Summary
Romanian-born Palestinian Jewish agronomist, protégé of Otto Warburg, whose discovery of wild emmer wheat at the foot of Mt. Hermon Zionism and Cosmopolitanism: Franz Oppenheimer and the Dream of a Jewish Future in Germany and Palestine presents as the single most important scientific accomplishment of Altneuland (journal) and the CEP, casting him as a “second discoverer” in the German colonial-fantasy trope (PDF p.144, p.152-153).
Details
- Born in Romania, Aaronson immigrated at six with his parents to help establish Zichron Ya’akov, where he lived most of his life; Warburg met him on the 1899-1900 Palestine trip (PDF p.144, p.154).
- His report portrayed local farmers, who were aware of the emmer, as oblivious to its significance, dismissing the brittle grain as unworthy of cultivation; Georg Schweinfurth praised the discovery in Altneuland and the Vossische Zeitung, and Warburg presented it at the Eighth Zionist Congress as a “perpetually acknowledged discovery in the history of culture” (PDF p.153).
- The discovery lent force to the CEP’s demand for an agricultural research station in Palestine, ultimately founded in Atlit under Aaronson’s management (PDF p.153).
- With Selig Soskin he argued wine cultivation failed for lack of study of and adaptation to Palestine’s climate, consumption and taxation, and that regional markets such as Egypt for raisins and grapes were ignored; he also scorned the JCA and Rothschild administrations for underachieving against the Templars despite higher investment, blaming neglect of roads, water and sewer infrastructure (PDF p.162, p.185).
Related pages
Zionism and Cosmopolitanism: Franz Oppenheimer and the Dream of a Jewish Future in Germany and Palestine, Otto Warburg, Selig Soskin, Altneuland (journal), Templars