Eisler, Moritz

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EISLER, MORITZ

EISLER, MORITZ (1823–1902), educator and historian of Jewish philosophy. Eisler was born in Prossnitz, Moravia. In 1853 he became a teacher of religion at the Piarist high school and director of the communal school at Nikolsburg. In 1862 he founded an organization for the support of disabled Jewish teachers, their widows and orphans (which later became the "Maehrisch-Schlesischer Israelitischer Lehrerverein") and served as its president until 1898. His Vorlesungen ueber die juedische Philosophie des Mittelalters ("Lectures On Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages," 3 vols., 1870–83) became one of the first attempts to present, in popular fashion, the main systems of medieval Jewish philosophy. In addition, he published a number of essays on specific questions in the history of Jewish philosophy, including essays on *Spinoza, *Ibn Daud, and Ibn *Ẓaddik.

bibliography:

H. Heller, Maehren's Maenner der Gegenwart, 1 (1889), 3, 28; Kuerschners Deutscher Literatur-Kalender (1902); Ch. D. Lippe, Bibliographisches Lexicon, 1 (1881), 92; 2 (1887), 52.