Egon Michael Zweig

Dr. Egon branch. Palestine Police Central Traffic Registry ID, December 13, 1938. Reproduction.

Egon Michael Zweig (born July 21, 1877 in Olomouc ; † March 18, 1949 in Jerusalem ) was a Viennese lawyer and Zionist , co-founder of the Palestine Office in Vienna and employee of the Keren Kajemet Le'Israel .

Egon Michael Zweig came from a prominent Jewish family from Prossnitz in Moravia , whose members included the writers Stefan Zweig and Max Zweig and the composer Fritz Zweig . Egon Zweig created the family tree of his family over many years and published it together with his brother Felix Zweig in 1932. Egon Zweig's grandparents first owned a barchent factory in Prossnitz and then a malt factory in Olomouc. Egon Zweig's father Siegmund Zweig (1845–1910) developed the company into one of the leading malt factories in Moravia. After the death of his first wife, Siegmund Zweig married her younger sister Josefine Doctor (1856–1930) in 1876. In addition to Egon, the children Felix (1879–1939) and Hilda (1886–1971) came from this marriage.

Live and act

Egon Zweig studied law in Vienna and then worked as a lawyer. On December 7, 1911, he married Louise Engel (1962), whose parents came from Hungary, in the synagogue on Neudeggergasse in Vienna's 8th district. There were three children from his marriage to Louise: Elieser Menachem, b. 1913, Judith Chana, b. 1915 and Mirjam Elisheva, b. 1916. After the First World War, Zweig worked for the Keren Kajemeth Le'Israel ( Jewish National Fund ). In the early 1920s he emigrated with his family to Palestine and moved to Jerusalem, where he continued to work for Keren Kajemeth Le'Israel until 1936. He died in Jerusalem in 1949.

Political career

Zweig had been an ardent Zionist from school and college. In 1896 he co-founded the Ferialverbindung Geullah in Olomouc. Before the First World War he was a leader in various Zionist associations. In November 1918 he founded the Palestine Office in Vienna together with Emil Stein and Adolf Böhm, the first of its kind outside of Palestine. Zweig was one of the most active Zionist functionaries in Vienna. From 1920 to 1922 he worked for the Keren Kajemet Le'Israel in The Hague . He was one of the initiators of the relocation of Keren Kajemet Le'Israel to Jerusalem. Zweig traveled to Europe several times on behalf of his employer in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1925 he brokered a beneficiary agreement between Keren Kajemet Le'Israel and Phönix-Versicherung, which worked for the benefit of all parties until it collapsed.

Shoah

Zweig was only able to save his sister Hilda Rooz (1886–1972) and his brother-in-law Otto Engel, who were able to travel to Palestine in 1939. His brother Felix Zweig committed suicide while in Gestapo custody in Olomouc in March 1939. The son of his sister Hilda Rooz, the 19-year-old Herbert Rooz, fled from Vienna to Prague in August 1938, where he obtained false papers after the occupation by the German army. On the basis of these papers he was drafted into the Wehrmacht. In January 1945 he was in East Prussia and has been missing since then.

Fonts

• The struggle for the religious communities . In: Tulo Nussenblatt (ed.), Contemporaries about Herzl . Brno 1929, 253-255.
• Farewell to Herzl . In: Tulo Nussenblatt (ed.), Contemporaries about Herzl . Heinrich Glanz Verlag: Vienna 1937, pp. 281–284.
• How the Palestine Office came about. The Vienna Palestine Office in 1919 and 1920 . In: Palestine Office Vienna (ed.), New Palestine Information Book. Vienna 1936, pp. 7-21.
• Jona Kremenetzky . In: Megilat Ha'admah, Vol. 2. , Hebräisch, Jerusalem 1951, pp. 24-26.

literature

• Adolf Gaisbauer: Star of David and double-headed eagle. Zionism and Jewish nationalism in Austria 1882–1918 . Böhlau, Vienna 1988
• Georg Gaugusch: Who Once Was. The upper Jewish bourgeoisie in Vienna 1800–1938 . Vol. 1, A – K, Amalthea, Vienna 2011, pp. 404–410
• Dieter J. Hecht (ed.): Louise to Egon Zweig. Letters from a Jewish woman in the First World War . CLIO, Graz 2020
• Dieter J. Hecht: Jewish (Vacation) Fraternities in the Habsburg Monarchy. Kadimah and Geullah - Forward to Redemption . In: Austrian Studies 24 (2016), pp. 31–48
• Dieter J. Hecht: War bonds, postcards, obituaries - the estate of a Jewish soldier . In: Petra Ernst / Eleonore Lappin-Eppel (eds.): Jewish journalism and literature under the sign of the First World War. Studienverlag, Innsbruck 2016, pp. 145–166
• Dieter J. Hecht: The Mapping Wall. Jewish Family Pictures as a Memory Box . In: Judaica Olomucensia 2015/2, pp. 69-88, online at: [1] (accessed April 20, 2020)
• Dieter J. Hecht: The way of the Zionist Egon Michael branch. Olomouc-Vienna-Jerusalem . (German / Hebrew), Korot Publishing House, Baram 2012
• Victoria Kumar: Land of Promise - Place of Refuge. Jewish emigration and National Socialist expulsion from Austria to Palestine 1920–1945 . Studienverlag, Innsbruck 2016, pp. 52–67
• Estate of Egon and Louise Zweig. Antiquariat Divrey Hayamim, Tomer Kaufmann, 1 Hagi-dem Street, Jerusalem: [e-mail]

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Family tree of the Zweig family. The descendants of Moses Zweig, Olomouc 1932.
2. ↑ Dieter J. Hecht: The way of the Zionist Egon Michael Zweig. Olomouc-Vienna-Jerusalem, German / Hebrew, Korot Publishing House: Baram 2012… pp. 19–24.
3. ↑ Cf. Dieter J. Hecht (ed.): Louise to Egon Zweig. Letters from a Jewish woman in World War I, CLIO: Graz 2020.
4. ^ Hecht, Der Weg des Zionist Egon Michael Zweig, pp. 45–55.
5. ^ Adolf Gaisbauer, Star of David and Double Eagle. Zionism and Jewish nationalism in Austria 1882–1918, Böhlau: Wien 1988, pp. 146–147.
6. ↑ Egon Zweig, How the Palestine Office came about. The Vienna Palestine Office in 1919 and 1920, in: Palestine Office Vienna (ed.), New Palestine Information Book, Vienna 1936, p. 8.
7. ↑ Hecht, The Way of the Zionist Egon Michael Zweig. Pp. 45-55.
8. ↑ Hecht, The Way of the Zionist Egon Michael Zweig, pp. 63–64.