Gustav Karpeles

Gustav Karpeles (1848–1909) was a German Jewish literary historian and journalist. Born in Moravia and educated at the rabbinical seminary and university in Breslau, he worked as an editor in Berlin and for many years directed the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums. His two-volume Geschichte der jüdischen Literatur (1886) was the first comprehensive history of its subject, and he also edited the works of Heinrich Heine and wrote studies of the poet. He founded and led the association of societies for Jewish history and literature in Germany and lectured widely to them; many of those lectures were collected in English as Jewish Literature and Other Essays.