1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Steinschneider, Moritz

13098061911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 25 — Steinschneider, MoritzIsrael Abrahams

Steinschneider, Moritz (1816–1907), Jewish bibliographer, was born in Moravia in 1816. He was the most accomplished bibliographer in the realm of Hebrew literature. His greatest work was his Catalogue of the Hebrew Collection of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, (1852–1860). In this masterly work he settled many questions as to the locality, date and authorship of early printed books, and provided a vast mass of biographical materials. His Jewish Literature (published in German in Ersch and Gruber in 1850, in English in 1857, and in Hebrew in 1899) is a complete survey of its subject. Steinschneider prepared many other catalogues (Leiden, Munich, Hamburg and Berlin). He wrote much on Arabic literature, and was the author of bibliographies on a great variety of subjects. Among them may be named bibliographies of Jewish mathematicians and travellers. His most extensive work after his Bodleian Catalogue was his treatise on Hebrew translations in the middle ages (Die hebräischen Übersetzungen des Mittelalters, 2 vols., 1893). Much of his work appeared in his periodical Hebräische Bibliographie (1859–1882). He died in Berlin in 1907.  ((I. A.))