kimerajamm
Joined: 28 Nov 2010
Posts: 785
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 Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2011 11:56 am Post subject: the rest of the quote |
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"Very little is known for sure about the origin and education of George Woldemar Cantor."[62] However, Cantor was frequently described as Jewish in his lifetime.[63] Cantor's paternal grandparents were from Copenhagen, and fled to Russia from the disruption of the Napoleonic Wars. There is very little direct information on his grandparents, consequently their level of Jewish observance is unknown.[64] Jakob Cantor, Cantor's grandfather, gave his children Christian saints' names. Further, several of his grandmother's relatives were in the Czarist civil service, which would not welcome Jews, unless they, or their ancestors, converted to Orthodox Christianity. Cantor's father, Georg Waldemar Cantor, was educated in the Lutheran mission in Saint Petersburg, and his correspondence with his son shows both of them as devout Lutherans. His mother, Maria Anna Böhm, was an Austrian born in Saint Petersburg and baptized Roman Catholic; she converted to Protestantism upon marriage. However, there is a letter from Cantor's brother Louis to their mother, saying
“ "Even if we were descended from Jews ten times over, and even though I may be, in principle, completely in favour of equal rights for Hebrews, in social life I prefer Christians..."[62] ”
which could be read to imply that she was of Jewish ancestry.[65]
There are documented statements that call this Jewish ancestry into question:
“ "More often [i.e., than the ancestry of the mother] the question has been discussed of whether Georg Cantor was of Jewish origin. About this it is reported in a notice of the Danish genealogical Institute in Copenhagen from the year 1937 concerning his father: "It is hereby testified that Georg Woldemar Cantor, born 1809 or 1814, is not present in the registers of the Jewish community, and that he completely without doubt was not a Jew .."[62] ”
It is also later said in the same document:
“ "Also efforts for a long time by the librarian Josef Fischer, one of the best experts on Jewish genealogy in Denmark, charged with identifying Jewish professors, that Georg Cantor was of Jewish descent, finished without result. [Something seems to be wrong with this sentence, but the meaning seems clear enough.] In Cantor's published works and also in his Nachlass there are no statements by himself which relate to a Jewish origin of his ancestors. There is to be sure in the Nachlass a copy of a letter of his brother Ludwig from 18 November 1869 to their mother with some unpleasant antisemitic statements, in which it is said among other things: ..."[62] ”
(the rest of the quote is finished by the very first quote above)
Thus Cantor has been called Jewish in his lifetime,[66] but has also variously been called Russian, German, and Danish as wellplane
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