THE LIFE WORK OF FRANZ OPPENHEIMER
Dr. Franz Oppenheimer, the founder of the co-operative colony, Merchavia, in Palestine, was born March 30, 1846, in Berlin. His father was the late preacher of the Jewish Reform Congregation of Berlin, Dr. Julius Oppenheimer, born in Uslar, Hanover, who was the descendant of a long line of scholarly rabbis, though the father of Dr. Julius Oppenheimer had been compelled during the turmoil of the Napoleonic period to become a merchant. Franz Oppenheimer's mother was the daughter of the practising physician Dr. Johannes Davidson of Pyritz in Pommerania an unusually learned and intelligent man, a friend of Lessing's biographer, Stahr. The mother herself was a successful teacher before her marriage, a woman of the rarest gifts of mind and character.
HIS UNIVERSITY CAREER
Franz Oppenheimer attended from 1870 to 1881 the Vorschule and the nine classes of the Friedrich Gymnasium in Berlin and after a brilliant examination at the age of 17 entered the university. He studied medicine at Freiburg and Berlin and in the spring of 1885 graduated as Doctor of Medicine. A year later he passed the state medical examination. During his student years he had been delegated by his fellow students to represent them in every office at their disposal. He won admiration as one of the best fencers and public speakers in Berlin. He represented the medical faculty in the students' committee.
After fulfilling his term of military service he settled in Berlin in 1887 as a physician and speedily won a good practice. But his eager spirit was not satisfied with material success. He pursued his scientific labors in the field of pathological histology. His interest widened to embrace philosophy and particularly the sociological sciences. In the latter
Franz Oppenheimer will sail for this country February 20, 1914. His visit will be in the interests of the co-operative colonization enterprises of the National Fund, which are directed by Prof. Oppenheimer. The February number of THE MACCABAEAN will contain a description of these enterprises as well as a characterization of the man at their head.
domain he won his first successes as a writer of popular science.
In 1893 Oppenheimer came into touch with two movements that were to have a decisive influence upon his scientific eareer. One was the club of educated young Berliners which under the name of the "Ethieal Club” met once a week to listen to Jectures and engage in free discussion. They were the best brains vi the German youth of that period that engaged in their tirst clash of arms on these occasions—a long series of names that in the succeeding decades attatnced renown: Richard Dehmel, Otto Frich Hartlebeu, Julius and Heinrich Hart, Wilhelm Bölsche. Bruno Wille and others. In the circle Oppenheimer was une of the livelicst combatanfs. Here he first came into touch with the gradually growing ideas of the still youthful, still credulous and not yet burenucratified socialism. The con- sequiences were serious stutlies in political economy, especially of Adam Smith and Karl Marx.
HIS CONNECTION WITH HERZKA
Schooled in this fashion he came a little later into touch with the circle that then surrounded Theodor Hertzka, a circle of credulous Utopians who wished to construct a commonwealth modeled on the Kenia in Central Africa. Oppenheimer felt himself as he still maintains in his latest works, fascinated by the construction of a model of society but with the clearness of vision peculiar to him he rejected the utopian elements of the scheme, viz. the project of Hertzka to build a "Freeland" on the Kenia. Cultura non facit saltum;" with this motto he published in 1893 a small brochure, "Freiland in Deutschland" the thesis of which is indicated by the title —that he considered the realization of the social order, in contradistinction of Hertzka, impossible on