Mordecai Aaron Günzburg (Hebrew: מֹרְדְּכַי אַהֲרֹן גִינְצְבּוּרְג, romanized: Mordekhai Aharon Gintsburg, Lithuanian: Mordechajus Aronas Gincburgas; 3 December 1795 – 5 November 1846), also known by the acronymRemag (רמא״ג) and the pen nameYonah ben Amitai (יוֹנָה בֶּן־אֲמִתַּי), was a Lithuanian Jewish writer, translator, and educator. He was a leading member of the Haskalah in Vilnius,[1][2] and is regarded as the "Father of Hebrew Prose."[3][4]
Biography
Günzburg was born into a prominent Jewish family in Salantai in 1795.[5] His father Yehuda Asher (1765–1823), under whom he studied Hebrew and Talmud, was one of the early members of the Haskalah in Russia,[6] and wrote treatises on mathematics and Hebrew grammar.[7] Günzburg was engaged at the age of twelve, and married two years later, whereupon he went to live with his in-laws at Shavly.[8] He continued his studies under his father-in-law until 1816.[9] From there Günzburg went to Palanga and Mitau, Courland, where he taught Hebrew and translated legal papers into German. He did not stay in Courland long, and after a period of wandering settled in Vilnius in 1835.[10]
Günzburg was best known for his series of histories of contemporary Europe.[12][13] His first major publication was Sefer gelot ha-aretz (1823), an adaption into Hebrew of Joachim Heinrich Campe's Die Entdeckung von Amerika,[14] a Yiddish translation of which he released the following year as Di entdekung fun Amerike.[6] In 1835, he published the first volume of his universal historyToldot bnei ha-adam, adapted from Karl Heinrich Ludwig Pölitz [de]'s Handbuch der weltgeschichte.[15] (A few chapters of the second volume would later be published in the Leket Amarim, a supplement to Ha-Melitz, in 1889.) In the same genre he wrote Ittote Russiya (1839), a history of Russia, and Ha-Tzarfatim be-Russiya (1842) and Pi ha-ḥerut (1844), accounts of the Napoleonic Wars.[16]
Among his other publications were Malakhut Filon ha-Yehudi (1836), a translation from German of Philo's embassy to Caligula, and the anthology Devir (1844), an eclectic collection of letters, tales, and sketches.[17] Many of Günzburg's works were published posthumously, most notably his autobiography Aviezer (1863, composed between 1828 and 1845),[18][12] as well as Ḥamat Dammeshek (1860), a history of the Damascus affair of 1840, and the satirical poem Tikkun Lavan ha-Arami (1864).[19][7]
Sefer gelot ha-aretz ha-ḥadashah al yede Kristof Kolumbus [Discovery of the New Land by Christopher Columbus] (in Hebrew). Vilna: Missionarrow. 1823. Later published as Masa Kolumbus, o, gelot ha-aretz ha-ḥadashah [Columbus' Voyage; or, Discovery of the New Land].
Di entdekung fun Amerike [The Discovery of America] (in Yiddish). Vilna: Rom. 1824.
Toldot bnei ha-adam [History of Mankind] (in Hebrew). Vol. 1. Vilna: Defus Binyamin ben David Ari' Segal. 1832.
Kiryat sefer [Republic of Letters] (in Hebrew). Vilna: Defus Binyamin ben David Ari' Segal. 1835. hdl:2027/nnc1.cu58931899. A letter-writing manual.
Malakhut Filon ha-Yehudi [Delegation of Philo Judaeus] (in Hebrew). Vilna: Defus Avraham Yitsḥak bar Shalom. 1836.
Ittote Russiya [Chronicles of Russia] (in Hebrew). Warsaw: Defus Menaḥem Man ve-Simḥah Zimel. 1839. A history of Russia.
^Ginsburg, Saul M. (1939). "Max Lilienthal's Activities in Russia; New Documents". Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society (35): 44–50. JSTOR43058467.
^Galron-Goldschläger, Joseph, ed. (2019). "M. A. Güntzburg". Lexicon of Modern Hebrew Literature (in Hebrew). Ohio State University. Retrieved 5 April 2021.
^Pelli, Moshe (May 1990). "The Literary Genre of the Autobiography in Hebrew Enlightenment Literature: Mordechai Ginzburg's 'Aviezer'". Modern Judaism. 10 (2): 159–169. doi:10.1093/mj/10.2.159. JSTOR1396259.