Leo Motzkin was born in the town of Brovary, near the city of Kyiv in Ukraine, then a part of the Russian Empire.
17 Facts About Leo Motzkin
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Leo Motzkin was raised and educated according to the culture and traditions of the Jewish community.
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Leo Motzkin had witnessed the 1881 anti-Jewish pogrom in Kyiv but escaped to Berlin, the capital of Germany.
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Leo Motzkin was accepted into the University of Berlin at the age of 16, after graduating from high school.
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At the university, Leo Motzkin helped found the Russian Jewish Academic Association in 1887 and soon became a full-fledged activist in the Zionist movement.
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Leo Motzkin participated in the First Zionist Congress in 1897 and became close to the Zionist leader Theodor Herzl, who sent him on a mission to Palestine to investigate the problems of the Jewish community; contrary to other leaders such as Baron Rothschild and Hovevei Zion, Leo Motzkin favored co-operation with the Ottoman Empire for Jewish interests.
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Leo Motzkin represented the "Democratic Faction" at the Fifth Congress in 1901.
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In 1902, together with Martin Buber and Berthold Feiwel, Leo Motzkin founded Berlin's Judischer Verlag.
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In 1909, the Zionist Organization commissioned Leo Motzkin to write a book about the pogroms in Russia, where he described the history of anti-Jewish violence and emphasized the importance of "Jewish Self-Defense" efforts to protect themselves against continuing violence and pogroms.
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Leo Motzkin organized an information service and a campaign against blood libels.
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Leo Motzkin traveled to the United States to collect funds for Jewish refugees and lobby for the protection of Russian Jews.
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Leo Motzkin proceeded to establish a Jewish delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 to represent the interests of Jews across Europe and lobbied for the creation of a World Jewish Congress to represent Jewish minorities worldwide.
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Leo Motzkin was a co-founder together with Paul Schiemann of the National Minorities Congress in 1925.
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Leo Motzkin was an early and leading opponent of the Nazi Party, organizing opposition to it and lobbying the League of Nations to ensure the safety of the German Jewish population.
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Leo Motzkin died in 1933 in Paris while working for the cause of German Jews.
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Leo Motzkin was re-interred in the Mount of Olives Cemetery in Jerusalem in 1934.
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Leo Motzkin was the father of noted mathematician Theodore Motzkin.