15 Facts About Arthur Ruppin

Arthur Ruppin was a German Zionist and one of the founders of the city of Tel Aviv.

In 1926, Ruppin joined the faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and founded the Department for the Sociology of the Jews.

Arthur Ruppin was born in Rawicz in the German Empire.

Arthur Ruppin joined the Zionist Organization in 1905.

Arthur Ruppin reported on what he saw, which was distressing, and gave recommendations for improving the situation.

In 1908 Arthur Ruppin came to live in Palestine by decision of the eighth Zionist Congress.

Arthur Ruppin opened the Palestine Office of the Zionist Organization in Jaffa, with the aim of directing the settlement activities of the Zionist movement.

Arthur Ruppin 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.

Arthur 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 collective and cooperative kibbutzim and moshavim that became the backbone of the state-in-the-making.

Arthur Ruppin was among the founders of the Brit Shalom peace movement, which supported a binational state, but left Brit Shalom after the 1929 Hebron massacre.

Arthur Ruppin 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.

Arthur Ruppin exercised considerable influence in the cultural formation of East European Jews who performed aliyah and were to rise to positions of importance in later decades, such as David Ben-Gurion, Itzhak Ben-Zvi, Joseph Shprinzak, Berl Katznelson, Yitzhak Tabenkin, Zalman Shazar, and Levi Eshkol.

In terms of historic origins, Arthur Ruppin believed that early Jews were a non-Semitic agricultural people, living in the Land of Israel up to the destruction of the First Temple.

Arthur Ruppin believed that realization of Zionism required "racial purity" of Jews and was influenced by works of anti-semitic thinkers, including some Nazis.

Arthur Ruppin performed skull measurements and believed Ashkenazi Jews, whom he regarded as superior to, for example, Yemeni Jews, themselves comprised various racial subclasses, according to nasal structure.