Morris Myer

Morris Myer (* 1876 in Darmanesti near Bacau, Romania; † October 25, 1944) was a British journalist.

Life and activity

Myer, who came from Romania, worked in his youth as a blacksmith in Bucharest , where he also wrote articles for socialist magazines. From 1899 to 1901 he published a Zionist weekly newspaper.

Myer came to Great Britain in 1902, where he settled in London's East End. There he became active in the labor movement as well as in the Jewish community life of the neighborhood such as the British Zionist movement. This found practical expression in the collaboration on Yiddish magazines.

From 1913 Myer published Die Tsayt (also Die Zayt ), a daily newspaper written in Yiddish for the Jewish population of the East End. He devoted himself to this task until his death in 1944. Although the newspaper also published religious articles, according to its profile it was aimed as a general-information daily newspaper for Yiddish-speaking people. For the first three decades of its publication, this newspaper was one of the most important opinion-forming organs for the Jewish population in Great Britain ( chief molder of opinion among masses of Yiddish readers in England ). In its Zionist attitude, Die Tsayt still represented a minority opinion in the country's Jewish population in the first years of its appearance. After Myers death, Die Zayt , edited by his son Harry Myer (1903–1974), was published until 1950, when it had to be discontinued due to rising costs and falling reader numbers, which in literature is an indicator of the achievement of a development stage in the integration of large ones Sections of East End Jews in mainstream British society were characterized by a high degree of acculturation.

As chairman of the Association of Jewish Writers and Journalists, he played an important role in the maintenance of Yiddish literature in Britain.

As a member of the Po'alei Zion, he was a prominent member of the British Zionist Association and participated in various world congresses. From 1919 he sat on the representative body of British Jews and was a member of its subcommittee on foreign affairs.

In addition, Myer was involved in founding the Federation of Jewish Relief Organizations, as its deputy chairman he temporarily served.

At the end of the 1930s, because of his role as a leading figure in Jewish life in Great Britain, Myer was targeted by the police forces of National Socialist Germany, who classified him as an important target: In the spring of 1940, the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin put him on the special wanted list GB , a directory of People who were considered particularly dangerous or important by the Nazi surveillance apparatus, which is why they should be identified and arrested with special priority by the special SS commandos following the occupation forces in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht.

Fonts

• The Sweating System, Vi Vert Men fun Ihr Poter , 1907. ("The Sweating System, How to Abolish It?")
• A Yidishe Utopye , 1918. ("A Jewish Utopia")
• Dzhordzh Elyot, di Englishe Nevie fun der Renesans fun Idishen Folk , 1920. ("George Eliot, English Prophetess of the Jewish People's Renaissance")
• Dos Organized Yidntum in England , 1943. ("Organized Jewry in England," 1943)

literature

• Encyclopedia Judaica ( digitized version )
• William D. Rubinstein / Michael Jolles / Hilary L. Rubinstein: The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History , p. 705.