Jakob Bernays

Jakob Bernays studied at University of Bonn. Training under Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker is recorded. The recorded working language is German. Places of work recorded in the authority are Wrocław and Bonn. Employment is recorded with University of Bonn and Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau.

Jacob Bernays was born in Hamburg to Jewish parents. His father, Isaac Bernays (1792–1849) was a man of wide culture and the first orthodox German rabbi to preach in the vernacular; his brother, Michael Bernays, was also a distinguished scholar. Between 1844 and 1848, Bernays studied classical philology at the University of Bonn under Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker, Christian August Brandis, and Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl, of whom Bernays became a favourite pupil. In 1853, he accepted the chair of classical philology at the newly founded Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau, where he formed a close friendship with Theodor Mommsen. In 1866, when Ritschl left Bonn for Leipzig, Bernays returned to his old university as extraordinary professor and chief librarian. He remained in Bonn until his death on 26 May 1881. Upon his death, he bequeathed his Hebrew library to the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau.

His chief works, which deal mainly with the Greek philosophers, are: • Joseph Justus Scaliger (1855) • Über das Phokylidische Gesicht (1856) • Grundzüge der verlorenen Abhandlung des Aristoteles über Wirkung der Tragödie (1857) • Über die Chronik des Sulpicius Severus (1861) • Die Dialoge des Aristoteles im Verhältniss zu seinen übrigen Werken (1863) • Theophrastos' Schrift über Frömmigkeit (1866) • Die Heraklitischen Briefe (1869) • Lucian und die Kyniker (1879) • Zwei Abhandlungen über die Aristotelische Theorie des Dramas (1880). The last of these was a republication of his Grundzüge der verlorenen Abhandlungen des Aristoteles über die Wirkung der Tragödie (1857), which aroused considerable controversy.