KOHN, JINDŘICH

KOHN, JINDŘICH (1874–1935), Czech political writer and philosopher. A lawyer by profession, Kohn was the author of scores of essays and articles on political, sociological, historical, and philosophical subjects. Only a few of his studies, such as Politika a právo ("Politics and Law," 1910) and Co jest a co není právo sebeurċení ("What is and what is not the Right of Self-determination," 1919), were published in book form during his lifetime. The originality of his thought and breadth of his interests became fully appreciated only when his essays and lectures were collected and published posthumously in 1936 as Asimilace a věky ("Assimilation and the Ages"). Kohn developed a philosophy of assimilation as a permanent process of progressive adaptation of man to changing conditions. Adapting his philosophy to the Jewish question, Kohn became the leading ideologist of Jewish assimilation in Czechoslovakia without ever becoming a militant opponent of Zionism. He gave a summary of his assimilationist historiography in JGGJČ, 2 (1930), 1–16 ("Soziologische Einfuehrungsskizzae in die Geschichtsschreibung des Judentums in der čechoslovakiszchen Republik"). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: O. Donath: Židé a židovství v ċeské literatuře 19. a 20. století, 2 vols. (1923–30); Hostovský, in: Jews in Czechoslovakia, 1 (1968), 444; F. Thieberger, in: Czechoslovakian Jewry, Past and Future (1943), 24–27. (Avigdor Dagan)