Moritz Guedemann, author and Chief Rabbi of Vienna was born in Hildesheim, Germany. He studied at the rabbinical seminary at Bresslau from 1854 to 1862. Following his ordination he was given his first pulpit at Magdeburg, Germany. With increasing pressure from orthodox Jews, Guedemann, who was considered more conservative, was called to Vienna in 1866 to officiate at the Leopoldstadt Synagogue. In 1891 he became Chief Rabbi of Vienna and successor to Rabbi Jellinek.
Rabbi Guedemann criticized the Zionist movement for its failure to emphasize the religious element in Jewish national rehabilitation. He fought, on the other hand, against the elimination of all references to Zion from the prayer book.
Rabbi Guedemann wrote many valuable works dealing with Jewish life. The most important of these are his classic studies on Jewish education. Das juedische Unterrichtswesen wahrend der spanisch-arabischen Periode (Vienna, 1893) dealing with Arabic and Hebrew literature of the Jews in medieval Spain, could be written thanks to his training in philology, Oriental languages and Islamic studies. Guedemann’s Geschichte des Erziehungswesen und der Cultur der abendlischen Juden waehrend des Mittelalters und der neueren Zeit (3 vol., Vienna, 1880, 1884, 1888) analyzes the harmonious co-existence and mutual influences between Jews and Christians. This work has been translated into Hebrew and Yiddish. His Quellenschriften zur Geschichte des Unterrichts und der Erziehung bei den deutsche Juden was published in Berlin in 1892. He contributed also to the field of comparative religious history in Juedisches im Christentum des Reformations-Zeitalters (Vienna, 1870), and Religionsgeschichtliche Studien (Leipzig, 1876). Two works are devoted to theological polemics: Das Judentum in seinen Grundzuegen und nach seinen geschichtlichen Grundlagen dargestellt (Vienna, 1902). The Juedische Apologetik (Glogau, 1906), which was written in self-defense against the rising clerical and political anti-Semitism. He also published a monograph on the Jews of Magdeburg, and many essays in Jewish periodicals and collections, and in the jubilee volumes for Zunz, Graetz and Steinschneider.