Heinrich Loewe

Born in Wanzleben (Germany) to an assimilated German Jewish family, Heinrich Loewe studied in public and Protestant schools before attending Berlin University. While attending the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in 1892, Loewe founded the Zionist Jung Israel group. In 1899, he founded the German Zionist Federation. He was a librarian at Berlin University, where he later became a professor. Loewe edited a handful of German Zionist newspapers and advocated for the creation of a Jewish national library in Palestine. In addition to his writings on Zionism and antisemitism, Loewe wrote about Jewish language and folklore. His innovative Lieder Buch für Jüdische-Vereine (Songbook for Jewish Organizations) became the model for most Jewish songbooks through World War I. Loewe immigrated to Palestine in 1933; he was the director of the Shaar Zion Library (today Beit Ariela Shaar Zion) in Tel Aviv until 1948.