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Salman Schocken (; October 30, 1877August 6, 1959) or Shlomo Zalman Schocken () was a German Jewish publisher, and co-founder of the large Kaufhaus Schocken chain of department stores in Germany. Stripped of his citizenship and forced to sell his company by the German government, he aliyah to Mandatory Palestine in 1934, where he purchased the newspaper Haaretz (which is still majority-owned by his descendants).
In 1931, he founded the publishing firm Schocken Verlag (English, "Schocken Publishers"), which printed books by German Jewish writers such as Franz Kafka and Walter Benjamin, making their work widely available. The firm also reprinted the Buber-Rosenzweig translation of the Bible and issued the Bücherei des Schocken Verlags (English, "Library of the Schocken Verlag") and the Jüdische Lesehefte (English, "Jewish readers") book series. These initiatives earned him the nickname "the mystical merchant" from his friend Scholem.
In 1933, the Nazis stripped Schocken of his German citizenship. They forced him to sell his German enterprises to Merkur AG, but he managed to recover some of his property after World War II.
Schocken became a board member of the Jewish National Fund and helped with the purchase of land in the Haifa Bay area.
Schocken became the patron of Shmuel Yosef Agnon during his years in Germany. Recognizing Agnon's literary talent, Schocken paid him a stipend that relieved him of financial worries and allowed him to devote himself to writing. Agnon went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1966.
Schocken died of heart failure on August 6, 1959, while vacationing at an Alpine resort in Pontresina, Switzerland. He was buried in Israel.
Schocken also had a library built in Jerusalem for his significant book collection. The building was also designed by Erich Mendelsohn and was built at what is now 6 Balfour Street, close to his home. Today the historic building is home to the Schocken Institute for Jewish Research of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. The Institute houses the Salman Schocken Library and other important archives and collections of Jewish and other books.
United States
In 1940 Schocken left Palestine with his family except for one son (Gershom), and settled in the United States, where he founded Schocken Books.
Family
In 1910 Salman Schocken married Zerline "Lilli" Ehrmann, a twenty-year-old German Jewish woman from Frankfurt. They had four sons and one daughter. Their eldest son, Gershom Schocken, succeeded his father at the Schocken publishing house in Tel Aviv and at the Haaretz newspaper. Another son, Gideon Schocken, became a Haganah fighter and later a Aluf and the head of the Manpower Directorate of the Israel Defense Forces.
Villa Schocken in Jerusalem
The home of Salman Schocken at what is now 7 Smolenskin Street is in the Rehavia neighborhood of Jerusalem. It was designed by Erich Mendelsohn. The building, constructed of Jerusalem stone between 1934 and 1936, was originally surrounded by a spacious garden. During the British Mandate the building was taken over by the British and used as the residence of General Evelyn Barker. Villa Schocken In 1957, the property was sold to the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance which invited another architect, Joseph Klarvin, to design an additional front wing of classrooms facing the street. Klarvin also added a third story, dispensing with the pergolas and blocking over the oval pool in the courtyard.
Reparations
On June 12, 2014, a court in Berlin awarded 50 million euros to Salman Schocken's surviving heirs in Israel as part of reparations for the seizure of Schocken AG by the Nazi regime in 1938.
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Categories: 1877 Births, 1959 Deaths, People From Margonin, People From The Province Of Posen, Jewish Emigrants From Nazi Germany To Mandatory Palestine, American Publishers, 20th-century German Publishers, Jewish Printing And Publishing, Israeli Publishers, Burials At Har Hamenuchot, Schocken Family
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