Hebrew Yom-Tob Lippmann
born Aug. 10, 1794, Detmold, Lippe
died March 18, 1886, Berlin
German historian of Jewish literature.
After taking his doctorate at Halle, he spent much of his life in a precarious struggle with poverty. With the publication of his seminal work, On Rabbinic Literature (1818), he initiated (1819) the movement called Wissenschaft des Judentums ("Science of Judaism"), which stressed the analysis of Jewish literature and culture with the tools of modern scholarship. His On History and Literature (1845) places Jewish literary activity in the context of European literature and politics. Zunz is often considered the greatest Jewish scholar of the 19th century.