Leo Baeck

Leo Baeck
German stamp, 1957 for 1st anniversary of the death of Leo Baeck
Synagogue	Fasanenstrasse Synagogue
Personal details
Born	(1873-05-23)23 May 1873 Lissa, Province of Posen, German Empire
Died	2 November 1956(1956-11-02) (aged 83) London, England
Denomination	Liberal Judaism
Spouse	Natalie Hamburger
Semicha	Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums

Leo Baeck (23 May 1873 – 2 November 1956) was a 20th-century German rabbi, scholar and theologian. He served as leader of Liberal Judaism in his native country and internationally, and later represented all German Jews during the Nazi era. After the war, he settled in London, U.K., where he served as the chairman of the World Union for Progressive Judaism.

Baeck was born in Lissa (Leszno) (then in the German Province of Posen, now in Poland), the son of Rabbi Samuel Baeck, and began his education at the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau in 1894. He also studied philosophy in Berlin with Wilhelm Dilthey, served as a rabbi in Oppeln, Düsseldorf, and Berlin, and taught at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (Higher Institute for Jewish Studies). In 1905 Baeck published The Essence of Judaism, in response to Adolf von Harnack's What is Christianity?. This book, which interpreted and valorized Judaism through a prism of Neo-Kantianism tempered with religious existentialism, made him a famous proponent for the Jewish people and their faith. During World War I, Baeck was a chaplain in the German Imperial Army.

In 1933, after the Nazis took power, Baeck worked to defend the Jewish community as president of the Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden, an umbrella organization that united German Jewry from 1933 to 1938. After the Reichsvertretung was disbanded during the November Pogrom, the Nazis reassembled the council's members under the government controlled Reichsvereinigung. Leo Baeck headed this organization as its president until his deportation. On 27 January 1943, he was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp.