WOLF, GERSON

WOLF, GERSON (1823–1892), Austrian historian and educator. Wolf was born in Holleschau (Holesov), Moravia. After a brief preoccupation with talmudic studies in Nikolsburg he moved to Vienna, where he studied pedagogy, philosophy, and languages. In 1849 he published a booklet, Die Demokratie und der Sozialismus, and several radical articles. Although he was ordered to leave Vienna in the wake of these publications, he managed to stay with the help of influential friends. In 1852 he was imprisoned for a number of weeks on suspicion of being a revolutionary. In 1854, after having worked in several schools, he was appointed a teacher of religion in the Vienna community and became inspector of its religious studies in 1884. Wolf founded a youth library and, together with others, an aid organization for poor Jewish students in Vienna. In addition to surveys and documents on the history of the Jews in Worms, Bohemia, Moravia, and Austria (particularly of the Jews in Vienna), he published a textbook for Jewish schools and a survey of the Austrian educational system. He also wrote biographies of I.N. Mannheimer\>\> and J. Wertheimer\>\> . His works include Ferdinand II und die Juden (1859); Judentaufen in Oesterreich (1863); Die Vertreibung der Juden aus Boehmen 1744 (1869); Geschichte der Juden in Wien 1156 – 1876 (1876); Die alten Statuter der juedischen Gemeinden in Maehren (1880); and Die Juden (1883). Wolf wrote regularly for the Monatsschrift fuer Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums (1858–87) and published a series of articles in the periodical Ha-Mazkir (1858–61). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: B. Wachstein, in: Zeitschrift fuer die Geschichte der Juden in der Tschechoslowakei 1 (1930), 17–36, (incl. bibl.). ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: (No author), in: Oesterreichische Wochenschrift. 9 (1892) 45, 804–805. (Zvi Avneri / Mirjam Triendl (2nd ed.)