Willy bamboo

Willy Bambus (sometimes also: Willi Bambus ; born on March 21, 1862 in Berlin ; died on November 3, 1904 there ) was a leading Berlin representative of the Chowewe Zion (supporter of the Jewish resettlement of Palestine before Herzl ). He also acted as a political writer .

Originally coming from the Jewish reform movement , he was active in the religious-national Chibbat Zion movement very early after his turn to Orthodoxy . 1886–1888 he was the editor of the Khovev Zionist magazine “Serubabel” in Berlin, and later worked for the national Jewish “Jüdische Volkszeitung” published by Nathan Birnbaum .

In 1892 he founded the national Jewish -Zionist association " Jung-Israel " together with Heinrich Loewe and was the pioneer and engine of the " Esra " ("Esra. Association for the support of arable Jews in Palestine and Syria", based in Berlin, was in 1883 as a western branch the Chowewe Zion Movement).

After a rapprochement with Herzl's political Zionism, he soon broke away from it and, since he wanted the colonization of Palestine without a political basis, he fought it fiercely in the 1897 magazine "Zion". Nevertheless he took part in the first three Zionist congresses (even belonged to the organizing committee of the first congress, although, paradoxically enough, he opposed the congress together with Hirsch Hildesheimer ).

In 1901 he was one of the co-founders of the Aid Association of German Jews , of which he became its chief secretary; the "aid association" represented a counterweight to the Alliance Israélite Universelle .

Bamboo was active in the fight against anti-Semitism; according to Nathan Birnbaum a “much vilified, but highly deserved man” (Birnbaum's letter to the editor in Jüdisches Volksblatt VI, 47, Vienna, November 18, 1904). In a letter to Leo Motzkin (November 10, 1891) the same pear tree had referred to bamboo as someone from the old guard who "happily colonized a foreign country and wanted to achieve everything with money".

Works (selection)

• The crime of the Jews in Germany , ed. from the Committee for the Defense against Anti-Semitic Attacks in Berlin, Cronbach Verlag Berlin 1896
• The Jews as soldiers. Edited by the Committee for Defense against Anti-Semitic Attacks in Berlin , Bln., Cronbach, 1896

literature

• Bamboo, Willy. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 1: A-Benc. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-598-22681-0 , pp. 344-345.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Some sources also state November 5th or 11th.