A Son of Israel Converts (I)

Hermann Cohen was born in Hamburg on November 10, 1821. His family held a distinguished rank among the twenty thousand some Jews in the city. His loving mother who was completely devoted to her promising son took him to Paris where he became the pupil of Liszt, and the success of this 13-year-old prodigy dazzled the worldly circles. He was seduced by the revolutionary utopias of the time and became thoroughly unsettled spiritually and emotionally. Until 1847, the musician Hermann Cohen, undone by his own success, lived a sinful, dissolute life, ruled by his passions alone. However, at age 26, one Friday in May of the same year, a friend asked him to fill in for him at the head of a church choir, during the solemnities of the month of Mary. When the moment of Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament arrived, he felt an indescribable agitation. He was, in spite of his own will, led to bow his head towards the ground. Coming back the following Friday, he was overawed in the same manner, and he suddenly had the idea to become Catholic. A few months later, having overcome his prejudices against priests, he attended Mass numerous times. On August 8, in Germany for a concert, he attended Sunday Mass in a little church. At the moment of the elevation of the Sacred Host, he could not contain a flood of tears. When he left this church, he was already a Christian in his heart. He returned to Paris where he was put in contact with Father Theodore Ratisbonne, a convert from Judaism. Hermann received baptism on August 28, 1847, the feast of Saint Augustine, whom he had chosen as his patron saint. On September 8, he made his First Communion.