David Günzburg

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Baron David Goratsiyevich Günzburg (Барон Давид Горациевич Гинцбург David Goratsievich Gintsburg, July 5, 1857, Kamenetzetz-Podolsk - December 22, 1910, St. Petersburg) was a Russian orientalist and Jewish communal leader.

Günzburg was born in present-day Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire. He was educated at home, his teachers being Adolph Neubauer, Senior Sachs, and Hirsch Rabinovich. At the age of twenty he received the degree of "candidate" at St. Petersburg University, after having attended the lectures of Stanislas Guyard at Paris and Baron Rosen at St. Petersburg; later he studied Arabic poetry under Orientalist Wilhelm Ahlwardt (1828-1909) at Greifswald (1879-80).

He edited the Tarshish of Rabbi Moses ibn Ezra in a fascicle which was issued by the Meqitze Nirdamim Society, and prepared for the press the Arabic translation of the same work, with a commentary. He published also Ibn Guzman (Berlin), and wrote a series of articles on "Metrics", published in the memoirs of the Oriental Department of the Russian Archeological Society (1893) and of the Neo-Philological Society (1892), in the "Journal" of the Ministry of Public Instruction of Russia, and elsewhere.

Günzburg was an enthusiastic patron of Jewish art, and published, with Stassov, L'Ornement Hébreu (Berlin, 1903). In this book he gives examples of Jewish ornamentation from various manuscripts from Syria, Africa, and Yemen. He edited a catalogue of the manuscripts in the Institute for Oriental Languages. He also contributed largely to the Revue des Études Juives, to the Revue Critique, to Voskhod, to Ha-Yom, and to the collections of articles in honor of Zunz, Steinschneider, Baron Rosen, etc.

Günzburg's personal library was one of the largest private libraries in Europe, and contained many rare books and manuscripts. He was one of the trustees of the St. Petersburg community, a member of the "Committee for the Promotion of Culture Among the Jews of Russia", the central committee of the Jewish Colonization Association, the Society for Oriental Studies, the Scientific Committee of the Russian Department of Public Instruction, and a life-member of the Archeological Society of St. Petersburg and of the Société Asiatique of Paris.

He was a contributor to the Jewish Encyclopedia as Baron David von Günzburg (D. G.).

He is not David Naumovich Ginzburg (Давид Наумович Гинзбург) (1890-1938)

[edit] See also

• Günzburg
  • Baron Joseph Günzburg, Osip Gintsburg, or Iosif-Evzel Gabrielovich Gintsburg (1812, Vitebsk - 1878, Paris), Industrialist ([1])
    • Baron Horace Günzburg, Goratsiy Evzelevich Gintsburg, Naftali-Gerts Evzelevich Ginstsburg (1833, Zvenigorodka, Kiev province - 1909, St. Petersburg), Financier, Industrialist ([2])
      • Baron Alexander Günzburg, Aleksandr Goratsievich Gintsburg (1863, Paris - 1948, Switzerland)
        • Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg, (1904–1981) socialite, editor, actor, producer

[edit] External links

• Encyclopædia Britannica

[edit] References

• This article incorporates text from the 1901–1906 Jewish Encyclopedia article "Günzburg, David, Baron" by Herman Rosenthal and S. Janovsky, a publication now in the public domain.