ברוך פלאצק

Rav Baruch Jacob Placzek (1834–1922), who also wrote under the pen name Benno Planek, was the last Landesrabbiner of Moravia, an author and poet, an orator, and a naturalist. He was born in Weisskirchen (today Hranice) to Rav Avraham Placzek, Landesrabbiner of Moravia, and his wife Anna. His father taught him Gemara in Boskowitz; he attended the gymnasia of Nikolsburg and Brünn and then the universities of Vienna and Leipzig, where in 1856 he completed a doctorate on the cultural history of the native peoples of Mexico.

After teaching at a Jewish school in Frankfurt and founding a Bürgerschule in Hamburg in 1858, he was appointed chief rabbi of Brünn (Brno) in 1861, a post he held for forty-four years. In 1884 he succeeded his father as Landesrabbiner of Moravia, serving until his passing. He promoted the founding of the Israelitisch-Theologische Lehranstalt in Vienna and sat as its curator, and helped found a number of charitable societies. Under the Planek name and his own he published two collections of verse, Im Eruw in 1867 and Stimmungsbilder in 1872, and in 1895 a novel, Der Takif, besides many sermons, addresses, and eulogies; some of these appeared in Hebrew, French, and English translation. In the natural sciences he gave lectures at Brünn’s Natural History Society and wrote for The Popular Science Monthly and for Kosmos; Gregor Mendel was a close friend of his, and he exchanged letters with Charles Darwin. Leipzig gave him an honorary doctorate in 1907, and the Order of Franz Joseph made him a knight.

He was niftar in 1922 at eighty-seven, his wife Caroline and son Oswald having passed before him; at least two of his surviving children were killed in Theresienstadt (HY”D). His grandchildren included George Placzek, the physicist, and Adolf K. Placzek, the architect and art historian, and his nephew was Leo Baeck. In 2012 the Jewish community of Brno unveiled a bust of him in the entrance hall of its community centre.