LöwIsohn, sAlomon

Löwisohn, Salomon a Jewish writer of note, and really the first Jew who chronicled the history of his people in the German tongue, was born at Moor, Hungary, in 1789, and was truly a self-made man. Amid the greatest difficulties he acquired an education, and particularly a thorough knowledge of the Hebrew. Possessed of great poetical talent, he wrote ישורון מליצה, a sort of Ars Poetica (Vienna, 1816). The first work in which a Jew applied Clio's pencil to the history of the chosen people of God, in a German version, was Lowisohn's Vorlesungen über die neuere Geschichte der Juden (Vienna, 1820, 8vo) which starts with their dispersion, and dwells at length on the Talmud and its authors. Unfortunately, however, the young man so well endowed to do this work, so auspiciously began, was brought to an early grave by disappointment in love. He died of broken heart, in his native place, in 1822. See Grätz, Gesch. d. Juden, 11:453 sq.; Oriental. Literaturbl. 1840, col. 10; Beth El. 1856, page 72 sq. (J.H.W.)