Turkenhirsch

Who was 'Turkenhirsch' whose death, eighty years ago on April 20, 1896, made headlines in newspapers all over the world? Few people today remember more than just the name of the man who was one of the most remarkable personalities of Edwardian Europe, a great and daring entrepreneur whose largest enterprise, the railway to Constantinople, had kept the chancelleries of Europe busy for decades. This enterprise, in the view of some historians, marked the overture to the drama of the Age of Imperialism. Of his philanthropic enterprises, the greatest was the resettlement of oppressed Russian Jews in Argentina, endowments hitherto unrivaled in scope and scale.'Turkenhirsch' - the nickname under which Baron de Hirsch was known all over the continent of Europe - is of equal interest to the political and economic historian of the nineteenth century, and to the historian of the Jewish renaissance.