Arthur Ruppin

Who was Arthur Ruppin?

Arthur Ruppin was a Zionist thinker and leader. He was also one of the founders of the city of Tel Aviv, and a eugenicist credited as being "The Father Of Jewish Sociology", directing Berlin's Bureau for Jewish Statistics and Demography from 1902 to 1907. In 1926 Ruppin joined the faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and founded the sociology department. A building there is now named in his honor. His most celebrated sociological work is "The Jews In The Modern World". Ruppin was an ambiguous figure in Zionist historic memory, perhaps due to his being influenced by and practicing the same eugenicist theories that would later be used to justify the institutionalisation of Nazi anti-semitism.

Arthur Ruppin was born in Rawicz in the German Empire. When he was fifteen, his family's poverty forced him to work to support it. Nonetheless, he was able to complete his studies in law and economics, winning the Krupp prize in 1899 for his dissertation on the use of social Darwinism in industry. He was to distinguish himself both in furthering practical Zionist settlement and in the academic world.

Ruppin joined the Zionist Organization in 1905.