Education
Güdemann attended the Jewish school in Hildesheim, and thereafter went to a Catholic Gymnasium. He was educated at the University of Breslau (Doctor of Philosophy 1858), and took his rabbinical diploma (1862) at the newly founded the Jewish Theological Seminary there.
Career
His most important work is Geschichte des Erziehungswesens und der Cultur der abendländischen Juden während des Mittelalters und der neueren Zeit. In the latter year he was called to the rabbinate of Magdeburg. In 1866 he went to Vienna as preacher, where he became rabbi in 1868, and chief rabbi in 1892.
As far back as 1871, however, he had strongly protested against the proposal of the Jewish community of Vienna to strike from the prayer-book all passages referring to the return of the Jews to the Holy Land (compare his sermon "Jerusalem, die Apfer und die Orgel," 1871), and had even gone so far as to threaten to resign from the board of trustees.