RIEGER, PAUL

RIEGER, PAUL (1870–1939), German rabbi, scholar, and historian. Rieger, who was born in Dresden, served as rabbi to the Reform congregations at Potsdam (1896–1902), Hamburg (1902–19), Brunswick, and Stuttgart (1922–39) where he died. He published works on the terminology and technology of handicrafts in the Mishnah, Versuch einer Technologie und Terminologie der Handwerke in der Mischnah (1894), and on various aspects of contemporary German-Jewish history. His major work was his participation, in collaboration with his friend Hermann Vogelstein, in a massive work on the history of the Jews in Rome (Geschichte der Juden in Rom), as the result of a prize competition sponsored by the Moritz Rapoport Foundation in Vienna in 1890. Rieger wrote the entire second volume (1895), dealing with the period from 1420 to 1870, as well as some parts of the first volume (1896). Notwithstanding the somewhat arid treatment and heavy style, it remains the standard work on the subject and is the basis of the work   Rome, a history of the Jews in Rome, published in English by Vogelstein in 1940. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: H. Liebeschuetz, in: YLBI, 8 (1963), 252–3. (Cecil Roth)