Leo Herrmann (journalist)

Leo Herrmann (born 1888 in Landskron , Austria-Hungary ; died 1951 in Jerusalem ) was a Czechoslovak journalist and Zionist.

Life

Leo Herrmann was a cousin of the writer Hugo Herrmann . He studied law at the Charles University in Prague . In 1906 Herrmann became a member of the Prague Association of Jewish University Students, Bar Kochba . He was its chairman in 1908/1909 when he invited Martin Buber to Prague, who gave his Three Speeches on Judaism there . Herrmann was the editor of the Zionist weekly newspaper Selbstwehr from 1910 to 1913 . He also wrote for the Jüdische Volksstimme in Brno and the Jüdische Zeitung in Vienna.

In 1913 he moved to Berlin, where he worked as secretary of the WZO World Zionist Organization . As the successor to Hugo Herrmann, he became editor-in-chief of the Jüdische Rundschau . In 1914 Herrmann published a pamphlet on Nathan Birnbaum and the pamphlet In the Battle for the Hebrew Language . His collection of articles Die Treue appeared in 1916. He sponsored Martin Buber's magazine Der Jude , which appeared for the first time in 1916. After the end of the war Herrmann belonged to the Czechoslovak delegation at the Versailles Peace Conference .

With Berthold Feiwel he founded the Keren Hayesod donation fund in 1920 and became its general secretary, first in London and from 1926 in Jerusalem in the British League of Nations mandate for Palestine . Herrmann had several propaganda films about the Jewish settlement of Palestine produced, including Le-Ḥayim ḥadashim (1934/35), the predecessor of the better-known version of the same name (1935).

Since he saw his idea of ​​a binational Palestine in the sense of the Brit Shalom being boycotted by the majority of Zionists and Jewish immigrants, he threatened Keren Hayesod with dismissal in 1929, but ultimately stayed in his office.

Fonts (selection)

• Nathan Birnbaum: His work and his change . Berlin: Jewish publishing house, 1914
• National capital in the Jewish national home: the task and achievements of the Keren Hayesod . Jerusalem: Keren Hayesod, 1941

literature

• Wilma Iggers: Herrmann, Leo , in: YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe
• Peter Heumos: Return to Nowhere: Leo Herrmann's diary entries about his trip to Prague and the situation of the Jews in Czechoslovakia in autumn 1945 . Bohemia 27 1986, No. 2, pp. 269-304
• Felix Weltsch : Prague vi-Yerushalayim: Sefer le-zikhron Le'o Herman . Jerusalem, 1953
• Dimitry Shumsky: Bilingualism and a binational idea. Prague Zionism 1900–1930 . From the Heb. by Dafna Mach. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013 ISBN 978-3-525-36955-5

Web links

• Literature by and about Herrmann, Leo in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature by and about Herrmann, Leo in the bibliographic database WorldCat