KOHLBACH, BERTALAN

KOHLBACH, BERTALAN (1866–1944), Hungarian Liberal rabbi and scholar of Jewish-Hungarian folklore. Kohlbach was   born in Liptoszentmiklos, Hungary, into a family of rabbis. In 1890, he became rabbi of the Conservative community of Temesvar. Six years later, he resigned as a result of opposition to his Reform views, and he taught secondary school in various Hungarian cities. Kohlbach was one of the pioneers in folklore research in Hungary. Of his writings on Jewish folklore, only extracts were published in German and Hebrew periodicals. He also wrote on the Jewish archaeological material in the Hungarian Museum; he described the Hasmonean coins of the Jewish Museum of Budapest, of which he was a founder; and he wrote on classical philology, archaeology, and general education. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: A. Scheiber, in: Az Országos Rabbi Egyesület Értesitője (Dec. 1948), 15–19. (Baruch Yaron)