Leo Winz

Leo Winz , (* 1876 in Hluchiw as Leib Jehuda Winz ; † March 18, 1952 in Tel Aviv ) was a journalist, publisher and an important representative of cultural Zionism in Germany .

Life

Winz studied at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-University of Berlin philosophy . In addition to Georg Simmel and Hermann Ebbinghaus , Heymann Steinthal was one of his teachers . The latter also taught at the College for the Science of Judaism , where Winz also took courses. At the age of 17, Winz wrote the first articles for the Hebrew press, namely for Nachum Sokolow's HaTzefirah and Alexander Zederbaum's HaMeliz . In 1895 Winz took over the management of the newly founded Jewish reading hall in Berlin .

Winz had been involved in Willy Bambus' Esra association since the mid-1890s and was one of the first members of the Zionist Association for Germany in 1898 , where he acted as a shop steward for the local group in Charlottenburg . At the Zionist Congresses in 1899 and 1900 Winz participated as a journalist and delegate. At the London Congress in 1900, Winz published a congress newspaper in Russian for the delegates from Russia, most of whom did not speak English.

In 1901, Winz founded the magazine Ost und West together with Davis Trietsch , which he ran as the responsible editor until 1923. In 1902 he also founded the Phoenix art publishing house, which sold postcards with Jewish motifs. In 1903 the first issue of the satirical Zionist magazine Schlemihl appeared under Winz's aegis . The magazine was continued by Max Jungmann with the slightly changed title Schlemiel ohne Winz, as he had become a non-person in Zionist circles through the publication of Achad Ha'am's criticism of Theodor Herzl's novel Altneuland in Ost und West in 1903.

In addition to his journalistic activities, Winz distinguished himself primarily as a writer of folkloric texts and as a collector and promoter of Jewish folk music .

In the years 1923, 1924 and 1925 Leo Winz was apparently mostly in Palestine , where he was studying the possibility of tobacco planting. In 1926 he successfully applied for Palestinian citizenship with the British Mandate Authority , but returned to Berlin that same year. Here he took over the community paper of the Jewish Community of Berlin , which had existed since 1911 , with a circulation of 87,000 copies, which was by far the highest-circulation German-language Jewish publication at the time.

In 1935 Leo Winz finally moved to Palestine, where he settled in Tel Aviv. He died there in 1952 at the age of 76. His estate is in the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem .

literature

• David A. Brenner: Marketing Identities: The Invention of Jewish Ethnicity in “East and West” . Wayne State University Press, Detroit 1998.
• Jascha Nemtsov: 'National Dignity' and 'Spiritual Reintegration': The Discovery and Presentation of Jewish Folk Music in Germany . In: Simon J. Bronner: Expression, Identity, and Representation . Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, Oxford 2008, pp. 13-24.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jewish Reading Hall and Library (ed.): Review of the first decade of the reading hall 1895-1905 . Berlin 1905, p. 4.
2. ↑ Kunstverlag Phönix (ed.): Illustrated catalog 1903 , Berlin 1903.
3. ↑ Max Jungmann: Memories of a Zionist . Jerusalem 1959, p. 61.
4. ^ Michael Heymann: The Uganda Controversy . Jerusalem 1970, pp. 68-70.