LANDAUER, GEORG

LANDAUER, GEORG (1895–1954), Zionist leader, active mainly in aiding the aliyah and absorption of German Jews in Israel. Born in Cologne, Landauer was active in the Zionist youth movement blau-weiss and the student Zionist organization Kartell Juedischer Verbindungen. He was a founder of Ha-Po'el ha-Ẓa'ir in Germany. In 1925 he became director of the berlin palestine office and, after two visits to Palestine between 1924 and 1933, settled there in 1934. He became managing director of the Palestine Office and of the Zionist Federation in Germany (1929–33). From 1934 to 1954 Landauer was director of the jewish agency Central Bureau for the Settlement of German Jews, in which his main activities were the organization of aliyah, capital transfer, agricultural settlement, youth aliyah , and German reparations. He was a founder of Aliyah Ḥadashah, a party of the Mandate period consisting mainly of German immigrants, and a member of the Va'ad Le'ummi (1941–48). From 1948 until his death he was chairman of Irgun Olei Merkaz Europa. He immigrated to the United States in 1953. He wrote Zwischen zwei Revolutionen; zionistische Betrachtungen zu Fragen der Uebergangszeit (1942); and a collection of his essays was published in 1957: Der Zionismus im Wandel dreier Jahrzehnte. (Kurt Loewenstein)