Israel Zangwill

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Israel Zangwill

Israel Zangwill (born January 21, 1864 in London , † August 1, 1926 in Midhurst , Sussex) was a British Jewish writer , essayist , journalist and political activist in the feminist , pacifist and Zionist movements. Zangwill is often cited as the author of the Zionist slogan "A land without a people for a people without a land", probably wrongly.

Family and education

Zangwill was born in London as the son of poor Jewish immigrants from Tsarist Russia and Poland . He spent his early childhood in Plymouth and Bristol . At the age of eight he returned with his family to London in the East End , where he attended the "Jews' Free School", where he later also worked as a teacher. He studied at the University of London and graduated with honors in the humanities, English and French in 1884.

In 1903 he married Edith Ayrton, a feminist and writer. With her he had two sons and a daughter.

Live and act

Theater program for The Melting Pot (1916)
Israel Zangwill 1905

Zangwill has worked for various magazines and has published numerous essays, dramas and novels. When he was 17, he won first prize in a short story competition and wrote his first short story, Motso Kleis or the Green Chinee , when he was 18. Zangwill became famous in 1892 with his novel Children of the Ghetto . He achieved the greatest literary aftermath with The Big Bow Mistery , which is now known as a classic of the crime genre. The motif of murder behind closed doors appeared for the first time in Edgar Allan Poe Murders of the Rue Morgue (1841), but Zangwill directly influenced Gaston Leroux with The Secret of the Yellow Room (1904). His best-known play is the 1908 in the United States , first performed drama The Melting Pot (The melting pot ).

Judaism

Zangwill had an ambivalent attitude towards traditional Judaism throughout his life. Despite his strong ties to Jewish tradition and a partial identification with Jewish ghetto life and the ideals that support it, he rejected the Orthodox-Hasidic Judaism as outdated and no longer suitable for modern times. This conflict between origins, Jewish ghetto warmth and the lure of a strange, eerie world he repeatedly addresses in his writings down to individual characters.

Zionism

Zangwill was a member of the national Jewish oriented "Maccabean Club" in London and an early supporter of Theodor Herzl . He was friends with Max Nordau , who introduced him to Herzl. The first meeting between the two took place in London on November 21, 1895, at which Herzl introduced himself with the words: “I am Theodor Herzl. Help me to rebuild the Jewish state ”. In his diary Herzl noted an unflattering description of Zangwill, whose (Jewish) appearance and harsh behavior were often commented negatively.

Israel Zangwill left the Zionist movement in connection with the Uganda controversy after Herzl's death in 1905 and founded the “ Jewish Territorialist Organization ” (ITO) after the 7th Zionist Congress , the aim of which was, wherever possible, outside of Palestine, Acquiring land for Jewish settlement. The organization resettled several thousand Russian Jews in Galveston, Texas , but otherwise remained unsuccessful. After the Balfour Declaration and the associated strengthening of Zionism, Zangwill temporarily rejoined the official Zionist line, but the difficulties of settling in Palestine and the resistance of the Arabs allowed him to revert to his earlier territorialist beliefs.

Fonts (selection)

  • The Big Bow Mystery . 1891. - German: The great secret of Bow Street . Das Neue Berlin , Berlin 1985 (from the English copy by Reinhard Lehmann).
  • The Children of the Ghetto . 1892.
  • Ghetto tragedies . 1893.
  • The King of Schnorrers . 1894 (novel). - German: The King of the Schnorrer . Manesse, Zurich 2006, ISBN 978-3-7175-2104-4 (translated from the English by Trude Fein. Nachw. By Herbert Tauber).
  • Dreamers of the Ghetto . 1898.
  • The Mantle of Elijah . (1899-1902).
  • Ghetto Comedies . 1907.
  • The melting pot . 1908 (in this drama , Zangwill first used the term " melting pot ", which was to become the catchphrase for US immigration policy ).
  • The War God . 1911.

Film adaptations (selection)

literature

  • Stuart Cohen: English Zionists and British Jews: The Communal Politics of Anglo-Jewry, 1895-1920 . Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1982

Web links

Wikisource: Israel Zangwill  - Sources and full texts

References and footnotes

  1. ↑ According to birth certificate, according to other information on February 6 or 14. Meri-Jane Rochelson: A Jew in the Public Arena. The Career of Israel Zangwill . Wayne State University Press, Detroit 2008, p. 9. ISBN 978-0-8143-3344-0 (English)
  2. ↑ Meri-Jane Elson Roch: A Jew in the Public Arena. The Career of Israel Zangwill . Wayne State University Press, Detroit 2008, p. 9.
  3. ↑ Klaus-Peter Walter (Ed.): Reclams Krimi-Lexikon . Authors and works. Philipp Reclam Jun., Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-15-010509-9 , p. 452 f.
  4. ↑ Sebastian Voigt: Melting pot: the New World as an answer to European anti-Semitism. About "The Melting Pot" (1908) by Israel Zangwill . In: Hans-Joachim Hahn and Olaf Kistenmacher (eds.): Attempts to describe the hostility to Jews II: anti-Semitism in text and image - between criticism, reflection and ambivalence . 1st edition. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin / Munich / Boston 2019, ISBN 978-3-11-053970-7 , pp. 141-160 .
  5. ↑ a b Harold Harel Fisch: Zangwill, Israel . In: Michael Berenbaum, Fred Skolnik (Ed.): Encyclopaedia Judaica . 2nd edition, Volume 21. Macmillan Reference USA, Detroit 2007, pp. 454–456 (English)
  6. ↑ Meri-Jane Elson Roch: A Jew in the Public Arena. The Career of Israel Zangwill . Wayne State University Press, Detroit 2008, pp. 28 ff. And 153.
personal data
SURNAME Zangwill, Israel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English writer, journalist and Zionist activist
DATE OF BIRTH February 14, 1864
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH August 1, 1926
Place of death Midhurst