Bodenheimer, Max Isador

(1865–1940)

   German Zionist leader. Bodenheimer, a Cologne lawyer, became a close associate of HERZL, and was one of the delegation that accompanied him in 1898 to Constantinople and Palestine to meet the kaiser.

   At the First Zionist Congress, Bodenheimer helped draft the Basle Programme and the statutes of the World Zionist Organization. He later occupied various important positions, such as president of the German Zionist Federation (1897–1910) and chairman of the Jewish National Fund (1907–14).

   In the post-war period, he joined the Revisionist movement headed by JABOTINSKY, but resigned when it seceded from the World Zionist Organization in 1934. The following year he settled in Jerusalem. His memoirs Prelude to Israel (1963; orig. Hebrew, 1952) were posthumously published.