Robert Weltsch

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Robert Weltsch (b. 1891, Prague; d. 1982, Jerusalem) was a journalist, editor and prominent Zionist.

He was editor of the Jüdische Rundschau (Jewish Review), a newspaper published twice a week in Berlin, Germany during the years the Nazis were gaining influence. The newspaper had a peak readership of 37,000.^[1] He edited and wrote for the Rundschau from 1919 through its demise under the Nazi regime in 1938 . His best-known contribution was a reaction to the April 1, 1933 Nazi-led boycott of Jewish shops, which was the first meaningful anti-Jewish action of the newly-empowered Nazis. In his editorial Weltsch used the phrase, "Wear it with pride, the yellow badge."^[2] This was a call for strength and solidarity, and a lone voice in reaction to the Nazi boycott. It was not a reference to the forced-wearing of yellow armbands, which the Nazis didn't force on Jews until 1941, but rather a call for unity to a German-Jewish community that had until then thought of itself as comfortably assimilated into German life.

Weltsch was born in Prague when it was part of Austria-Hungary. The city had a strong Jewish community which was culturally German. Weltsch fought in World War I on the German side. His cousin, Felix Weltsch, was a good friend of Franz Kafka and Max Brod, and Robert was also life-long friends with the latter; they shared a strong interest in idealistic Zionism.

From 1925 to 1933 Robert Weltsch was active in the Zionist organization Brit Shalom which advocated a binational solution in Palestine, with Jews and Arabs living together. In this cause he was befriended by Martin Buber and Albert Einstein,^[3] among others.

After fleeing to Palestine in 1938 (which at that time included all the territory of modern-day Israel and modern-day Jordan), he continued agitating for accommodation with the native Arabs. He was friendly with Chaim Weizman, who would later become the first president of Israel; but the majority in the Zionist community was not interested in trying to make peace with the hostile Arabs, especially after having recently been through the horrors of the Holocaust. Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, carried the day: in 1948 the Jewish state of Israel was established, displacing some Arabs, although modern-day Jordan, which is much larger than Israel, remained Arab-controlled.

Weltsch worked for many years as a correspondent for Haaretz, a major Israeli newspaper. In 1945 he moved to London, becoming Haaretz's London correspondent. In this capacity he covered the Nuremberg Trials. He was a major force in establishing the Leo Baeck Institute, named for a rabbi and leader of the German-Jewish community during the Nazi years. The Institute is a group dedicated to preserving German-Jewish history and culture and is still acive. Weltsch edited the Institute's Yearbook from 1956 to 1978.

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