Davis Trietsch

Davis Trietsch (4 January 1870 – 31 January 1935) was a German Zionist writer and publisher. A proponent of practical Zionism rather than political, he argued from the 1890s for immediate Jewish colonization wherever it was possible, including in Cyprus and at El-Arish, a programme he called "Zionist maximalism". He opposed Herzl's insistence that a charter from the Ottoman government must precede any colonizing or even preparatory work, and he held that industry rather than agriculture should carry the settlement. Both positions met strong resistance in the movement. Trietsch co-founded the journal Ost und West and the Jüdischer Verlag publishing house, edited the periodical Palästina and helped found an information bureau in Jaffa that coordinated Jewish immigration to Ottoman Palestine. He sat on the Zionist General Council from 1907 to 1911 and again from 1920 to 1921. He wrote extensively on the economics of Jewish settlement, promoting industry, garden cities and poultry farming as its basis. During the First World War he published pamphlets arguing that Jews and Germans formed a community of language and interest and that Germany should take up the Zionist cause. The British government commissioned Arnold J. Toynbee to answer him. He settled in Mandatory Palestine in 1932 and helped establish Ramot HaShavim the following year. He was largely forgotten after his death and became the subject of renewed scholarly attention with a 2022 monograph by Lisa Sophie Gebhard.