Moses Hess

Moses Hess

Moses Hess (b. 21 January 1812 in Bonn, French Empire; d. 6 April 1875 in Paris, France) was a Jewish philosopher, early communist and Zionist thinker.

Life

Moses Hess was born in Bonn, which was under French rule at the time (now Germany). His father was an ordained rabbi, but never practiced this profession. Hess received a Jewish religious education from his grandfather, and later studied philosophy at the University of Bonn, but never graduated.

Hess was an early proponent of socialism, and a precursor to what would later be called Zionism. As a correspondent for the Rheinische Zeitung, a radical newspaper founded by liberal Rhenish businessmen, he lived in Paris. He was a friend and important collaborator of Karl Marx, who was the editor of the Rheinische Zeitung, following his advice, and befriended also with Friedrich Engels. Hess initially introduced Engels to communism, through his theoretical approach.

Marx, Engels and Hess took refuge in Brussels, Belgium, in 1845, and used to live in the same street. By the end of the decade, Marx and Engels had fallen out with Hess. The work of Hess was also criticized in part of The German Ideology by Marx and Engels.

Hess fled to Switzerland temporarily following the suppression of the 1848 commune. He would also go abroad during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871.

From 1861 to 1863, he lived in Germany, where he became acquainted with the rising tide of German antisemitism. It was then that he reverted to his Jewish name Moses (after going by Moritz Hess) in protest against Jewish assimilation. He published Rome and Jerusalem in 1862. His book calls for the establishment of a Jewish socialist commonwealth in Palestine, in line with the emerging national movements in Europe and as the only way to respond to antisemitism and assert Jewish identity in the modern world.