), 91–95; M. Eliav, Ha-Ḥinnukh ha-Yehudi be-Germanyah (1960), 113, 115–8, 221–4.