Salman Schocken

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Salman Z. Schocken
Kaufhaus Schocken
  • Haaretz
  • Schocken Books
    • Children4 sons, 1 daughter

    Salman Schocken (German:

    Kaufhaus Schocken chain of department stores in Germany. Stripped of his citizenship and forced to sell his company by the German government, he immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1934, where he purchased the newspaper Haaretz
    (which is still majority-owned by his descendants).

    Biography

    Germany

    Salman Schocken ("S" in Salman pronounced "Z") was born on October 30, 1877,

    Kaufhaus Schocken stores throughout Germany. Schocken commissioned German Jewish architect Erich Mendelsohn to design Modernist style buildings. [3] He opened branches in Nuremberg (1926), Stuttgart (1928) and Chemnitz (1930, the only one to survive). By 1930 the Schocken chain was one of the largest in Europe, with 20 stores. After his brother Simon's death in 1929, when his friend Franz Rosenzweig also died, Salman Schocken became sole owner of the chain.[4]

    Kaufhaus Schocken, Chemnitz

    In 1915, Schocken co-founded the

    S.Y. Agnon. In 1930 he established the Schocken Institute for Research on Hebrew Poetry in Berlin, a research center intended to discover and publish manuscripts of medieval Jewish poetry. The inspiration for this project was his longstanding dream of finding a Jewish equivalent for the foundational literature of Germany, such as the German epic poem The Nibelungenlied. In 1931, he founded the publishing company Schocken Verlag, which printed books by German Jewish writers such as Franz Kafka and Walter Benjamin, making their work widely available; they also reprinted the Buber-Rosenzweig translation of the Bible. These initiatives earned him the nickname "the mystical merchant" from his friend Scholem.[4]

    In 1933, the Nazis stripped Schocken of his German citizenship. They forced him to sell his German enterprises to

    Merkur AG, but he managed to recover some of his property after World War II
    .

    Palestine

    In 1934 Schocken left Germany for Palestine. In

    Nahum Glatzer, opened another branch, Schocken Books. In 1987 Schocken Books became an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group at Random House, owned by widely diversified media corporation Bertelsmann
    since 1998.

    Schocken became a board member of the Jewish National Fund and helped with the purchase of land in the Haifa Bay area.[5]

    Schocken became the patron of Shmuel Yosef Agnon during his years in Germany.[6] Recognizing Agnon's literary talent, Schocken paid him a stipend that relieved him of financial worries and allowed him to devote himself to writing. Agnon went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1966.[6][7]

    United States

    In 1940 Schocken left Palestine with his family except for one son (Gershom), and settled in the United States, where he founded Schocken Books.

    Schocken died of heart failure on August 6, 1959, while vacationing at an Alpine resort in Pontresina, Switzerland.[8][9] He was buried in Israel.[10]

    Family

    In 1910 Salman Schocken married Zerline (Lilli) Ehrmann, a twenty-year-old German Jewish woman from Frankfurt. They had four sons and one daughter. Their eldest son,

    Manpower Directorate of the Israel Defense Forces
    .

    Villa Schocken in Jerusalem

    The home of Salman Schocken at what is now 7 Smolenskin Street is in the Rehavia neighborhood of Jerusalem. It was designed by Erich Mendelsohn. The building, constructed of Jerusalem stone between 1934 and 1936, was originally surrounded by a spacious 1.5-acre (6,100 m2) garden. During the British Mandate the building was taken over by the British and used as the residence of General Evelyn Barker.[11] In 1957, the property was sold to the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance which invited another architect, Joseph Klarvin, to design an additional front wing of classrooms facing the street. Klarvin also added a third story, dispensing with the pergolas and blocking over the oval pool in the courtyard.[12]

    Schocken also had a library built in Jerusalem for his significant book collection. The building was also designed by Erich Mendelsohn and was built at what is now 6 Balfour Street, close to his home. Today the historic building is home to the Schocken Institute for Jewish Research of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. The Institute houses the Salman Schocken Library and other important archives and collections of Jewish and other books.[13]

    Reparations

    On June 12, 2014, a court in

    Nazi regime in 1938.[14]

    See also

    References

    1. Touro College
      Libraries. p. 1611.
    2. ^ "Man of the Book: Reading a Life of Salman Schocken". The Forward. 12 December 2003.
    3. ^ Salman Schocken: Forefather of Haaretz Newspaper and a Modernist in Love With Tradition
    4. ^ a b Asian Hoffman and Peter Cole, Sacred Trash: the lost and found world of the Cairo Geniza, New York: Schocken books, 2011, p. 113 ff., citing the biography of Schocken by Anthony David, The Patron (New York, 2004).
    5. ^ a b Ben Zikri, Almog (June 24, 2015). "Haaretz Publisher Amos Schocken: Israel's Settlers Have Won". Haaretz.
    6. ^
      S2CID 161508136
      . Retrieved December 15, 2019.
    7. ^ "National Yiddish Book Center - A Simple Story by S.Y. Agnon". January 2003. Archived from the original on 2007-08-09.
    8. UPI
      . August 8, 1959. p. 11. Retrieved December 15, 2019. Salman Schocken, 81, of Scarsdale, NY, a Zionist aide and book publisher, died Thursday [August 6] of a heart attack.
    9. ^ "Obituary – Dr. Salman Schocken". Daily News. New York, NY. AP. August 8, 1959. p. C12. Retrieved December 15, 2019. Pontresina, Switzerland, Aug. 7 (AP).—Dr. Salman Schocken, 82, New York philanthropist, died yesterday [August 6] of heart failure in this Alpine resort.
    10. The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle. Vol. 83, no. 26. Milwaukee, WI. JTA
      . August 14, 1959. p. 3. Retrieved December 15, 2019.
    11. ^ Villa Schocken
    12. ^ "sustainable Jerusalem". Sustainable Jerusalem. May 5, 2003. Archived from the original on 2007-02-22. Retrieved December 15, 2019.
    13. ^ "The Library - The Schocken Institute". schocken-jts.org.il. Archived from the original on 2021-01-11. Retrieved 2015-03-09.
    14. ^ Karin Matussek (12 Jun 2014). "Jewish Family Awarded $68 Million for 1938 Nazi Store Seizures". Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg. Retrieved 12 Jun 2014.

    Further reading

    External links

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