Adolphe Danziger De Castro, also known as Gustav Adolf Danziger, Adolph Danziger, Adolphe Danziger and Adolphe De Castro, (November 6, 1859 – March 4, 1959) was a Jewish scholar, journalist, lawyer and author of poems, novels and short stories.

Life

Adolphe Danziger De Castro was born Abram Dancygier, the son of Symcha Jakub Dancygier and Chaja Szarka, near Dobrzyń nad Wisłą, Congress Poland

Congress Poland

The Kingdom of Poland , informally known as Congress Poland , created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna, was a personal union of the Russian parcel of Poland with the Russian Empire...

. He claimed that the ancestor of the family Dancygier was a Portuguese Jew named Israel De Castro who migrated from Portugal

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

 to the Netherlands

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 in the 16th century and whose descendants settled in Danzig, whence the surname Danziger originated.

Danziger De Castro also claimed that he had received the rabbinical ordination by Rabbi Israel Jehoszua Trunk called 'R. Shiele Kutner' (1820–1893)http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?letter=I&artid=308https://www.virtualjudaica.com/Item/21678/Yeshu%27ot_Yisrael around 1877 and had obtained a Ph.D.

Ph.D.

A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 in oriental philology at the university of Bonn

Bonn

Bonn is the 19th largest city in Germany. Located in the Cologne/Bonn Region, about 25 kilometres south of Cologne on the river Rhine in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, it was the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990 and the official seat of government of united Germany from 1990 to 1999....

 in 1882. In 1883 he emigrated to the U.S.A., where he first lived as a journalist and teacher in St. Louis and Vincennes

Vincennes

Vincennes is a commune in the Val-de-Marne department in the eastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris. It is one of the most densely populated municipalities in Europe.-History:...

 (IN), before settling in San Francisco in November 1884, where he practiced as a dentist and free-lance journalist until 1900. In 1900 he moved to New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 to get a book published, abandoning his first wife and the children. In 1903-04 he served as vice-consul of the United States in Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

. Since that time he worked as an attorney at law. In 1904-05 he lived in Aberdeen

Aberdeen

Aberdeen is Scotland's third most populous city, one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas and the United Kingdom's 25th most populous city, with an official population estimate of ....

, Scotland, between 1905 and 1921 in California. On February 1, 1920, he was one of the thirty-nine founders of the Sephardic Community of Los Angeles (La Comunidad Sefardi) and was elected the first president of the congregation.http://home.earthlink.net/~benven/STTI.htm Between 1921 and 1926 he spent some time in Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

, between 1927 and 1936 he lived in New York City, since 1936 in Los Angeles.

He was first married in to Bertha M. Levy (b. 1867) and had the children Beatrice Danziger (1891–1974, married to William K. Dolan) and Nathan Danziger (1894–1965), who changed his name to Nathaniel Dolan. He got married a second time - without having been divorced from his first wife - in 1907 to Georgina Sterling McClellan (1880–1935) and, after his second wife's death, a third time to Maria Paez Urquidi.

Adolphe Danziger De Castro died at almost 100 years in Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 on March 4, 1959.

Works

Danziger translated the story "Der Mönch von Berchtesgaden" (The Monk of Berchtesgaden), by German author Richard Voß

Richard Voß

Richard Voß was a German dramatist and novelist.-Biography:Voss was born at Neu-Grape near Pyritz, in Pomerania, the son of a country squire....

, published in a German monthly magazine in 1891, into English and contracted Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist and satirist...

, who supported Danziger's literary ambitions between 1886 and 1894, to edit the story. It was published as "The Monk and the Hangman’s Daughter" first in serial form in a San Francisco newspaper in 1891 and republished in book form in 1892.

