Wolfgang von Weisl

Who was Wolfgang von Weisl?

Binyamin Ze'ev von Weisl was one of the founders of the Revisionist movement and a leader in the Zionist struggle for establishing a Jewish state. He was writer and a journalist, a physician and medical researcher, a military man and an original military strategist, an Austrian noble and a world expert in Islam.

Dr. Wolfgang von Weisl was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1896. His father, Dr. Ernst Von Weisl, who received the ennobling predicate "von" from Emperor Franz Josef, was among the first Jews to join Theodor Herzl in his Zionist movement. For his son, Wolfgang, this was a call to the flag, and a cause to which he dedicated his life. For Weisl, junior, Zionism meant living in what is now called the land of Israel, participation in its building and defence, and the struggle to ensure its independence toward the Return of Zion. At the age of 11 Dr. Wolfgang von Weisl launched his Zionist path with his first political article with a call to transport Yemenite Jews to the land of Israel. The article was published in the Wiener Handelsblatt. In 1914, in the midst of his medical studies, he served as an artillery officer in the Austo-Hungary army, earned the Iron Cross Medal, destributed the Jewish national colors of blue and white to Jewish officers, and established a Jewish corps for the defense of the Jewish quarter. His work with the Jewish National Fund brought him in touch with Zeev Jabotinsky, then a leading man in Keren Hayesod. Weisl proposed to buy a whole Korpus' gear and armament for 60,000 Lira; to transport 30,000 pioneers and to conquer the Land of Israel. This proposal set Weisl's ideology and heritage: Weisl believed that Israel could survive on the condition that it had a strong army and kept to the historical borders – the only defensible borders. In 1922, right after he completed his medical studies in the University of Vienna, Weisl immigrated to the Holy Land and received a Palestine passport. When, four decades later, he was asked by the Austrian ambassador to Israel why he had not returned to the "beloved Vienna" after the war? Weisl answered: "When I was a medical student in Vienna graffiti on the walls and doors of the toilets called: "Jews out!". And I always read toilet literature seriously." In 1925, together with Yaakov and Abraham Weinschel, Rozof and several other, Weisl founded the Revisionist Party in Eretz Israel.