Lehmann Isaac Kohen, Grandson of Behrend Lehmann and Student of Albrecht Haller: The (Rightful) First Jewish Medical Graduate of the University of Göttingen, 1739
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Edward Reichman
Abstract
From the time of the establishment of universities in Europe, Jews were barred from university medical training by papal decree. By the fifteenth century, the University of Padua in Italy opened its doors to Jews, followed by Dutch universities in the mid seventeenth century. While Tuviya HaRofeh and Gabriel Felix briefly attended the University of Frankfurt in 1678, it wasn’t until the early to mid-eighteenth century that German universities followed suit. Here we identify the first Jewish medical graduate of one of Germany’s premier medical schools, the University of Göttingen. While Benjamin Wolff Gintzburger is thought by many to have been the university’s first Jewish graduate, we clarify here that it was in fact Lehmann Isaac Kohen, grandson of the Court Jew Behrend Lehmann. The expansive archival record of Kohen’s medical training is unique among Jewish medical students of the Early Modern Period. Kohen was a student of the renowned Albrecht von Haller, and it was in an addendum to Kohen’s dissertation that Haller made an extraordinary statement, ignored in the historical literature, advocating religious tolerance in medical education.
Article Note
I thank the editors and anonymous reviewers of Aschkenas for their corrections and suggestions, which enhanced this article, though I am responsible for any errors.
© 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
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- Lehmann Isaac Kohen, Grandson of Behrend Lehmann and Student of Albrecht Haller: The (Rightful) First Jewish Medical Graduate of the University of Göttingen, 1739
- Die ›Judenoffnung‹ von 1743. Ein Quellenfund zur jüdischen Geschichte von Randegg
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Introduction
- Die Briefbücher des Erfurter Rates bis 1456 als Quelle für Kredite von Juden
- Jewish Archives, Archival Practices, and Jewish-Christian Business Records in the Medieval Holy Roman Empire
- Mirror of the Community? Jews and Books of Obligations in Eger (Cheb)
- Jewish Life in Kolín in Light of Municipal Sources from the Fourteenth to the Sixteenth Centuries
- The 1262 rotulo de puramento (TNA E 101/249/10)
- The Mother Tongues of Medieval English Jews
- Gender, Jewish Credit Markets, and Notarial Culture in the Crown of Aragon
- Jewish Moneylenders and the Use of Notarial Registers in Late Medieval Provence
- Legal Prohibitions on Usury and the Documents of the Cairo Geniza
- Weitere Beiträge
- Lehmann Isaac Kohen, Grandson of Behrend Lehmann and Student of Albrecht Haller: The (Rightful) First Jewish Medical Graduate of the University of Göttingen, 1739
- Die ›Judenoffnung‹ von 1743. Ein Quellenfund zur jüdischen Geschichte von Randegg
