Moses Dobruška or Moses Dobruschka, alias Junius Frey (12 July 1753,
Brno
Brno ( , ; german: Brünn ) is a city in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. Located at the confluence of the Svitava and Svratka rivers, Brno has about 380,000 inhabitants, making it the second-largest city in the Czech Republic ...
,
Moravia – 5 April 1794) was a writer, poet and revolutionary. His mother was the first cousin of
Jacob Frank, who claimed to be the
Jewish messiah and founded the Frankist sect.
On 17 December 1775 he converted from
Judaism to the
Catholic faith and took the name of Franz Thomas Schönfeld. On 25 July 1778 he was elevated to nobility in
Vienna, becoming Franz Thomas
Edler von Schönfeld. Together with , who did not convert, he became one of the main activists of the
masonic lodge of the “Knights of St. John the Evangelists for Asia in Europe,” active in Germany and Austria between 1783 and 1790, which was the first German-speaking masonic order to accept Jews.
In 1792, in the wake of the
French Revolution, he traveled via Strasbourg to Paris and became a
Jacobin
, logo = JacobinVignette03.jpg
, logo_size = 180px
, logo_caption = Seal of the Jacobin Club (1792–1794)
, motto = "Live free or die"(french: Vivre libre ou mourir)
, successor = Pa ...
, changing his name, once again, to Junius Frey. The new name derived from ''Junius'' from the Roman
Junii family that fostered the famous tyrant slayer
Brutus, and ''Frey'' being a transliteration of the German word for "liberty". In June 1793 he published his book ''Philosophie sociale, dédiée au peuple françois''.
He was arrested for
treason and espionage and executed by guillotine on 5 April 1794 in connection with the case against his brother-in-law
François Chabot.
[Wölfle-Fischer, 1998, p. 141.]
Notes
References
* Greco, Silvana, ''Moses Dobruska and the Invention of Social Philosophy. Utopia, Judaism, and Heresy under the French Revolution''. De Gruyter Oldenburg, 2022.
* Greco, Silvana, ''Il sociologo eretico. Moses Dobruska e la sua Philosophie sociale (1793)''. Giuntina, 2021.
* Wölfle-Fischer, Susanne, ''Junius Frey, 1753-1794: Jude, Aristokrat und Revolutionär''. P. Lang, 1998.
*
Davidowicz, Klaus Samuel, ''Jakob Frank, der Messias aus dem Ghetto''. P. Lang, 1998.
1753 births
1794 deaths
Writers from Brno
People from the Margraviate of Moravia
Austrian people of Czech-Jewish descent
Czech Roman Catholics
Austrian Roman Catholics
Converts to Roman Catholicism from Judaism
Edlers of Austria
18th-century Austrian people
18th-century Bohemian people
Frankism
People executed by guillotine during the French Revolution
Executed Czech people
Executed Austrian people
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