David Günzburg

Who was David Günzburg?

Baron David Goratsiyevich Günzburg, 3th Baron de Günzburg, was a Russian orientalist and Jewish communal leader. He was the son of Baron Horace Günzburg. His grandfather Baron Joseph Günzburg, was ennobled by the Grand Duchy of Hesse, and founded World ORT, non-profit non-governmental organization whose mission is the advancement of Jewish and other people through training and education with past or present involvement in over 100 countries.

Günzburg was born in present-day Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire. He was educated at home, his teachers being Adolph Neubauer, Senior Sachs, and Hirsch Rabinovich. At the age of twenty he received the degree of "candidate" at St. Petersburg University, after having attended the lectures of Stanislas Guyard at Paris and Baron Rosen at St. Petersburg; later he studied Arabic poetry under Orientalist Wilhelm Ahlwardt at Greifswald.

He edited the Tarshish of Rabbi Moses ibn Ezra in a fascicle which was issued by the Meqitze Nirdamim Society, and prepared for the press the Arabic translation of the same work, with a commentary. He published also Ibn Guzman, and wrote a series of articles on "Metrics", published in the memoirs of the Oriental Department of the Russian Archeological Society and of the Neo-Philological Society, in the "Journal" of the Ministry of Public Instruction of Russia, and elsewhere.