Max I. Bodenheimer
Max Isidor Bodenheimer (born March 12, 1865 in Stuttgart ; † July 19, 1940 in Jerusalem ) was a German jurist of the Jewish religion, a pioneer of the Zionist movement in Germany and subsequently an influential functionary of the World Zionist Organization . Herzl's nickname for Bodenheimer was occasionally Hajoll (Hebrew chajal = soldier; - also code designation in telegrams etc.).
Life
Bodenheimer studied law in Berlin , Strasbourg , Freiburg im Breisgau and Tübingen until 1889 , settled in Cologne in 1890 and opened a law firm there in 1893, which he ran until 1933.
In 1896 Max Bodenheimer married Rosa Dalberg (* December 7, 1876 - March 24, 1938; she proposed the establishment of the "Association of Jewish Women for Cultural Work in Palestine", the forerunner of WIZO ) at the Zionist Congress in Hague in 1907 . The marriage had the three children Fritz Simon (1897-1959, professor of zoology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Henrietta Hannah (1898-1992, her father's biographer) and Ruth (1900-1941, lawyer).
The seizure of power by the National Socialists forced Bodenheimer to emigrate to Amsterdam in 1933 . After retiring from the Zionism movement in 1934, the family moved to Jerusalem in 1935, where Bodenheimer devoted himself to writing his autobiography, but also worked as a journalist. He died there on July 20, 1940.
Political career
Bodenheimer had long been concerned with the situation of the Jews. From 1889 he realized that Judaism represented a nation, and he began to get involved in the Zionist movement. His first article, Are the Russian Jews a Nation? in the Hamburg weekly newspaper Die Menorah , which was followed by others, especially (also in 1891) his brochure Where to go with the Russian Jews or Syria, a refuge for Russian Jews (part of the then administrative unit Syria was Palestine).
Gradually he made contact with various Zionist organizations and, since his first meeting in February 1892, worked closely with David Wolffsohn . Together with him, Bodenheimer founded the Cologne Association for the Promotion of Agriculture and Crafts in Palestine in 1893 . In 1894 he and Gustav Tuch participated in the founding of the Free Israelite Association in Hamburg. Also in 1894, under Bodenheimer's leadership, the first National Jewish Association was established in Cologne (later "ZVfD"), of which he became president (and remained until 1910).
From May 1896 Bodenheimer was in lively correspondence with Theodor Herzl . Before the two met for the first time, the “National Jewish Association of Germany” was founded in Bingen on July 11, 1897 and Bodenheimer was elected its chairman. Herzl and Bodenheimer met at the first Zionist World Congress , which began on August 29, 1897 in Basel and in which Bodenheimer participated as a delegate of the German movement. There he was elected to the action committee, of which he was a member until 1921. From 1901 to 1922 Bodenheimer was the congress attorney for the Zionist World Congress.
Bodenheimer accompanied him on Herzl's travels to Constantinople and Jerusalem in October and November 1898, when Herzl tried to found his own state "Israel" in talks with Kaiser Wilhelm II and Sultan Abdülhamid II .
In May 1899 Bodenheimer initiated the Jewish National Fund together with others . In addition to his involvement in the German Zionist movement, he was primarily responsible for a concept about the organizational statutes of the world association. This concept was adopted at the 5th World Congress in 1901 and the founding of an international fund, the Jewish National Fund (JNF), was decided, the second president of which - after Kremenetzky - Bodenheimer was from 1907 to 1914.
Bodenheimer also became a member of the organizing committee, and in 1910 he took over its chairmanship with the aim of reforming the organizational structures. The reform became necessary due to the emergence of party formations within the organization, which Bodenheimer had initially been critical of. The reforms were intended to regulate the positions of these parties within the world association and were implemented at the 10th Congress in August 1911 in Basel.
As a result, Bodenheimer's influence increased internationally, while it decreased in Germany when the headquarters of the German Zionists moved from Cologne to Berlin. Between 1912 and 1914 in particular, Bodenheimer openly opposed the increasingly radical sentiment of the German movement, which was now dominated by Kurt Blumenfeld . As a result, Bodenheimer did not take part in the German Zionist Congress for the first time in 1912. Bodenheimer spent March and April of that year on behalf of the JNF in Palestine.
At the beginning of the First World War in 1914, on Bodenheimer's initiative, the headquarters of the JNF moved from Cologne to The Hague. He then initiated (together with Franz Oppenheimer, Adolf Friedemann and other Zionists) the " Committee for the Liberation of Russian Jews ", later renamed the "Committee for the East", the aim of which was to improve the situation of Jews in the regions of Germany and Austria. Hungary was occupied by Russian territories. In order not to question the neutrality of the world association, Bodenheimer was not appointed chairman of the committee. Instead, Franz Oppenheimer took the chair . In November of that year he resigned from chairing the JNF but remained a member of the board of directors.
1921 turned into a fateful year for Bodenheimer: in April he voted, with a majority of the JNF Board of Directors, to try to buy up land in Palestine, and defended this decision passionately at the 12th World Congress in Carlsbad in September 1922. This appearance should also be his last intervention at a Zionist World Congress. The new leaders in the world association, among them President Chaim Weizmann , who was newly elected in 1920 , slowly broke away from the era of Theodor Herzl. In December this meant that many of Herzl's companions were not re-elected to the board of directors of the JNF, including Bodenheimer.
Bodenheimer had his last major appearance in Germany in 1928, when the Cologne Jewish Community entrusted him with the organization and presentation of the Jewish exhibition as part of the international press exhibition “ Pressa ”.
In 1929 Bodenheimer finally broke with Weizmann's policy and joined the revisionists around Zeev Jabotinsky . As their delegate, he took part in his last world congress in Basel in 1931. When he left the Revisionist Party in 1934, Bodenheimer withdrew into private life.
Little is known that he wrote a drama about the life of Jesus in 1933 ( In the matter of Jesus , under the pseudonym M. Bodmer ).
Fonts
- So became Israel. From the history of the Zionist movement. Memories of Dr. Max Isidor Bodenheimer (ed. Henriette Hannah Bodenheimer based on the unfinished Hebrew biography of 1952), European Publishing House, Frankfurt a. M., 1958
literature
- Bodenheimer, Max. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish authors . Volume 3: Birk – Braun. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-598-22683-7 , pp. 250-255.
- Henriette Hannah Bodenheimer (ed.): In the beginning of the Zionist movement . Frankfurt am Main 1965.
- This: The Zionists and Imperial Germany . Bensberg 1972.
- This: the breakthrough of political Zionism in Cologne 1890-1900 . Cologne 1978.
- This: Max Isidor Bodenheimer (1865-1940). In: Rheinische Lebensbilder, Volume 12. Ed. By Franz-Josef Heyen. Rheinland Verlag, Cologne 1991, pp. 233-256.
- Wilhelm Sternfeld , Eva Tiedemann: German Exile Literature 1933-1945. A bio bibliography . Foreword by Hanns Wilhelm Eppelsheimer , Schneider, Heidelberg / Darmstadt, 1962.
- Citron , Lexicon Zioni, column 57
- Herzl's diaries, passim
- Roland Geiger: At the edge of knowledge . In: Yesterday 5th ed. By Roland Geiger, St. Wendel 2004, pp. 94-101.
Web links
- Literature by and about Max I. Bodenheimer in the catalog of the German National Library
- Biography of Bodenheimer (German)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Bodenheimer, Max I. |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Bodenheimer, Max Isidor (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German lawyer, Zionist and functionary |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 12, 1865 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Stuttgart |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 19, 1940 |
| Place of death | Jerusalem |