Salomon Reinach Research Articles

Salomon Reinach (1858–1932) and the “Jewish Question” in Russia

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Jews in France sought to assimilate into French society. It is generally accepted that this desire to assimilate explains their wariness towards Russian Jews, whose nationalist aspirations found concrete expression in the Zionist and territorial projects. The correspondence of Salomon Reinach, who was one of the most important figures in French Judaism during the Belle Epoque, shows that the “Jewish question” and the situation of the Jews in Russia was central to his attention both as a historian and as the head of the Alliance Israélite Universelle. An analysis of this correspondence allows us to understand the emergence of cultural and scientific transfer processes between France and Russia, French Jews and Russian Jews.

Ciencia y creencia en la construcción del concepto de religión paleolítica

The study of prehistory established itself as a scientific discipline during the second half of the nineteenth century. The main issues discussed by this new science centered on the origins of humankind, society, technology, art and religion; this intellectual process of the creation of ideas, concepts and categories was projected on the archaeological finds. When archaeological evidence was found that could be interpreted as proof of the existence of religious beliefs in Paleolithic times, there were various reactions and interpretations among prehistorians. The clash between evolutionism and the Judeo-Christian religious tradition was a key element in the development of these different discourses; these two viewpoints implied opposite ways of thinking about human nature. This paper discusses this diversity of narratives, specifically in the context of France, through the contributions of four authors, each with different ideologies and sociopolitical circumstances: Gabriel de Mortillet, Emile Cartailhac, Salomon Reinach and Henri Breuil.

A redescoberta de um sociólogo: considerações sobre a correspondência de Émile Durkheim a Salomon Reinach

O artigo apresenta um balanço das mais recentes descobertas documentais relativas ao sociólogo francês Émile Durkheim, e reflete sobre seu impacto na reavaliação, seja ela histórica e/ou teórico-metodológica, de seu legado. Almeja-se armar o leitor frente à leitura de sua correspondência com Salomon Reinach, enfatizando particularmente o debate sobre o tema do totemismo, que é um dos eixos centrais de As formas elementares da vida religiosa, obra que neste ano completa seu centenário de publicação, e o envolvimento de Durkheim no Caso Dreyfuss, que representa um dos principais aspectos de seu engajamento político.

Salomon Reinach and the religious interpretation of Palaeolithic art

When did upper Palaeolithic cave art come to be thought of as religious? The author shows an origin rooted in the intellectual movements of the later nineteenth century, and in particular in the personage and thought of Salomon Reinach.

La création des institutions patrimoniales de Tunisie : œuvre des savants de l'Académie des inscriptions et des belles-lettres et des fonctionnaires du ministère de l'Instruction publique et des Beaux-arts

"The foundation of the heritage institutions in Tunisia, as the work of the scholars of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres and of the civil servants in the ministry of Public Instruction and Fine Arts", by Myriam Bacha. When the protectorate was established, the personality of the civil servants in the French ministry of Public Instruction and Fine Arts, as well as the one of the scholars of the Institut de France had a great impact on the foundation of the heritage institutions in Tunisia. Xavier Charmes, as a head of the secretary's and accounts department in the ministry of Public Instruction, relies on the scholars of the Académie des Inscriptions et belles-lettres to define the broadlines of his policy. So Georges Perrot, Charles Tissot, René Cagnat and Salomon Reinach have lent their scientific support to Charmes and have enabled him to organize the Mission in Tunisia since 1881. Afterwards, when he sets up the antiquities and arts services and promulgates the decree of March 7th 1886, Charmes becomes more and more indépendant from this scholarly circle and organizes these institutions so as to oust the Historic Monuments Department from the Tunisian ground. If Charmes has left his mark on the Tunisian heritage policy, so has his representative, René de la Blanchère as a head of the Antiquities services, having a long-term influence on this administration. This institutional history tells how decisive the personality of the ones who had shaped it all could have been.

