The writer and journalist Moritz Gottlieb Saphir (1795–1858) was born to an Orthodox Jewish family in a Hungarian village and studied in a yeshiva but spent his professional life in the cities of Germany and Austria. He was one of the most popular authors and cultural figures in Central and Western Europe in the 19th century, which can be also seen from the fact that Alexandre Dumas, Sr. published a collection of his writings in French complete with a long essay expressing his admiration for Saphir. Together with his friends Heinrich Heine and Ludwig Börne, Saphir was the first Jewish author to achieve international fame. Like them, he converted to the Lutheran faith, but he never denied his Jewish origins and wrote appreciatively of Jewish food traditions.
His literary and journalistic innovations included publishing the first modern newspapers in Berlin, Munich and Vienna, developing a new style of humorous writing, introducing the journalistic genre of the feuilleton to Austria, authoring the first extended prose poem in the German language and writing the first study of vernacular Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine, as well as the first review of a Jewish cookbook and restaurant. Although due to censorship he had to largely eschew political subjects, he courageously fought for press freedom and against anti-Jewish prejudice. Although perhaps not a great writer, he was an important and intriguing figure of European cultural history who certainly doesn’t deserve the neglect his work has suffered since the early 20th century.
András Koerner’s book is the first modern monograph of him, which in addition to a detailed presentation of his eventful, interesting life and an examination of his personality, identity and work also includes the first-ever extensive annotated anthology of him in English.