See Steck, _Das Kloster Hirschau_ (1844); Helmsdorfer, _Forschungen zur Geschichte des Abts Wilhelm von Hirschau_ (Gottingen, 1874); Weizsacker, _Fuhrer durch die Geschichte des Klosters Hirschau_ (Stuttgart, 1898); Sussmann, _Forschungen zur Geschichte des Klosters Hirschau_ (Halle, 1903); Giseke, _Die Hirschauer wahrend des Investiturstreits_ (Gotha, 1883); C. H. Klaiber, _Das Kloster Hirschau_ (Tubingen, 1886); and Baer, _Die Hirsauer Bauschule_ (Freiburg, 1897). HIRSCH, MAURICE DE, BARON HIRSCH AUF GEREUTH, in the baronage of Bavaria (1831-1896), capitalist and philanthropist (German by birth, Austro-Hungarian by domicile), was born at Munich, 9th December 1831. His grandfather, the first Jewish landowner in Bavaria, was ennobled with the _pradikat_ "auf Gereuth" in 1818; his father, who was banker to the Bavarian king, was created a baron in 1869. The family for generations has occupied a prominent position in the German Jewish community. At the age of thirteen young Hirsch was sent to Brussels to school, but when seventeen years old he went into business. In 1855 he became associated with the banking house of Bischoffsheim & Goldschmidt, of Brussels, London and Paris. He amassed a large fortune, which he increased by purchasing and working railway concessions in Austria, Turkey and the Balkans, and by speculations in sugar and copper. While living in great splendour in Paris and London and on his estates in Hungary, he devoted much of his time to schemes for the relief of his Hebrew co-religionists in lands where they were persecuted and oppressed. He took a deep interest in the educational work of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, and on two occasions presented the society with gifts of a million francs. For some years he regularly paid the deficits in the accounts of the Alliance, amounting to several thousand pounds a year. In 1889 he capitalized his donations and presented the society with securities producing an annual income of L16,000. On the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the emperor Francis Joseph's accession to the Austrian throne he gave L500,000 for the establishment of primary and technical schools in Galicia and the Bukowina. The greatest charitable enterprise on which he embarked was in connexion with the persecution of the Jews in Russia (see ANTI-SEMITISM). He gave L10,000 to the funds raised for the repatriation of the refugees in 1882, but, feeling that this was a very lame conclusion to the efforts made in western Europe for the relief of the Russian Jews, he offered the Russian Government L2,000,000 for the endowment of a system of secular education to be established in the Jewish pale of settlement. The Russian Government was willing to accept the money, but declined to allow any foreigner to be concerned in its control or administration. Thereupon Baron de Hirsch resolved to devote the money to an emigration and colonization scheme which should afford