Israel Epstein

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Israel Epstein, 1936 or 1937

Israel Epstein ( Chinese  伊斯雷爾 · 愛潑斯坦  /  伊斯雷尔 · 爱泼斯坦 , Pinyin Yīsīléi'ěr Àipōsītǎn , born April 20, 1915 in Warsaw ; † May 26, 2005 in Beijing ) was a Russian- Chinese journalist and author. He became a member of the Chinese Communist Party , became a Chinese citizen and was a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference . In China he is also known by his Chinese names Ai, Pei ( 艾培 , Ài Péi ).

Life

His father was imprisoned by the tsarist government for his activity in the labor movement , his mother was exiled to Siberia . After the First World War , Israel Epstein's father worked in Japan . When the German army reached Warsaw in 1915, the remaining members of the Jewish family fled to Asia, they reached China in 1917 and settled in Tianjin in 1920 .

At the age of 15, Israel Epstein began working as a journalist for the English-language newspapers Peking Times and Tientsin Times . He later reported on the Japanese occupation of China for United Press and other foreign media outlets. In 1933 he met the journalist Edgar Snow . In 1938 he became a member of the China Defense League founded by Song Qingling ( Sun Yat-sen's widow ) .

In 1944, Israel Epstein visited the communist headquarters in Yan'an , where he interviewed Mao Zedong , Zhou Enlai , Zhu De and other leading communists and wrote a series of articles for the New York Times . In the same year he first traveled to Great Britain and then to the USA , where he worked for Allied Labor News , among others . In 1949 he published his book The Unfinished Revolution in China .

In 1951, Song Qingling invited him and his wife Elsie Fairfax-Chomeley to return to China to work on the English-language magazine China Reconstructs (German edition: China under construction ), which she founded . Until his retirement he was editor-in-chief of the magazine.

In 1957 he became a Chinese citizen. Israel Epstein was one of around one hundred foreigners, such as the journalist Ruth Weiss from Vienna, the doctor Hans Müller from Düsseldorf, the Viennese Richard Frey , the American Ma Haide (George Hatem), the teachers Käthe Zhao from Berlin and the Swiss Olga Lee , the New Zealand journalist Rewi Alley or the German photographer Eva Siao , who received Chinese citizenship . In 1964 he joined the Chinese Communist Party.

During the Cultural Revolution , Israel Epstein was imprisoned for five years from 1968 to 1973, but was fully rehabilitated after his release; Mao, Zhou Enlai, and Deng Xiaoping received him regularly. In 1983 he was one of the eleven famous "foreign experts" appointed by the Communist Party as MPs in the Political Consultative Conference of the Chinese People . Epstein therefore took part in the 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th Consultative Conference.

Epstein died shortly after his 90th birthday celebrations, and his remains were buried on June 3, 2005 in the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery in Beijing. Almost the entire leadership of the People's Republic took part in the state funeral . B. Hu Jintao , Wen Jiabao , Jia Qinglin and Li Changchun .

Works

literature

  • Jonathan Goldstein: Israel Epstein in China. A case study of Father-son-conflict in jewish ideological formation. In: Raoul David Findeisen (Ed.): At home in many worlds. Reading, writing and translating from Chinese and Jewish cultures. Essays in honor of Irene Eber . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 978-3-447-06135-3 , pp. 241-258. (in google books online)

Web links

Commons : Israel Epstein  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

German

English

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Visiting Agents , article of October 18, 1971 on Spiegel Online
  2. ↑ The newspaper was later renamed China Today or China Today .
  3. ↑ see also the English WP Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery
personal data
SURNAME Epstein, Israel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish-Chinese journalist
DATE OF BIRTH April 20, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Warsaw , Poland
DATE OF DEATH May 26, 2005
Place of death Beijing , People's Republic of China