BAECK, LEO (1873–1956), rabbi and theologian, representative spokesman of German Jewry during the Nazi era. Born in Lissa, Posen (at that time part of Prussian Germany), a son of the local rabbi, Baeck first pursued his higher education at the university in Breslau and the moderately liberal Jewish Theological Seminary. In order to study with the distinguished scholar of religion Wilhelm Dilthey, Baeck transferred to the university in Berlin, where he earned a doctorate in 1895. Two years later, he was ordained as a rabbi at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, a leading institution of Liberal Judaism. Baeck then held pulpits in Oppeln (Silesia) and Düsseldorf, and in 1912 he was called to Berlin where, with the exception of a stint as chaplain during World War I, he remained until his deportation to a concentration camp by the Nazis. During his years in Berlin, Baeck assumed a number of increasingly influential positions. In 1913 he joined the faculty of the Hochschule as a docent of Midrash and homiletics. In 1922 he became chairman of the national association of German rabbis, and in 1925 he assumed the presidency of the Bʾnai Bʾrith, a fraternal network, in Germany.
When Hitler ascended to the German chancellorship, it was Baeck who had the prescience to declare that "the thousand-year" history of German Jewry had come to an end. Baeck was instrumental in founding the Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden, an organization that made the most successful attempt in German-Jewish history to unify Jewish defense, welfare, and cultural activities on a nationwide scale. As president of this body, he devoted himself to defending the rights of Jews in Germany, facilitating their emigration, and raising the morale of those still left in Hitler's Reich. A noteworthy example of the last effort was a special prayer composed by Baeck for public recitation on the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) in 1935, which included a defiant rejection of Nazi slanders: "In indignation and abhorrence, we express our contempt for the lies concerning us and the defamation of our religion and its testimonies" (Out of the Whirlwind: A Reader of Holocaust Literature, ed. Albert Friedlander, New York, 1968, p. 132). Arrested repeatedly by the Nazis for his outspokenness, Baeck persisted in his refusal to flee Germany until every Jew had been rescued. He continued to head the national body of German Jews after it was forcibly reorganized by the government into a council that was accountable to the Nazis. In January 1943 Baeck was deported along with other elderly German Jews to the concentration camp of Theresienstadt. In that "model camp" he served as honorary president of the ruling Jewish council and devoted his time to comforting and teaching his fellow inmates. When the camp was liberated, he still refused to leave his flock until he had been assured of their safety.
Baeck immigrated to London after the war. His last years were devoted to work on behalf of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, teaching at the Hebrew Union College (the Reform rabbinical school in Cincinnati), and organizing the surviving remnants of German Jewry. In England, he served as president of the Council of Jews from Germany. And shortly before his death, Baeck helped found an international research institute for the study of central European Jewry that bears his name (the Leo Baeck Institute).
Baeck's writings reflect his lifelong efforts to defend his people and faith. He achieved early fame by rebutting the anti-Jewish claims of Adolf von Harnack, a liberal Protestant theologian who denigrated Judaism in his book Das Wesen des Christentums (The Essence of Christianity). Baeck's first book, a polemical work entitled Vorlesungen über das Wesen des Judentums (Lectures on the Essence of Judaism; 1905), continued this defense and boldly proclaimed Judaism superior to Christianity, a claim that won Baeck considerable attention as a champion of German Jewry. Employing the approach to religion developed by his mentor, Dilthey, Baeck attempted to penetrate the underlying psychology of Judaism and understand the Jewish religion in its totality (Gestalt).
In subsequent essays and reworkings of his first book, Baeck sharpened the contrast between Judaism and Christianity: the latter, he claimed, was a "romantic religion" that exalted feeling, self-indulgence, dogma, and passivity; Judaism, by contrast, was a "classical religion" imbued with ethical concerns. In Judaism, Baeck saw a religion in which God's mystery and commandment exist as polarities. Dieses Volk (This People Israel), a book written in Nazi Berlin and the concentration camp of Theresienstadt, explores the meaning of Jewish existence. Written during the bleakest era of Jewish history, it is a work of optimism that expresses Leo Baeck's belief in the eternity of the Jewish people and their ongoing mission. In defiant rejection of Nazi barbarism, Baeck affirmed the messianic role of the people Israel to heed God's ethical command.
Bibliography
Two of Baeck's most important books have been translated into English: The Essence of Judaism, rev. ed. (New York, 1961), and This People Israel: The Meaning of Jewish Existence, translated by Albert H. Friedlander (New York, 1965). Several of his major essays appear in Judaism and Christianity: Essays by Leo Baeck, translated by Walter Kaufmann (Philadelphia, 1958). There are two book-length studies of Leo Baeck: Friedlander's Leo Baeck: Teacher of Theresienstadt (New York, 1968) primarily analyzes Baeck's writings; Leonard Baker's Days of Sorrow and Pain: Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jews (New York, 1978), a more popular account, describes, on the basis of extensive interviews, Baeck's communal and wartime activities.
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