Background
Jakob Bernays was born at Hamburg of Jewish parents on the 11th of September 1824. His father, Isaac Bernays (1792 - 1849), a man of wide culture, was the first orthodox German rabbi to preach in the vernacular. His brother, Michael Bernays (1834 - 1897), was born in Hamburg on the 27th of November 1834. He studied first law and then literature at Bonn and Heidelberg, and obtained a considerable reputation by his lectures on Shakespeare at Leipzig and an explanatory text to Beethoven's music to Egmont. Having refused an invitation to take part in the editorship of the Preussiche Jahrbucher, in the same year (1866) he published his celebrated Zur Kritik und Geschichte des Goetheschen-Texles. He confirmed his reputation by his lectures at the university of Leipzig, and in 1873 accepted the post of extraordinary professor of German literature at Munich specially created for him by Louis II of Bavaria. In 1874 he became an ordinary professor, a position which he only resigned in 1889 when he settled at Carlsruhe. He died at Carlsruhe on the 23th of February 1897. At an early age he had embraced Christianity, whereas his brother Jakob remained a Jew. Among his other publications were: Briefe Goethes an F. A. Wolf (1868); Zur Enstehungsgeschichte des Scltlegelschen Shakespeare (1872); an introduction to Hirzel's collection entitled Der junge Goethe (1875); and he edited a revised edition of Voss's translation of the Odyssey. From his literary remains were published Schriften zur Kritik mid Litteratur geschichte (1895- 1899).
