Joseph Carlebach (1883–1942)

Joseph Carlebach was born to a large Jewish family in Lübeck, Germany. From 1901, he studied natural sciences, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, and the history of art at Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin. The quantum physicist Max Planck and the philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey were among his teachers. During 1905 to 1907, Carlebach interrupted his studies to teach at the Lämel School in Jerusalem. In 1908, he graduated summa cum laude in Berlin with qualifications as a high school teacher of natural sciences. In 1909, he obtained a doctorate in mathematics at Heidelberg University. He gained academic fame publishing books on Levi ben Gershon and on Albert Einstein's theory of relativity in 1912. From 1910, Carlebach attended the rabbinical seminary in Berlin and was ordained a rabbi in 1914. Several of his brothers also became rabbis. During World War I, Rabbi Carlebach served in the imperial German Army, originally as a telegraphist and then as a Jewish chaplain and educator. From 1919 to 1921, he was rabbi of his hometown of Lübeck. In 1921, he became the headmaster of the Talmud Torah high school in Hamburg. From 1925 to 1936, he was the last chief rabbi of the Jewish community in Hamburg-Altona before and during the Holocaust. After the Nazis banned Jews from attending German schools, Rabbi Carlebach set up a number of schools throughout Germany to educate Jewish children. In 1941, he and his wife Charlotte Carlebach-Preuss and four of their younger children were deported to the Nazi concentration camp at Jungfernhof near Riga, Latvia, and murdered. The Joseph Carlebach Institute at Bar Ilan University in Israel is named in his honor.