In 1903, he wrote the academic book Jewish Forerunners of Christianity on the Jewish Patriarchs of the 2nd Temple Period from Hillel

Hillel the Elder

Hillel was a famous Jewish religious leader, one of the most important figures in Jewish history. He is associated with the development of the Mishnah and the Talmud...

 through Jesus Christ until Rabbi Juda the Prince

Judah haNasi

Judah the Prince, or Judah I, also known as Rebbi or Rabbeinu HaKadosh , was a 2nd-century CE rabbi and chief redactor and editor of the Mishnah. He was a key leader of the Jewish community during the Roman occupation of Judea . He was of the Davidic line, the royal line of King David, hence the...

, the compiler of the Jerusalem Talmud

Jerusalem Talmud

The Jerusalem Talmud, talmud meaning "instruction", "learning", , is a collection of Rabbinic notes on the 2nd-century Mishnah which was compiled in the Land of Israel during the 4th-5th century. The voluminous text is also known as the Palestinian Talmud or Talmud de-Eretz Yisrael...

.

H.P.Lovecraft, with whom Danziger De Castro corresponded between 1927 and 1936, revised two of his early short stories in the late 1920s; they were published in Weird Tales

Weird Tales

Weird Tales is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine first published in March 1923. It ceased its original run in September 1954, after 279 issues, but has since been revived. The magazine was set up in Chicago by J. C. Henneberger, an ex-journalist with a taste for the macabre....

.

Essays

• "Extracts of the System of Jewish Philosophy and Religion of Maimonides", series of articles, in: The Jewish Voice, St. Louis, 1888.
• "The Position of Laboring Men Among the Ancient People, Especially Among the Ancient Jews in Palestine", series of articles in: The Jewish Voice, St. Louis, 1888.
• "The Story of Joseph, The son of Jacob: From the Legendary Lore of the Hebrews", series of articles in: The Jewish Voice, St. Louis, 1889.
• "The Jew in San Francisco, the Last Half Century", in: Overland Monthly and Out West magazine, San Francisco: Vol. 25, No. 148, April 1895.
• Jewish Forerunners of Christianity, New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1903 (re-issued in London: John Murray, 1904, and as Jesus Lived: Hebrew evidences of his existence and the rabbis who believed in him, New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1926).
• The Sephardic movement in Spain: A present day review, unpublished monograph (Box B-77-272, American Jewish Archives, Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati), ca. 1920’s.
• Portrait of Ambrose Bierce, New York: The Century Co., 1929.
• All I Care to Tell, unpublished autobiography (at the American Jewish Archives, Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati).

Novels

• The Monk and the Hangman’s Daughter, with Ambrose Bierce, Chicago: F. J. Schulte, 1892 (first published as serial in: San Francisco Examiner, 1891).
• A Man, A Woman and A Million, London: Sands & Co., 1902.
• Children of Fate: A Story of Passion, New York: Brentano's, 1905.
• The Polish Baroness, (n.p.), 1907.
• Helen Polska’s Lover, or The Merchant Prince, (n.p.), 1908 (re-issued London, 1909).

Poems

• After the Confession, and other verses, Western Authors' Publishing Association, 1908.
• In the Garden of Abdullah, and other poems, Los Angeles: Western Authors' Publishing Association, 1916.
• The Painter’s Dream, Los Angeles, 1940.
• The Hybrid Prince of Egypt, plus, Song of the Arabian Desert, Los Angeles: Western Authors Association, 1950.

Short stories

• In the Confessional and The Following, New York, San Francisco: Western Authors’ Publishing Association, 1893.

Revisions by H.P. Lovecraft

• "The Last Test", in: Weird Tales, Vol. 12, No. 5, Nov. 1928 (revision of "A Sacrifice to Science", in: In the Confessional and the Following, 1893)
• "The Electric Executioner", in: Weird Tales, Vol. 16, No. 2, Aug. 1930 (revision of "The Automatic Executioner", first published in: The Wave, Nov. 14, 1891, republished in: In the Confessional and the Following, 1893)

External links

• "The Revised Adolphe Danziger de Castro" (Christopher Powell)
• "Adolphe Danziger deCastro Publications and References" (Christopher Powell)