Summary
German physician, sociologist and Zionist (born March 30, 1864, Berlin; died 1943, Los Angeles) whose conjunction of Zionism and cosmopolitanism is the subject of Zionism and Cosmopolitanism: Franz Oppenheimer and the Dream of a Jewish Future in Germany and Palestine: Peretz argues Oppenheimer sought to prove Jews capable of colonization and nation-building in order to strengthen Jewish pride and improve the perception of Jewish civic aptitude in Europe, while remaining a German citizen himself (Zionism and Cosmopolitanism: Franz Oppenheimer and the Dream of a Jewish Future in Germany and Palestine, PDF p.14, p.26).
Details
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Born in Berlin’s Spandauer Vorstadt, the old Jewish Quarter, son of Julius, a reform rabbi at the Johannis Street Synagogue (PDF p.38).
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He wrote in his autobiography that his Jewish tribal consciousness was compatible with his German national and cultural consciousness and that he was never an assimilationist (PDF p.17).
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His engagement with Zionism started in 1901 and continued until the mid-1930s; he founded the first Zionist agricultural cooperative at Merhavia and in 1919 was appointed to the first German professorship for sociology in Frankfurt (PDF p.15).
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Trained as a physician (otolaryngology), he closed his practice in 1896 and became a social economist; researching antisemitism was, in his words as quoted, part of his scientific business (PDF p.40, p.44).
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He did not reject the concept of race but held social causes influenced race more than biological ones, embraced Rassenhygiene, and regarded agricultural settlement cooperatives as the vehicle for the racial transformation of the Jews within a generation (PDF p.25).
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His citizenship was rescinded under the Nazis; he emigrated with his youngest daughter Renata via Japan and Shanghai to Los Angeles, where he died in 1943 (PDF p.33).
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In the German Sociological Society debates he pitted class against race, declaring the racial conception of history “not a science but a pseudoscience” and antisemitism “essentially, social class struggle, not racial hate”; his Plasticity of race held race malleable within a few generations, and his settlement cooperative rested on Kropotkin’s mutual aid and on breaking land enclosure (PDF p.63, p.77, p.96, p.98).
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Peretz’s Chapter 3 shows his path to Zionism was not the chance train encounter of his memoirs: he sat on the Bodenkulturverein board from 1897, published “Jüdische Siedlungen” in Die Welt from December 13, 1901, and was commissioned by Herzl in January 1902; he co-founded the Jewish Orient Colonization Society with Davis Trietsch, resigned its chairmanship under Herzl’s pressure in July 1903, and defined his position in 1903: “I am a Zionist because, and insomuch as, I am a devout Socialist.” (PDF p.111-112, p.123-128).
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At the Sixth Zionist Congress his lecture laid down mutual aid, agricultural focus and national ownership of land, and he was voted onto the Commission for the Exploration of Palestine board, coediting Altneuland (journal) in 1904-1906 (PDF p.131-134).
Related pages
Zionism and Cosmopolitanism: Franz Oppenheimer and the Dream of a Jewish Future in Germany and Palestine, Merhavia, Altneuland (journal), Theodor Herzl, Jewishness, Rassenhygiene, Liberal socialism, Organicism