Solomon Ettinger

Who was Solomon Ettinger?

Solomon Ettinger was a 19th-century Yiddish- and Hebrew-language playwright, poet and writer of songs and fables whose emblematic play Serkele has remained a classic of the Yiddish theatre. His given name has appeared variously as Salomon or Shlomo or Shloyme and his family name has also been rendered as Ettingher.

Writer was born in Zamość. By 1795, Poland had been partitioned between Prussia, Russia and Austria. Zamość was in the Austrian partition, but the residents spoke primarily Polish and the Zamość had a large Jewish population.

Young Solomon lost his parents at an early age and was raised by his grandfather, a rabbi, whom he described as open-minded and tolerant. As was common at the time, the young man had an arranged marriage at the age of fifteen and was apprenticed to various professionals. Ettinger further related that his attempts at a career were all failures. Eventually, he traveled to the big town of the Austrian partition, the primarily Polish-Ukrainian city of Lviv, to study medicine at its renowned University. After years of learning, he graduated with a medical degree and returned to his native region, but was unable to practice as a physician. By 1832 the city of Zamość, where Ettinger now lived, had been incorporated into the Russian partition, the most intolerant of the three. Anti-Jewish pogroms were frequent and Ettinger's degree was declared invalid, because it came from an ostensibly foreign institution.