LEWKOWITZ, ALBERT

LEWKOWITZ, ALBERT (1883–1954), philosophical and pedagogical writer and scholar. Lewkowitz, who was born in Georgenberg (Miasteczko), Silesia, studied at Breslau University and Jewish Theological Seminary, becoming lecturer at the latter in the philosophy of religion and pedagogics in 1914. During World War i, he served as a chaplain in the German army. Taking refuge in Holland from Nazi Germany, he lectured from 1939 at the Ashkenazi Rabbinical Seminary in Amsterdam, but was interned in 1943 at the *Westerbork concentration camp and from there was transferred to *Bergen-Belsen. Surviving the ordeal, he settled in Haifa, where he served as rabbi to the Aḥavat Zion congregation (he was an adherent of moderate Reform) and as lecturer at the Even Pinnah Teachers' Seminary; he also taught at the Reali school.

Lewkowitz' scholarly activities date from the publication (1910) of his thesis dealing with Hegels Aesthetik im Verhaeltniss zu Schiller. This was followed by studies on neo-Kantianism (in Zeitschrift fuer Philosophie und philosophische Kritik, vol. 144, no 1, 1911) and on the classical theory of law and state (Die klassische Rechts-und Staatsphilosophie, 1914), and other works. He soon turned to the study of the philosophy of religion and of Judaism in particular, devoting special studies to the relationship to Judaism of such philosophers as *Spinoza, *Mendelssohn, and *Kant. Lewkowitz' major work was Das Judentum und die geistigen Stroemungen des 19 Jahrhunderts (1935), which was preceded by two similarly titled articles which appeared in the 1928 Jahresbericht ("Annual Report") of the Breslau seminary and in the seminary's 75^th anniversary volume (1929). In this work, Lewkowitz compares Jewish and general philosophies and points out their similarities and divergencies. He also wrote Hauptrichtungen der Paedagogik (1933).

bibliography:

G. Kisch (ed.), Breslau Seminary (1963), 130, 281, 398f. (bibliography).