Theodor Zlocisti

Born in Borchostrova, near Gdańsk in the Baltic reaches of the German Empire (today in Poland), Theodor Zlocisti received his medical degree from the University of Berlin in 1900. An early Zionist, Zlocisti corresponded with Theodor Herzl during his student years, and in 1897, attended the First Zionist Congress as a delegate. He was a leading figure in the German Zionist movement for the next decade and a half. Zlocisti served as a medical officer for the Red Cross in Constantinople during World War I. Following the war, he immigrated to Palestine and in 1921, settled in Tel Aviv. Alongside his medical practice and participation in Zionist politics, Zlocisti maintained an interest in the works of the mid-nineteenth century “proto-Zionist” utopian thinker Moses Hess throughout his career, assembling a substantial body of the socialist philosopher’s previously unpublished writing as well as biographical material about him. Zlocisti also published two volumes of his own poetry and translated several works of Yiddish literature into German. He spent his final years in Haifa.