German word, that is, go through the university and obtain a degree. They adduced the fact that the smaller congregations at least, such as Wreschen, Wollstein, and Kosten, in part had appointed “graduate rabbis” (studirte Rabbiner), in part had resolved to fill their rabbinates with them.

To secure means for a university course, he agreed to accept a position as tutor in Ostrowo, and entered upon his work at the end of 1840. Ostrowo is a little town in the south-eastern part of the Province, the seat of a large Jewish community, which at the time was still completely under the sway of the graceless habits of Ghetto life. Graetz felt thoroughly uncomfortable. His position in the house at which he was engaged to teach did not please him, and in the town he found no one with whom he cared to cultivate friendly intercourse. He had submitted to tutoring, by no means an arduous occupation, in order to lay by money, but he lacked financial talent and the ability to economize. In fact, his devotion to his family connections, his good nature, and his improvidence involved him in pecuniary embarrassments so serious that the monologues in his diary overflow with pessimistic, melancholy reflections. He sought indemnification in frequent excursions to neighboring towns, in composing a Hebrew biography of Mishna teachers under the title תולדות אבות {Hebrew: Toldot Avot},10 and, it appears, in reading the works of the Fathers of the Church. On one of his little trips, the occasion being the betrothal of a friend of his, he met the sister of the fiancée, a very young girl, who attracted and pleased him, and who was destined to exert decisive and salutary influence upon his life. The meeting acted like a soothing charm upon his ill-humor, though he was far from anticipating the consequences it bore. He remained in his position at Ostrowo for one year and a half, until July, 1842, when a trivial occurrence ruptured the irksome relation in a manner not altogether pleasant.

Now he went straightway to Breslau to the University. As he had not been graduated from a Gymnasium, Graetz had to obtain ministerial permission to attend the University. His petition was granted, and, in October, 1842, he was matriculated. With reverential awe and expectation the self-taught student entered the mysterious lecture halls consecrated to pure science, only to leave them shrugging his shoulders at the wisdom proclaimed, disappointed, his longings unsatisfied. The knowledge of which he was master when he began his University course was richer and more varied than ordinary students are likely to start with, and though it was not systematically ordered nor well-balanced, it formed a unit, and had already begun to crystallize about a center. His apprenticeship years, in short, were over; the maturity of his views and his judgment is unmistakable.

While at the University, he heard lectures on a wide variety of subjects--on history, philosophy, Oriental languages, even physics--but it does not appear that any left deep traces upon his mind. Even Professor Bernstein, an Orientalist of considerable reputation, who drew him into the circle of his close associates, did not understand how to kindle his pupil’s zeal, usually so impetuous, for the thorough study of Syriac and Arabic. Apparently Graetz had relinquished the ambition to gain mastery of them. The only one to have success was Professor Braniss, a philosopher in high esteem in his day, with whom also Graetz cultivated intimate relations. He at all events must have been instrumental in acquainting him with the Hegelian system of philosophy, and in imbuing him with the recognition, that even in the world of liberty, that is, man’s world of mental endeavor, phases of development succeed each other in conformity with absolute laws, chiefly of an ideal, non-mechanical nature; that therefore the spiritual powers that produce the history of mankind by the realization of ever higher ideas not only follow their indwelling laws, but at the same time submit unconditionally to the law of cause and effect; and that the paradox of opposites, the principle of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, is particularly helpful in the consideration of historical phenomena.

Though Graetz was immersed in his studies, he did not fail to give close attention to the occurrences in the Breslau Jewish community. The events happening there in those days were not merely of local interest. They cast their light and their shadow far beyond the Silesian frontier, and were the cause of intense excitement in all Jewish circles of Germany. In Breslau the orthodox and the reform views of Judaism for the first time rushed at each other with full force in the struggle for supremacy. Storm and conflict raged violently between the old and the new. Blind to the conditions of the time, orthodoxy stubbornly opposed a non possumus to every offer looking to an adjustment of difficulties. The representatives of the two parties, the orthodox Solomon Tiktin on the one side and the progressive Abraham Geiger on the other, sought to get the better of each other with remorseless acrimony. Geiger won the upper hand, and even the disruption of the Breslau congregation caused by Tiktin’s defeat did not derogate from the reform champion’s victory.

Dr. Abraham Geiger should be classed among the most prominent rabbis of his time. The modern development of the religious life had been proceeding quietly though steadily, when it was convulsed to its depths by the storm announced by his first appearance upon the rabbinical scene. As a speaker and as a writer he handled a popular style with masterful skill, which manifested itself in felicitous copiousness rather than in the concentration of precise, forcible language. One of the best pulpit orators among Jews, he succeeded in holding attention and stimulating thought by his simple manner and brilliant turns of expression. His published sermons, very limited in number, give not even an approximate idea of the powerful impression produced by his spoken words, totally unaided though they were by charms of person.11 His scholarly contributions to Jewish science are of pre-eminent and of permanent value. He has rendered particularly valiant service by his researches into the history of literature, a field in which he was master. On the other hand, one sometimes misses thoroughness of scholarly culture in his early productions, especially those of the first part of his Breslau period. Besides, he was fond of obtruding his reform bias. In spite of his scientific attainments, his historical sense lacked profundity, and in spite of his great achievements in the province of modern liturgy, his appreciation of the needs and emotions of the people’s spiritual life was neither sufficiently delicate nor sufficiently intense. At bottom he was a doctrinaire rationalist. His religious program and aims, too, were not clearly and definitely put forth. For example, his attitude towards the radical currents at that time rolling their destructive waves over Judaism amounted to more than benevolent neutrality. The observer cannot ward off the impression, that he was inclined to steer straight for ethical deism, and was restrained only by opportunist reasons. At this above all Graetz took umbrage, and by and by his antipathy to Geiger was complete. A good deal of sham and tinsel had probably slipped into the various tentative