Richard Lichtheim

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Richard Lichtheim (born February 16, 1885 in Berlin ; died April 29, 1963 in Jerusalem , Israel ) was a German and later Israeli politician, publicist and insurance manager.

Life

Richard Lichtheim studied in Berlin and Freiburg im Breisgau. From 1911 he worked as an editor for the Zionist newspaper Die Welt . From 1913 to 1917, as the successor to Victor Jacobson , Lichtheim was the representative of the World Zionist Organization in the Ottoman capital Constantinople , where he repeatedly intervened in German and Turkish authorities to prevent repression against the Jewish settlers in Palestine during the First World War , and with the help of the then American ambassador Henry Morgenthau senior organized humanitarian aid deliveries. Important contact persons in Constantinople were the German journalists Paul Weitz and Friedrich Schrader (both correspondents for the Frankfurter Zeitung ).

Because of his contacts with US agencies, Lichtheim came under suspicion of espionage in 1917 and had to return to Germany. In 1919 he was part of the Zionist delegation to the peace negotiations in Versailles , and in 1921 Chaim Weizmann appointed him to the office of the World Zionist Organization in London.

In 1925, after a falling out with Weizmann, Lichtheim joined the revisionist movement of Vladimir Jabotinsky and became its representative in the German Reich. He had met Jabotinski in Constantinople in 1913–14, when he was editor-in-chief of the French-language daily Jeune Turc (1908–1915) founded by Lichtheim's predecessor Jacobson and then WZO President David Wolffsohn . After breaking up with Weizmann, Lichtheim worked full-time as an insurance broker in Berlin. In 1934, Lichtheim emigrated to Palestine with his family . He later turned away from Jabotinsky's increasingly radical course and became an executive member of the World Zionist Organization again. As a qualified economist, he worked for insurance companies in Palestine.

From 1938 to 1946, Lichtheim was a representative of the World Zionist Organization at the League of Nations in Geneva . In 1942 he sent the first reports on the Shoah to Jerusalem from Geneva .

After the Second World War and the founding of Israel, Lichtheim lived in Jerusalem and wrote several books and writings on the history of Zionism .

Richard was married to Irene Lichtheim. The two had two children, the British Marxist theorist and journalist George Lichtheim (1912–1973) and the Israeli Egyptologist Miriam Lichtheim (1914–2004).

Fonts (selection)

  • The program of Zionism . Berlin-Charlottenburg: Zionist. Unite. for German, 1911
  • Building Jewish Palestine . Berlin: Jewish publishing house, 1919
  • Revision of Zionist Policy . Berlin: Ewer bookstore, 1930
  • The history of German Zionism . Jerusalem: Mass, 1954
  • Return - Memories from the early days of German Zionism. DVA, Stuttgart 1970.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Richard Lichtheim: Return - Memoirs from the early days of German Zionism. DVA, Stuttgart, 1970.
  2. ↑ Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem: Letter from Lichtheim to the Zionist Action Committee in Berlin, November 13, 1913 CZA 3:47
  3. ↑ Stefan Mächler: "When the authorities closed the border, they knew what that meant for the rejected Jews": Neue Zürcher Zeitung, August 11, 2017 Link NZZ Online
  4. ↑ Hans Jonas: Memoirs . Ed .: Christian Wiese. UPNE, 2008, ISBN 978-1-58465-639-5 , pp. 81–82 ( google.ch [accessed June 3, 2020]).
personal data
SURNAME Lichtheim, Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Zionist politician
DATE OF BIRTH February 16, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH April 29, 1963
Place of death Jerusalem