Ancestral Tales and Legends

Ludwig A. Frankl

1836

Under the roof of the oldest synagogue in Prague (the Altneuschul), because of the belief that misfortune would meet the workers, there is preserved, in its primeval form and color, a piece of trunk-like clay, which is known by the name “Golem.”

A wise rabbi (still called High-Reb Leb by the Jews), who diligently occupied himself with the Kabbalah…

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Creator Bio

Ludwig A. Frankl

1810–1894

Born in Chrast, Bohemia, Ludwig August Frankl was educated in Prague and Vienna; he studied medicine in Italy. He became a poet, editor of the Sonntagsblätter, secretary of the Vienna Jewish community, and founder of the Laemel School in Jerusalem and the Vienna Jewish Institute for the Blind. Frankl was a political liberal who supported the 1848 revolution through his journal and his verse. He used his position in Vienna’s literary elite to encourage new writers and was ennobled as Ritter von Frankl-Hochwart in recognition of his philanthropic activities. His is one of the earliest Prague golem tales.

Related Guide

Folk Tales and Fiction, 1750–1880

The “return to history” of Jews in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and engagement between Jews and their majority cultures offered new models for imaginative writing beyond those within their ancestral traditions.

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