Leon Pinsker

Leo Pinsker ( frequent variant name: Leon Pinsker, also: Judah or Yehuda Leib or body Pinscher, * 1821 in Tomaszow, then Russian Empire, † December 9, 1891 in Odessa) was a physician and journalist as well as precursors and pioneers of Zionism.

The Jewish doctor Leon Pinsker - the son of Simcha Pinsker - originally wanted to be a lawyer, but had to realize that a career would give him as Jews are denied as a lawyer, came from the advocacy of assimilation for emphasizing a Jewish nationality and Jewish independence and emancipation.

In the wake of pogroms in the Russian Empire after the assassination of Alexander II, he thematized with his writing Autoemancipation! Exhortation to his fellow tribesmen by a Russian Jew (1882 ) for the first time in all clarity, that requirement earlier (of Moses Montefiore, then Moses Hess in 1862 with Rome and Jerusalem, and others) time and again raised by a Jewish nation-state, with 1897 authoritative formulated by Theodor Herzl in Basel Declaration on the main demand of political Zionism was.

Pinsker was responding to the then occurring more aggressive anti-Semitism in Europe (especially in Russia). Originally he advised the Jews to assimilate and encouraged them to speak Russian. As in 1881 in Odessa pogroms broke out, the Jews were confused; assimilation efforts to heard. The government-backed anti-Semitism led Pinsker to face the situation. He regarded the Enlightenment and the Haskalah movement no longer be adequate for the Russian Jews and no longer believed that general humanism is a means to counter the hatred of Jews.

Leo Pinsker had traveled in the wake of pogroms in Russia in 1881 throughout Europe. He saw in the spread of anti-Semitism, especially in the "enlightened" countries " Judäophobie ", ie a mental illness in the mutually reinforcing " certainties " a collective mental disorder anzeigten ( " The Judeophobia is a psychosis. As psychosis is hereditary, and as an inherited disease for two thousand years it is incurable "). There were a fear of ghosts, the herrühre therefore, that the Jewish people will walk in the sinister figure of the dead among the living. They could only be overcome if the ghostly form of Jewish existence ceases. There is only one way, the national resurrection of the Jewish people.

In his 1882 published work auto-emancipation he concluded from the necessity of a Jewish state and thus became the pioneer of Zionism. Pinsker was chairman of the Hovevei Zion movement. Although it came to party struggles within the movement, Pinsker was by supporting Baron Edmond de Rothschild's continue in the service of the organization.

In Germany, most of the Jews rejected the propagated by Pinsker attitude, they preferred to continue to try to fight for their integration and recognition.

Pinsker's last days were marked by pessimism and official rejection of Jewish immigration plans for Palestine ( Pinsker had previously been tested yet possibilities of settlement in Argentina). Leon Pinsker died in 1891 in Odessa.

In 1934 his remains were buried on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem.

Theodor Herzl knew Pinsker's writings before the end of 1895.

In 1883 he became an honorary member of the fraternity Kadima.