Salman Schocken

Salman Schocken (Hebrew שלמה זלמן שוקן, Schelomo Salman Schocken ) ( born October 30, 1877 in Margonin at Posen; † August 21, 1959 in Pontresina, Switzerland ) was a German businessman, publisher and Zionist.

Life

Salman Schocken was born into a Jewish family. He worked for a commercial apprenticeship in 1901 in his brother Simon Zwickau department store, founded with this together several branches, inter alia, at Nuremberg and Stuttgart, and thus founded the department store group Schocken. His brother Julius opened independently by the Group in Bremerhaven Schocken department stores, but worked with Salman Schocken along when shopping. After the death of his brother Simon, who died as a result of a traffic accident at the age of 55 years on 26 October 1929 was Salman Schocken sole owner of the department store chain.

In 1915 was a co-founder of the Schocken conducted by Martin Buber Zionist magazine The Jew. In 1929 he founded the Schocken Institute for the Study of Hebrew poetry and the Schocken Verlag in Berlin in 1931. In July 1932, he tried to purchase Wildeck Castle in Abstatt, but left him the purchase failed, so that the castle came to the Württemberg State in July 1933 by the Fideikommissgericht in Stuttgart.

Schocken emigrated in 1934 under the impact of National Socialism to Palestine, where he laid the foundation stone for the media company of the Haaretz Group by buying the daily newspaper Ha'aretz. 1938 his Berlin publishing house was forcibly closed. In 1940 he emigrated to the United States.

In Jerusalem he was by Erich Mendelsohn, who had realized for the Schocken Group pioneering Kaufhausbauten in Germany (Nuremberg, remodeling, Chemnitz; Stuttgart ), a large house and a separate private library build. He became a member of the Board of the Hebrew University. It was followed by the founding of the publisher Schocken Publishing House Ltd.. (which should be followed by a foundation in New York ), while in Germany the stores were sold forcibly (so-called linearization ) and then operating under the Merkur AG. After the Second World War ( 1949) succeeded Schocken but to recover 51% of the shares in the department stores; In 1953 he sold it to Helmut Horten. Salman Schocken died in 1959 during a trip to Switzerland.