Totems, Taboos, and Jews: Salomon Reinach and the Politics of Scholarship in Fin-de-Siecle France

Totems, Taboos, and Jews: Salomon Reinach and the Politics of Scholarship in Fin-de-Siecle France

Totems, Taboos, and Jews: Salomon Reinach and the Politics of Scholarship in Fin-de-Si�cle France

alomon Reinach (1858-1932) was one of the leading figures of the Franco-Jewish establishment at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He was the vice president of the most importantJewish organization of the time, the Alliance Israelite Universelle, was one of the cofounders of the Jewish Colonization Association, the institution established to help Jews leaving Russia to settle on the land in various parts of the world, and was very active in the Societe des EtudesJuives, the famous French society of scholarship on Jews and Judaism, founded in 1880. He was also a good friend of Zadoc Kahn, the chief rabbi of France. Together with his brothers, the deputy Joseph Reinach and the scholar and later deputy Theodore Reinach, he was also one of the earliest of the Dreyfusards, working indefatigably for the exoneration of Captain Alfred Dreyfus. This veryJewishly involved personality was at the same time a fixture in the Parisian intellectual scene, penning numerous works on the classics, Greek archaeology, philology, and ancient religions. A member of the prestigious academy the Institut, professor of the history of art and archaeology at the Ecole du Louvre, director of the Museum of National Antiquities at St. Germain-en-Laye, and director of the journal Revue Archeologique, he was to leave his mark as the major contributor to and propagator of the totem and taboo school of British anthropology in France, applying its findings relentlessly in hundreds

Race, Slavery, and the French and Haitian Revolutions

The soldier, nobleman, and multicide Gilles de Rais ranks among most notorious criminals of fifteenth century. Executed at in 1440 for host of crimes, which apparently included heresy, invocation of demons, and murder of an undetennined number of children, he is figure tailor-made for lasting infamy. However, Gilles has also enjoyed an extraordinary posthumous career, even undergoing something oi&prooes de rehabilitation in vein of his former companion Jeanne d'Arc. This exoneration seems to have begun at very moment of his death. He was apparently followed to gibbet by a great crowd of people praying to God for condemned, and some years later his daughter Marie built memorial fountain on site of his execution. Other contemporary observers are no less forgiving. The fifteenth-century chronicler Monstrelet, for instance, strove to convince his readers of Gilles 's ultimate merit: In spite of false and inhuman will he had, at end he was very graceful and pious . . . The greater part of Breton nobility, and especially those of his family, had very great pain and sadness.2 Among these medieval witnesses, therefore, there is tacit desire to reintegrate this deviant figure into codes he violated.3 The gestures of Monstrelet and Marie de Rais show common desire to draw this criminal, the savage baron more terrible than ravening wolf, back into value-system of his society.4Interestingly, this redemptive project seems not to have ended with Middle Ages. Since interest in case was revived in nineteenth century, large volume of commentary on Gilles and his crimes has been generated. Much of this scholarship has also sought to absolve him in some way. At times this intent is explicit: Salomon Reinach, for instance, utterly dismissed charges against Gilles, advising the good people of Nantes to raise an expiatory monument to him, while Margaret Murray turned him into nothing less than martyr to covert Old Religion.5 But even outside such revisionary discussions, more moderate voices have followed same course. There have been numerous later attempts to rationalize Gilles 's crimes which have often shared this exculpatory dimension. Just as Monstrelet sought to reconcile him with moral and social order he inhabited, so modern analysts have tried to square him with history, transferring responsibility from him to wider, external factors.It is purpose of present article to examine how this tendency has manifested itself in some of major examinations of Gilles's career. Although literature on this subject is not uniform in its approach or findings, as recent surveys by Val Morgan and Michel Meurger have shown, in certain respects discussions of crimes have remained strikingly constant.6 Throughout this scholarship there has been sustained attempt to rehabilitate Gilles, in which key set of tactics is often evident. The article will also judge whether these efforts can in fact be wholly justified, or whether they are borne out of other, more tacit concerns.The most important early study of Gilles and his activities was that published in 1886 by Eugene Bossard, abbot of Sainte-Marie in Cholet.7 While Bossard cannot be considered first modern commentator on case, since earlier studies and fictional versions were produced by Gueraud, Lacroix, Michelet, and Des Essarts, amongst others, his work does provide first comprehensive overview of Gilles's life.8 Even now Bossard's monograph remains an authoritative account: despite his occasional inaccuracies, most subsequent writers have followed sequence of events established by Bossard.9 If nothing else, his study remains valuable for printing records of civil and ecclesiastic trials, which are appended in an edition by Marie la Claviere, albeit with some of more graphic passages excised.10From first, Bossard makes it clear that Gilles cannot simply be thought an aberrant figure but instead key element in wider social system. …

Salomon Reinach et les archipels égéens. À propos d'un voyage sur le Latouche-Tréville

A presentation based on unpublished documents concerning Salomon Reinach's sea voyage in the Aegean archipelagoes from August 15 to October 1 1880 on board the advice-boat Latouche Treville. These documents include a book of notes deposited at the Bibliothèque de la Maison de l'orient in Lyons and letters kept at the Bibliothèque de la Méjanes in Aix en Provence. This corpus shows the personality of a novice archeologist who was often tempted by treasure hunts, it also sheds a new light on the history of the French School of Athens through the activities of one of its members and its relations with the National Navy in the Eastern part of the Mediterranean.

