LEHMANN, EMIL

LEHMANN, EMIL (1829–1898), lawyer, politician, and advocate of Reform Judaism and of Jewish emancipation in Saxony. Lehmann was a descendant of Behrend *Lehmann, the Court Jew. He sat on the Dresden city council from 1865 to 1883 and from 1875 to 1880 was a member of the Progressive Party in the Saxony Diet, being the only Jew there. Colleague of and successor to Bernhard *Beer in the fight for emancipation in Saxony, he was for several decades president of the Dresden congregation and was one of the founders of the *Deutsch-Israelitische Gemeindebund and the *Centralverein. He fought the rising movement of antisemitism, which was inspired by A. *Stoecker. In a series of newspaper articles and pamphlets Lehmann pleaded for a radical religious reform, stressing the elements common to Judaism and Christianity, and for removing the dividing ones such as circumcision and Jewish holidays. He promoted these ideas in articles in the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums and other Jewish periodicals. Among his published works were Der polnische Resident Berend Lehmann (1885); Aus alten Akten (contributions to the history of the Dresden Jewish community, 1886); and Hoere Israel (appeal to German coreligionists, 1889). A volume of Lehmann's collected writings, Gesammelte Schriften, appeared posthumously (1899; 1909²).

bibliography:

E. Lehmann, Die Rechtsverhältnisse der Juden in Sachsen (…), (1869); A. Bruell, in: adb, 51 (1906), 620–3; Mitteilungen des Deutsch-Israelitischen Gemeindebundes, 47 (1898), 2; J. Heller, in: Encyclopaedia Judaica, 10 (1934), 734f.

[Alexander Carlebach]