Dr. Caesar (Haim Phineas) Seligmann

http://www.judengasse.de/dhtml/P145.htm

Seligmann, Caesar

(1860-1950) Caesar Seligmann was rabbi of the Israelite community from 1903-1932 and was one of the leading representatives of the Jewish reform movement at the beginning of the 20th century.  Seligmann was born in Landau in the Palatinate in 1860 into an old rabbi family.  He was ordained a rabbi at the Jewish-theological seminar in Breslau and received his doctorate in Halle.  After working as a preacher in a liberal synagogue, the "Temple", in Hamburg from 1889 to 1902, he was called to Frankfurt in 1903.  Here he was supposed to revitalize the now weakened Jewish reform movement.  During his time in Frankfurt, Seligmann became the leader of the religiously liberal movement in Germany.  First he created a new liberal prayer book for the Frankfurt congregation, then a unified prayer book for the liberal German-Jewish congregations.  He founded the magazine "Liberales Judentum" and played a key role in the unification of liberals in Germany.  In 1912 he wrote the "guidelines" which were to form the theoretical foundations and the program of a new Judaism in the spirit of religious liberalism.  These guidelines triggered violent disputes within the community and could not be implemented in everyday religious life.  He retired in 1932.  In 1939 he managed to emigrate to England.  In London he co-founded a liberal Frankfurt emigre community.  He died there in 1950. His numerous publications include essays, sermons and lectures, the treatment of the Passover Haggadah and his main work, the "History of the Jewish Reform Movement" printed in 1922.