Picasso's neoclassic outlines: An archaeology of consciousness

She innovations and outlinings in Picasso's critically formative Pink Period, and in his recurrent classicisms, clearly stem from once novel and then fashionably assimilated imagery of Late Archaic and Severe style Greek art (Fig. 1; cf. also Fig. 3). As far as I know, however, nowhere in the vast Picasso literature is mentioned another obvious but pedestrian source for these borrowings: the popular yet archaeologically specialized outline reproductions of tens of thousands of Classical works of art in Salomon Reinach's score of mass produced and inexpensive volumes on Greek and Roman reliefs and paintings (Fig. 2).1 Picasso's facile and voracious exploitation of art historical sources is well known. Some wags have even reckoned him the best art historian of the century. The assimilation and abandonment of his father's academicism; his accomplished productions in Barcelona's popular art nouveau expressionism, which led him briefly to imagery like that of Lautrec and Munch in Paris; and his adoptions of Spanish Medievalist as well as Classical styles, followed by Africanist Cubism a la C4zanne and Matisse, all exemplify an eclectic and kaleidoscopic ravaging of high and low sources carried on until his death.2 That frenzied man (and eye) continually on the run left the spoor and seed of an overcompensating alpha male--which belied his plummy associations and infantile polymorphism.

Wrestling with Analogy: A Methodological Dilemma in Upper Palaeolithic Art Research.

In 1902 Emile Cartailhac published hisMea Culpa d'un Sceptique. His acceptance of the high antiquity of prehistoric art in western Europe followed Capitan and Breuil's convincing discoveries in Font de Gaume and Les Combarelles and reflected a widespread change of opinion. Despite previous scepticism, researchers were beginning to allow that the parietal as well as the mobile art did indeed date back to the Upper Palaeolithic. But this swing in scientific opinion opened up an even more baffling problem: why did Upper Palaeolithic people make these pictures? In the year following Cartailhac's turn-about Salomon Reinach tried to answer this question by developing an analogical argument based on ethnographic parallels. He could see no other way of approaching the problem: ‘Our only hope of finding outwhythe troglodytes painted and sculpted lies in asking the same question of present-day primitives with whom the ethnography reveals connections’ (Reinach 1903, 259; my translation, his emphasis).

The Flying Gallop: East and West

Not since Salomon Reinach's series of articles on the flying gallop was published in 1900-01 has a comprehensive study of this convention been undertaken. The present essay covers 3000 years and ranges over Europe and Asia, proposing solutions to the following problems: Why did the flying gallop appear only at certain places? Was its appearance due to diffusion or independent invention? And, finally, how did it happen that the motif appeared in Western Europe near the end of the 18th century after three millennia of disuse?

The publication of Salomon Reinach's ‘Orpheus’ and the question of Christian origins

(1977). The publication of Salomon Reinach's ‘Orpheus’ and the question of Christian origins. Religion: Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 46-65.

The Position of Old-World Prehistory (Conclusion)

The pioneers of European prehistory marched under a banner inscribed Ex Oriente Lux, assuming as an axiom that all the fundamental inventions and discoveries like farming and metallurgy were brought to Europe from the East. The Frenchman Salomon Reinach first challenged the dogma, branding it as le mirage orientale, and then the Germans set about inverting the roles of Europe and Asia till under Hitler it was seriously contended that conquering invaders from Europe had spread to the valleys of the Nile and of the Tigris in time to create there the Sumerian and Pharaonic civilisations! Only now is it really possible to test the conflicting claims of the opposing schools by reference to objective data.

M. Salomon Reinach

BY the death of Salomon Reinach, which took place at Boulogne-sur-Seine on November 4, France has lost one of her most distinguished and widely-known sons, who for more than a generation held a foremost place in the world of scholarship and archæology.

