Carlebach, Joseph

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CARLEBACH, JOSEPH

CARLEBACH, JOSEPH (1882–1942), rabbi and educator, son of Solomon Carlebach (1845–1919) and rabbi of Luebeck for nearly 50 years. Joseph Carlebach probably served as the

prototype for the rabbi in Thomas Mann's Dr. Faustus. After a period of teaching, he opened a Hebrew high school in German-occupied Kovno, Lithuania, during World War i. He later became headmaster of the Talmud Torah high school at Hamburg and rabbi of Luebeck (1919–22), Altona (1927–37), and ultimately of Hamburg. Carlebach published commentaries on the Song of Songs, the Prophets (1932), and Ecclesiastes (1936), and his thesis on *Levi b. Gershom as a mathematician, besides many articles in German-Jewish periodicals. He perished in the Holocaust, in a concentration camp near Riga, Latvia. (see Chart: Rabbis of the Carlebach Family).

bibliography:

N. Carlebach, Joseph Carlebach and His Generation (1959).

[Ze'ev Wilhem Falk]