SCHOTT (SCHOTTLÄNDER), BENEDICT (BARUCH):

German educationist; born in Danzig March 11, 1763 (or 1764); died at Seesen July 21, 1846. Left an orphan at an early age, he wandered through Germany as a scholar ("baḥur"), and among other places sojourned in Glogau, Breslau, and Berlin. In the last-named city he was tutor in the house of the banker Herz Beer, father of the composer Meyerbeer. In 1804 Schott was called as a teacher to the newly established Jacobsonschule in Seesen, and two years later he was made its director.

At Jacobson's request the title "hofrat" was conferred upon Schott by Landgrave Ludwig X. of Hesse-Darmstadt.

In 1806 Schott, commissioned by Jacobson, went to Paris to submit to the Sanhedrin summoned by Napoleon a memorial urging the necessity of better education among the Jews. After a long term of activity in the Jacobsonschule, Schott retired July 1, 1838, in his seventy-fifth year.

Schott was the author of the following works: "Der Levit von Ephraim," Breslau, 1798; "Toldoth Noach, oder die Geschichte der Sündfluth," ib. 1799; "Zaphnat Paneach," a collection of moral teachings, proverbs, stories, and poems from the Talmud and other Jewish works; a reader for Jewish children, designed especially for use in the Jacobsonschule, vol. i., Königslutter, 1804; vol. ii., Hildesheim, 1812; "Sendschreiben an Meine Brüder, die Israeliten in Westfalen, die Errichtung eines Jüdischen Konsistoriums Betreffend," Brunswick, 1808.

Bibliography:
  • Ha-Meassef, ix. 9;
  • Sulamith, iii., part v., 301; new series, vol. i., part ii., p. 157, notes;
  • P. Philippson, Biographische Skizzen, ii. 168, and notes;
  • Steinschneider, Cat. Bodl. col. 2573;
  • Zeitschrift des Harzvereins für Geschichte und Altertumskunde, xxiii. 204, 206;
  • Woblwill, in Allg. Zeit. des Jud. 1847, p. 13;
  • Lewinsky, Hofrat Benedict Schott, ib. 1901, pp. 460 et seq.
S. A. Lew.
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