Arthur Ruppin

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Arthur Ruppin

Arthur Ruppin (born March 1, 1876 in Rawitsch near Posen ; died January 1, 1943 in Jerusalem ) was a Jewish sociologist , Zionist and one of the pioneers in founding the city of Tel Aviv (Ahuzat Bajit). He is often called the father of the Zionist settlement movement .

Life

From 1886 Ruppin lived with his family in Magdeburg , where he spent his youth. His parents ran a small goods business. Ruppin first attended the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gymnasium, but had to leave it prematurely for economic reasons. In 1896 he passed his Abitur at the Domgymnasium as extraneus . He then studied economics and law in Berlin and Halle . In 1903 and 1904 he worked as a trainee lawyer at the public prosecutor's office and later at the Magdeburg district court . During this time he founded a Jewish trainee regulars table, which met regularly in Magdeburg in the Café Dom. Michael Meyer and Ernst Merzbach, who later worked as lawyers in Berlin, also belonged to this group. In 1903 Ruppin received the renowned Haeckel Prize for his work on Darwinism and Social Science . While still in Magdeburg he was writing the book The Jews of the Present . From 1904 to 1907 he took over the management of the “ Bureau for Statistics of the Jews ” in Berlin, which he founded, and also published its magazine.

In 1908 Ruppin immigrated to Palestine . He took over the management of the newly created Palestine Office , the official representation of the World Zionist Organization , in Jafo (opening April 1, 1908); Jacob Thon (Ja'acov Tahun, יעקב טהון) was at his side as deputy. The foundation of the city of Tel Aviv goes back to Ruppin's support. He was one of the proponents of practical Zionism and strove for a Jewish settlement in Palestine. In 1920 Ruppin won the Frankfurt architect Richard Kauffmann to manage the planning office of the Central Office for Settlement Matters at the Palestine Office, which planned the northern expansion of Tel Aviv and many rural settlements. In 1925 he co-founded the Brit Shalom peace union , which appealed to Jews and Arabs to abandon their national aspirations and proposed a binational polity, but changed his mind after the Hebron massacre (1929) , leaving Brit Shalom and calling for a single Jewish state.

In 1926, he took over the chair of “Sociology of the Century” at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem . In his sociological work, Ruppin tried, on the basis of demographic and empirical-sociological methods, to refute anti-Semitic prejudices that certain professions were dominated by Jews. He showed himself to be open to ideas of eugenics , called for a “selection of human material” for the new settlement in Palestine and met Hans FK Günther in Jena in August 1933, that is, after the Nazi seizure of power in Germany . The people to be settled should be of special “physical, professional and moral quality”. He also participates intensively in the development of new forms of social coexistence, in particular the kibbutz movement .

Ruppin is considered to be the founder of the sociology of the Jews . However, his work is controversial. His statements on eugenics earned him the charge of racism . His previously mentioned meeting with the racial ideologist Günther is the subject of Dani Gal's film White City , "in which the artist makes the points of contact in the thinking of Zionists and National Socialists understandable". What was said at this meeting, "Gal constructed from Ruppin's diary entries".

Honors

The city of Magdeburg named Arthur-Ruppin-Strasse after him. It describes the southern flank of the Green Citadel of Magdeburg , the last and largest architectural work of art by the artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser . Arthur-Ruppin-Straße joins the main shopping street “Breiter Weg” at the point where the Ruppin family's house is said to have stood before the Second World War.

The city of Haifa donated a state prize (Ruppin Prize) in his honor. Prize winners included a. 1949 the writer and translator Leah Goldberg and 1952 the philosopher, Zionist and Kafka friend Felix Weltsch .

In his honor a kibbutz in northern Israel bears the name Kfar Ruppin .

Works (selection)

Vol. 1. The social structure of the Jews. After lectures at d. Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1930
Vol. 2. The struggle of the Jews for their future. After lecture at d. Hebrew Univ.-Jerusalem. 1931

literature

  • Etan Bloom: The "Administrative Knight" - Arthur Ruppin and the Rise of Zionist Statistics. In: The Tel Aviv University Year Book for German History. Vol. 35, 2007, pp. 183-203.
  • Etan Bloom: What “The Father” had in Mind, Arthur Ruppin (1876–1943), Cultural Identity, Weltanschauung and Action. In: The Journal for History of European Ideas. Vol. 33, Issue 3, 2007, pp. 330-349
  • Baruch Kimmerling : Ruppin, Arthur. In: Wilhelm Bernsdorf / Horst Knospe (Hrsg.): Internationales Soziologenlexikon. Vol. 1, Enke, Stuttgart ² 1980, p. 363 f.
  • Thomas Kluger: Ruppin, Arthur. In: Guido Heinrich, Gunter Schandera (ed.): Magdeburg Biographical Lexicon 19th and 20th centuries. Biographical lexicon for the state capital Magdeburg and the districts of Bördekreis, Jerichower Land, Ohrekreis and Schönebeck. Scriptum, Magdeburg 2002, ISBN 3-933046-49-1 .
  • Ita Heinze-Greenberg: Europe in Palestine. The architects of the Zionist project 1902–1923. gta Verlag, Zurich 2012, ISBN 978-3-85676-230-8 .
  • Ruppin, Arthur. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 18: Phil – Samu. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. De Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 2010, ISBN 978-3-598-22698-4 , pp. 426-432.
  • Ina Susanne Lorenz :  Ruppin, Arthur. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 22, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-428-11203-2 , p. 281 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Amos Morris Empire: Palestine Office. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 4: Ly-Po. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2013, ISBN 978-3-476-02504-3 , pp. 478-482.

Web links

Commons : Arthur Ruppin  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Myra Warhaftig : You laid the foundation stone. Life and work of German-speaking Jewish architects in Palestine 1918–1948 . Berlin and Tübingen: Wasmuth, 1996, p. 42. ISBN 3-8030-0171-4
  2. ↑ Shlomo Sand : The Invention of the Jewish People. Israel's founding myth put to the test . Berlin: Propylaen, 2011, ISBN 978-3-549-07376-6 , p. 388 fn. 489
  3. ^ Carmela Thiele: Revision of Modernism: 'Weissenhof City - From the past and present of the future of a city'. In: Die Tageszeitung , August 12, 2019, p. 16. The film is part of an ongoing exhibition about the Weißenhofsiedlung in the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, about which Carmela Thiele reports.
personal data
SURNAME Ruppin, Arthur
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Jewish sociologist, Zionist and pioneer in founding the city of Tel Aviv
DATE OF BIRTH March 1, 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH Rawitsch near Posen
DATE OF DEATH January 1, 1943
Place of death Jerusalem