Friedrich Bräuninger is cited twice, w/ familiarity, in Hans Lewy's
Sobria Ebrietas [1929],
p.17, pp.
79-80. This provides us some insights toward the German-Jewish scholarship of a very small circle of Classically-trained philologists in Weimar Berlin and Heidelberg, including especially Ludwig and Emma Edelstein.
Bräuninger was born 18 June 1901 in Berlin. He received his doctorate in late 1925 from the University of Berlin and passed the state examination for a higher teaching position on March 1, 1926. Lewy was born 21 March 1901 in Berlin. He received his doctorate in 1926 from the University of Berlin, a few months after Bräuninger. These peers likewise studied under and completed their PhD dissertations for Eduard Norden (1868-1941), whom each cited as his mentor/faculty advisor. Furthermore, Ludwig Edelstein (born 23 April 1902: a year younger) studied under E. Norden at precisely the same time, c.1923-4, though illness and other reasons led Edelstein to depart (late 1924) and continue his studies elsewhere. Simply put, these three scholars were classmates if not close friends, so of course they knew of and followed each others' interest and output, c.1924-5. As documented here, Lewy even discussed his ongoing research with his classmate, F. Bräuninger, for a substantial accord; this demonstrates how friendly or close Norden's students were, and how they worked under his supervision in this period.
See H. Lewy,
Sobria Ebrietas, p.79-80, n.1:
As F. Bräuninger showed me, {the Asclepius} belongs to a different literary type than the Poimandres, namely that of a book of revelation (like Corp. Herm. XIII). The similarity with Poimandres -- apart from conceptual congruences, explained by the fact that both writings belong to Hermetic Gnosis -- extends also to the fact that the author of the 'Asclepius' dialogue likewise adheres to the unit of time of a day, closing his treatise with the evening prayer. But here, too, the reasons are different, for the Asclepius author imitates Classical models of dialogue.
I should note in passing how Lewy references
The Asclepius, a text carefully studied and much quoted in the Edelstein's seminal
Asclepius: Collection and Interpretation of the Testimonies [1945/
1998], written c.1934-42. That our Edelsteins would likewise borrow from both Bräuninger (1926) and Lewy (1929) in their somewhat later work is by no means coincidental nor surprising, in fact.
Given conventions of German scholarship at that time, Prof. Norden directed his students' work: the pupil was largely the product of his master. From the dissertation topics which Bräuninger and Lewy chose, we may presume Norden inspired both scholars to follow certain related, shared lines of
mystical research. Without doubt, evident by citation in their works, Norden's teaching and course-work during the period 1923-4 greatly impacted Bräuninger (1926), Lewy (1929) ... and also, we shall see, their classmate Ludwig Edelstein. Although L. Edelstein left the University of Berlin for Heidelberg in 1924, and his biographers typically cite Werner Jaeger (1888-1961) as Edelstein's main mentor at Berlin, his thematic work more than a decade later (Anonymous, 1939) points squarely back to studies alongside Bräuninger and Lewy under Prof. Norden's influence c.1924. In his own scholarship, Edelstein's mystical, religious turn might date from this period; however, none of his biographers have recognized and identified this marked
character.
Hans Lewy citing his classmate Bräuninger's work is perfectly explicable -- nor was it any great coincidence Ludwig Edelstein would later digest and combine ideas of both classmates' respective monographs in his own research and product for the Rockefellers, in 1938. In effect, all three scholars are drawing ideas and lines of inquiry from the same seminars taught or organized by E. Norden in 1923/4. Now we can understand: similarities in their works will appear much less 'coincidental' in light of known German pedagogical factors and Prof. Eduard Norden's definite influence on all three men, his own students. These were trained scholars, expressing (in part) the genius of their teacher.
Here is a passage from a biographical note by another of Norden's students and Edelstein's friends, colleague Elias Bickerman, published in October 1927. See the translation in Albert I. Baumgarten, “Eduard Norden and his Students: A Contribution to a Portrait, Based on Three Archival Finds,”
Scripta Classica Israelica, no. 25 (2006),
p.130:
Let us take [Eduard Norden's] book, that has the Greek title, Ἄγνωστος Θεός: The Unknown God {1913}, as an example of his craft [as a scholar]. This is the God about whom, as narrated in Acts, Paul preached in Athens. The apostle spoke in Greek, and the account of the event is in Greek not only in language but also in composition. But the concept of the ‘unknown god’ is not Hellenic; it is oriental. Norden proves this by following the development of the word ἄγνωστος and demonstrating its absence in the truly Hellenic world, and its wide distribution in oriental Hellenism. And so painstaking, ‘nitpicking’ lexicographic studies lead to the realization that this Semitic and later Christian ‘gnosis’ was not rational discourse about God, but a mystic identification that means becoming immersed in the godhead. And in that way the investigation of words leads to the understanding of that by-gone time, which just now feels so close to us, when mystic vision began to prevail over extravagant intellectualism.
Later in the same essay, Bickerman suggests something more important in Norden's method:
Norden categorizes forms of praises of God [...] and from the accumulation of quotations and syntactical observations there gradually emerges the distinction between Greek and Semitic types of piety: a Greek praises only the deeds of the godhead, while an Oriental also praises its attributes. [...] Norden’s contribution ties together the art of analysis with the drive to synthesis.
Quite simply, none of Ludwig Edelstein's other professors at either Berlin or Heidelberg taught about "Semitic Gnosis" or mystical Judaism in so dialectal fashion. Here, I am not implying Edelstein's other teachers (especially W. Jaeger and Karl Jaspers) exerted no other possible influence, either. Rather, that in their Anonymous work, the Edelsteins' allusions to the Agnostos Theos, obscure references to Ancient Greek thought, the debate between self-knowledge and knowing God, and immersion in the Krater/godhead (among other themes which may be drawn) all make the most sense from Norden's tutelary example. This is only to suggest the obscure philosophy behind the Basic Text may, in some sense, be considered Norden-esque: "Sober Inebriety" was an analytical, synthetic Norden topic, indeed.
Portrait of Ludwig Edelstein's Professor Eduard Norden, c. 1925?
Today (2023), the young Weimar German scholars Hans Lewy and Friedrich Bräuninger are all but forgotten; these works are still untranslated. Only the Edelsteins' Anonymous work -- a bold, keen synthesis of his classmates' earlier published (German-language) dissertations, the foundation of their re-constructed Hellenistic Jewish therapeusis -- remains in print: over 30mln copies sold, with a new (yet another) edition planned.
Of Eduard Norden's and
Erich Frank's students, we can now grasp how: "They had visioned the Great Reality," to write a scientistic cabbala for Therapeutic-Hermetic Gnosis, hypothecated from the cult
bios of Judeo-Egyptian Pythagoreans at
Plinthine (near Taposiris Magna) c.15 AD.
