Elias Schwarzfeld

Elias Schwarzfeld or Schwartzfeld (; March 7, 1855 – 1915) was a Moldavian, later Romanian Jewish historian, essayist, novelist and newspaperman, also known as a political activist and philanthropist. Writing in several languages (Romanian, Yiddish, French), he focused his studies on the Romanian Jewish community, while steadily publishing articles and brochures which confronted antisemitism. The brother of literary historian Moses Schwarzfeld, Elias was the uncle of poet-philosopher Benjamin Fondane.

Harassed and expelled by Romanian authorities, Schwarzfeld settled in France and became a French citizen. While pursuing his literary and scientific activities, he also worked as an assistant to Maurice de Hirsch, managing his various philanthropic projects and, after 1891, the Jewish Colonization Association.

Biography

Romanian career Born in Iaşi, Elias Schwarzfeld belonged to a family of intellectual prominence: his father B. Schwarzfeld was a poet and owner of a large book collection. The future writer, who was two years older than Moses, also had a sister, Adela Schwarzfeld-Wechsler (1859 – 1953), mother of Benjamin Fondane. Like his two siblings, Elias was raised within an intellectual environment shaped by Junimea literary society, his family being acquainted with several of Junimeas leading members. It was in this journal that he published, from 1884 to 1898, his numerous studies on the history of the Jews in Romania.