From Elias Auerbach to Hulda Zlocisti – Paths of migration and professionalization of German-speaking Zionists in Jewish Palestine before 1933

• Applicant: Dr. Ines Sonder
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 581474584

Around 3,000 German-speaking Jews lived in Palestine before 1933. Unlike the approximately 60,000 Jewish emigrants from Germany and the German-speaking areas who fled to the country after Hitler came to power, during the Fifth Aliyah, until the outbreak of World War II, they had immigrated out of Zionist conviction. A small number had already arrived before World War I when the region was still part of the Ottoman Empire, while the larger group came at the beginning of the 1920s during the Third Aliyah, after Palestine became a British Mandate. They were forerunners and trailblazers in various fields of the development of the Jewish homeland – in architecture and urban planning, engineering, medicine, education and social work, law, the arts and cultural sectors, as well as in academia as some of the first scholars at the Hebrew University. “Among them were many whose work left lasting marks on the economic and intellectual life of the country” (Richard Lichtheim). Their life paths as Zionist pioneers from Germany and the German-speaking areas, as well as their contribution to establishing viable structures for a Jewish community in Palestine have so far been documented only through a few published personal testimonies and monographs, but have hardly been substantiated by scientific studies – again in marked contrast to the research conducted on the exile of German-Jewish emigration to Palestine in the 1930s. Notably, their active assistance through the establishment of the Hitachduth Olej Germania (HOG), the self-help organization of immigrants from Germany founded in 1932, through which they, the long-time residents, supported the integration of their former compatriots, represented a collective achievement that was unprecedented (even internationally). However, this has received little attention in research, despite being the foundation for the successful integration of thousands of refugees. The aim of the research project is to document for the first time the life paths of German-speaking Jews who settled in Palestine before 1933 out of Zionist conviction and to make their intellectual, cultural and architectural legacy visible: generally through a bio-bibliographical online database of this immigrant group and specifically in the form of a group portrait of ten German-speaking Zionist women in Palestine as a monograph: Lotte Cohn, Käthe Dan, Gurit Kadman, Gerda Luft, Grete Obernik, Escha Scholem, Helene Hanna Thon, Anna Ticho, Lydia Treidel and Hulda Zlocisti. This research project represents an important contribution to German-speaking Zionism and its gender history, particularly to the research on German-Jewish migration to Palestine before 1933, thereby addressing a significant research gap, and to the German-Jewish cultural heritage in the history of Israel in the 20th century.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants