Siegfried Kapper was the literary pseudonym

Pen name

A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...

 of Isaac Salomon Kapper (21 March 1821, Smíchov

Smíchov

Smíchov is a district of Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, and is part of Prague 5. It is located on the west bank of the Vltava river....

7 June 1879, Prague

Prague

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

), a Bohemia

Bohemia

Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague...

n-born Austrian writer of Jewish

Jews

The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...

 origin. Born in Smichow, Kapper studied medicine at Prague University, later completing a Ph.D.

Ph.D.

A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 at the University of Vienna

University of Vienna

The University of Vienna is a public university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world...

. Kapper wrote excellent fairy tales and poems, and was one of the leading figures of Czech-Jewish assimilation. Kapper wrote in both German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 and Czech

Czech language

Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...

. He translated Mácha

Karel Hynek Mácha

Karel Hynek Mácha was a Czech romantic poet.- Biography :Mácha grew up in Prague, the son of a foreman at a mill. He learned Latin and German in school...

's Máj

Máj

Máj is a romantic poem by Karel Hynek Mácha in four cantos. It was fiercely criticized when first published, but since then has gained the status of one of the most prominent works of Czech literature; the poem now is memorized by schoolchildren and continuously in print.-Setting:According to the...

into German for the first time (1844).

After his death, the Kapper-Society was founded; its aim was Czech-Jewish assimilation and opposition to Zionism

Zionism

Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...

 and German-Jewish assimilation.

Selected works

• "Slavische Melodien," (1884)
• "Die Handschriften Altböhmischer Poesien" (1859)
• "Die Böhmischen Bäder" (1857)
• "Fürst Lazar" (1853)
• "Falk" (1853)
• "Südslavische Wanderungen" (1853)
• "Die Gesänge der Serben" (1852in two parts)
• "Lazar der Serbenzar," (1851). Kapper had a Serbian predecessor in the person of Joksim Nović-Otočanin who published his book on the same theme at Novi Sad (Neusatz) in 1847.
• "Befreite Lieder dem Jungen Oesterreich" (1848)
• "České Listy" (1846)

External links

• "Siegfried Kapper" at the Jewish Encyclopedia