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Born on 4 May 17776 in Fürth,
Bayern, as the son of Hertz Eschwegel. He is portrayed
as a teacher of drawing [who] taught calligraphy to the
children in the local Talmud Torah. H. remained a
student all of this life, lived in isolation and in his
circles acquired a name [for himself] as an engraver of vignettes
for various former editions.
H. [according to Zalmen
Reyzen] was one of the last representatives of the
vanished Yiddish literature in Germany, and he had
composed a Purim-shpiele program with
the title of "Esther, oder, Di belohnte tugend. A pose in
four sections ,,, in Yiddish-German mundart,"
which he had issued in 1929 in Fürth (the introduction is
dated Cheshvan 5585).
The piece hadn't any
artistic value. In the German "Forrvort dez
ferfassern," H., he himself a settler, that "diezes
works is tsu geringfigig" and "no als eyne
belustigende unterhaltung fir mikh betrakhtete, und nor
durkh don dringende bitmen meyner froynde mikh entshlas,
ez dem drukke tsu ibergeben"; it however is
characterized as iberbleybekhts of the kind of Yiddish
literature in Germany, which is possible without the
curiosity of Yiddish in the eyes of the ostensibly
enlightened assimilated language -- before the true
literary creativity. With its popular, often entirely
trivial humor, H.'s Purim-shpiele in certain
measures a folkloric and even a cultural-historic value,
reflecting (in anachronism) some appearances of Jewish
life in Germany in the beginning of the nineteenth
century. Especially the play is important as a document
of Bayernish Yiddish, especially of the old Jewish Fürth
community, with its specific dialogue, H. gives over so
faithfully.
The play, it appears, had a
certain success in the circles for which it was given,
and it was published in a second edition (publisher S.
B. Gusdorfer, Fürth, 1854, 128 pp., in vayber-teytsh
script.) in which there also was included songs and a
parody in prose.
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Zalmen Reyzen --
"Lexicon of Yiddish Literature," Vol. I, pp. 870-2.
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B. Gorin -- "History
of Yiddish Theatre," Vol. I, p. 58.
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