Moritz Lazarus (1824–1903)

Moritz Lazarus was born to a Jewish family in Filehne, in the Prussian district of Posen (present-day Wieleń, Poland), the son of Aaron Levin Lazarus, a rabbinical judge and scholar. He studied Hebrew literature and history, law, and philosophy at the University of Berlin and completed his doctoral degree in 1850. He served as a the first professor of psychology at the University of Bern, Switzerland, then returned to Berlin, where he taught at the Kriegsakademie (Military Academy) in Berlin, and the Friedrich Wilhelm University (now Humboldt University of Berlin). Later he taught at the Hochschule fuer die Wissenschaft des Judentums (Higher Institute for Jewish Studies). In 1859, with philologist Heymann Steinthal, his brother-in-law, Dr. Lazarus founded the pioneering journal Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft (Journal of Psychology and Linguistics), which established the new science of comparative or "folk" psychology. He edited the journal until 1886. His most famous work was Das Leben der Seele (The Life of the Soul), in three volumes from 1855 to 1857. Written in a popular and easy style, it described the relationship between thought and speech, how languages are developed, and how they create a collective soul of a nation. He was a leading opponent of anti-Semitism in his time. Toward the end of his life, Dr. Lazarus settled in Meran, Austria (now Italy), where he completed his multi-volume work Ethik des Judentums (1898–1911), translated into English by Henrietta Szold as Ethics of Judaism (1900–1901).