Arthur Ruppin was born in Rawicz in the German Empire (today in Poland). When he was fifteen, his family's poverty forced him to work to support it. Nonetheless, he was able to complete his studies in law and economics. He was to distinguish himself both in furthering practical Zionist settlement and in the academic world.
Ruppin joined the World Zionist Organization (WZO) in 1905. In 1907 he was sent by David Wolfsohn, the President of the WZO, to study the condition of the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine, then a province of the Ottoman Empire, to investigate the possibilities for development of agriculture and industry. He reported on what he saw, which was distressing, and gave recommendations for improving the situation. In 1908 Ruppin came to live in Palestine by decision of the eighth Zionist Congress. He opened the Palestine Bureau (also known as "Eretz Yisrael Office") of the Zionist organization in Jaffa, with the aim of directing the settlement activities of the Zionist movement. His work made "practical Zionism" possible and shaped the direction of the second Aliya, the last wave of Jewish immigration to Palestine before World War I.
Ruppin became the chief Zionist land agent. He helped to get a loan for Ahuzat Bayit, later Tel Aviv, and acquired land on the Carmel, in Afula, in the Jezreel Valley, and in Jerusalem. Ruppin was instrumental in shaping the nature of Jewish settlement in Palestine and in changing the paradigm of settlement from those of plantation owners and poor laborers to the kibbutz collective and cooperative moshavim that became the backbone of the state-in-the-making. He catalyzed the commune at Sejera and helped to turn it into the first kibbutz settlement - Degania, as well as helping to support and organize Kinneret, Merhavia and other settlements. Later, he supported Yehoshua Hankin in his purchases of large tracts of land in the Galilee.
Ruppin was among the founders of the Brit Shalom peace movement, which supported a binational state, but he left Brith Shalom after the 1929 Hebron massacre. Thereafter he was convinced that only an independent Jewish state would be possible, and he believed that the way to bring about that state was through continued settlement. He headed the Jewish Agency between 1933 and 1935, and helped to settle the large numbers of Jewish immigrants from Germany who came in that period. Ruppin died in 1943 and was buried in Degania Alef.
The German city Magdeburg, in which Ruppin lived during his youth, has named one street after him. The city of Haifa has a prize in his name awarded for extraordinary works in thinking, philosophy and politics. One of the prize- winners was the philosopher, zionist and friend of Kafka's, Felix Weltsch in 1952.
References
- The main points of his ideas were given in address to the Vienna Jewish Colonization association.
- Background about Labor Zionism can be found at Labor and Socialist Zionism
- Etan Bloom, The "Administrative Knight" – Arthur Ruppin and the Rise of Zionist Statistics, The Tel Aviv University Year Book for German History, XXXV, 2007 (183-203).
- Etan Bloom, What "The Father" had in Mind, Arthur Ruppin (1876-1943), Cultural Identity, Weltanschauung and Action, The Journal for History of European Ideas, 33/3, 2007 (330-349).
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