Philosophy

THIS new and revised Anglo-American edition of M. Salomon Reinach's well-known history of religions, which in France has now reached its thirty-eighth edition, brings the survey of the religious movement in the modern world fully up to date. Here M. Reinach is amusing as well as instructive. In dealing with earlier times and other types of religion, the chapter on Christian origins has been almost entirely rewritten in the light of the fresh evidence furnished by the Emperor Claudian's letter to the Alexandrian community and by the Slavonic text of Josephus relating to Jesus, discovered some years ago and brought to the notice of the learned world in 1925. M. Reinach's interpretation of these two documents gives an entirely new conception of the course of events in Jerusalem leading up to the Crucifixion for he concludes that the unnamed leader of the insurrection, which the text of Josephus states was in contemplation, was, in fact, Jesus.

News and Views

THERE would appear to be good ground for believing that another senfiational archæological discovery has suffered the late many of its kind in the past and has failed stand the test of examination by experts. The remarkable character of the finds at Glozel, in which objects of neolithic culture akin to the Ægean, inscriptions on clay tablets, and engravings of animals on pebbles wore found in association, aroused no little scepticism at the time of their discovery; but Dr. Salomon Reinach was convinced of their authenticity and, relying upon their evidence, put forward the theory that a degenerate Magdalenian culture had lasted, so late as 4000–3500 B.C., with the consequence that the Magdalenian must be placed so low as 5000 B.C. The resemblance of the script on the tablets to that alleged to have been found in a Portuguese dolmen in 1894 was immediately apparent. Tt has been stated that a confession of forgery has appeared in Belgium, but confirmation of this is not yet to hand. In the issue of Antiquity for June, Mr. Crawford gives in some detail the results of an examination of the objects themselves, and subjects the circumstances of the find to a critical scrutiny based upon a personal inspection of the ground. He is persuaded that the objects in question are forgeries. His case is convincing; all the more so in that his opinion coincides with that of the Abbe Brouil.

“L’Affaire Glozel”

On 27 September 1926 the learned world was startled by a letter from Monsieur Salomon Reinach, published in The Times. The writer expressed the opinion that the Palaeolithic period (the last phase of which is represented in France by La Madelaine) might have lasted up to 5000 B.C. M. Reinach is Director of the National Museum of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris; his reputation as a savant stands very high, and he is listened to with respect. The discoveries which prompted him to express this unorthodox opinion were, he says “ascertained last summer at Glozel near Vichy. In the same stratum, no doubt a deposit of a religious character, have been found—(1) objects akin to the Neolithic culture of the Aegean, one of them being an idol in the shape of a violin; (2) inscriptions closely related to those found in 1894 in an early Portuguese dolmen; (3) numerous engravings of animals on pebbles, the style of which is degenerate Magdalenian. As the objects classified under (1) and (2) date from about 4000–3500, degenerate Magdalenian outlines (3) cannot possibly be earlier, and we thus have a proof, which I think is conclusive, that the Magdalenian should be dated about 5000 B.C.” Thus from the outset the discussion of the issues has been confused by questionable fact and faulty inference.

Ancient Carving from Sussex

The Dolmen goddess, who is represented in somewhat varying forms on the statue-menhirs of France, is of doubtful origin. M. Salomon Reinach suggests the western world: M. Déchelette, in his Manuel d'Archéologie, favours the eastern, and says that as the cult becomes more sporadic the farther it spreads from the regions of the Mediterranean, so should its origin be sought in a region neighbouring the Aegean littoral, or at least further south than France; he refers to finds of Sir Arthur Evans in Crete, and Dr. Schliemann at Hissarlik. M. Louis Siret would persuade us that the earliest and less distinct figures on the stones represent but primitive symbols of the deified elements.

The Institue of Human Palæontology.

ATTENTION was recentlv directed in NATURE (January 26, p. 412) to the establishment by the Prince of Monaco of an institute of human palaeontology in Paris. The council of administration has now been appointed; it consists of his Highness the Prince as president; MM. Dislere and E. Mayer, conseillers d'état; MM. Boule and Verneau, professors of palaeontology and anthropology in the Museum d'histoire naturelle in Paris; M. Salomon Reinach, member of the Institut and Conservateur of the Musée des antiquites nationales; and M. Louis Mayer, conseiller intime of the Prince. On account of his great services to archaeology and his administrative experience, Prof. M. Boule will be the director of the institute. Two collaborators have been appointed: l'Abbè H. Breuil, professor of prehistory and ethnography of the University of Fribourg, who will occupy the chair of prehistoric ethnography, and Dr. H. Obermaier, privat-docent in prehistory at the University of Vienna, who will be professor of geology in its relation to prehistory.