Solomon Löwisohn
Solomon Löwisohn (1788 or 1789 – 27 April 1821) was a Hungarian Maskilic poet, historian, grammarian, and linguist, part of the Haskalah movement. He was born in Moor, Weißenburg County, Kingdom of Hungary, into a prominent Jewish family. His father, a skilled Talmudist, taught him at home until he was 15. With no Jewish school in the village, he attended Moor’s Capuchin school to learn German and arithmetic. He showed great talent, mastering the Tanakh and Hebrew by age 13 and beginning to write poetry.
In 1808–1809 he studied at the Prague yeshiva with Moses Saphir, and between 1813 and 1815 he studied Semitic languages at the University of Prague. Löwisohn joined the Maskilic circle around Baruch and Judah Jeitteles. His first major work, Siḥah be-ʻolam ha-neshamot, a dialogue on Hebrew grammar between David Kimḥi and Joel Brill, was published in 1811. In 1814 he became a corrector at the printing house of Anton Edler von Schmid in Vienna, but left in 1820. He grew ill and died in Moor in 1821 at the age of 32.
His other writings include Meḥkere erets, on the geography of the Tanakh; Dikduk leshon ha-Mishna (1815), on the language of the Mishnah; and translations with annotations of the Maḥzor and part of the Tisha B’Av ritual (1819). His major works are Melitsat Yeshurun (1816), a study of Bible poetics, and Vorlesungen über die neuere Geschichte der Juden (1820), the first volume of which was published.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 14:13 (CET).