Avigdor Hameiri

Avigdor Hameiri (Hebrew: אביגדור המאירי; September 16, 1890 – April 3, 1970) was an Israeli author.

Avidor Hameiri

Biography

Hameiri was born as Avigdor Menachem Feuerstein in 1890, in the village of Odavidhaza (near Munkatsch), Carpathian Ruthenia in Austria Hungary. He emigrated to Mandate Palestine in 1921, and fought in the 1948 War of Independence. He published the State's first independent newspaper and helped to organize the worker's bank. Hameiri was the first poet to whom the title Israel's Poet Laureate was awarded.

Hameiri fought in World War I in the Austro-Hungarian army and recorded the events in his memoirs, The Great Madness (1929)[1] and Hell on Earth (1932).[2] The latter recounts his experiences as a POW of the Russians. Hameiri marched through Buczacz while fighting, and asked a civilian where the house of the famous Hebrew writer Shmuel Yosef Agnon was located. His books have been published in 12 languages.[3]

Alon Rachamimov writes that Hameiri's war stories "reveal the degree to which Jewish identification processes could be contextual, angst-ridden, and laden with contradictory tendencies. The extent to which Hameiri was aware of his struggles regarding notions of 'loyalty,' 'fatherland,' and 'patriotism'...illuminate the complexities of collective identification among Habsburg Jews."[4] Gershon Shaked argues that Hameiri's anti-war stance is rooted in his Judaism.[5]

He died in Israel on April 3, 1970.

Awards

In 1968, Hameiri was awarded the Israel Prize for literature.[6]

See also

References
  1. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2012-04-26. Retrieved 2011-01-01.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  2. The Limits of Loyalty. Cole, Laurence, et al., 2007, p. 185.
  3. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2012-06-14. Retrieved 2011-01-01.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  4. The Limits of Loyalty. Cole, Laurence, et al., 2007, p. 181.
  5. Shaked, Gershon (2000). Modern Hebrew Fiction. Indiana University Press. pp. 106. Hameiri.
  6. "Israel Prize Official Site - Recipients in 1968 (in Hebrew)".

Bibliography
  • Abramson, Glenda (2008). Hebrew Writing of the First World War. Valentine Mitchell.
    - contains chapters on Uri Zvi Greenberg and Shaul Tchernichovsky as well.
  • Rachamimov, A. "Collective Identifications and Austro-Hungarians Jews (1914-1918): The Contradictions and Travails of Avigdor Hameiri", in Laurence Cole and Daniel L. Unowsky (eds), The Limits of Loyalty: Imperial Symbolism, Popular Allegiances, and State Patriotism in the Late Habsburg Monarchy (Oxford, Berghahn Books, 2007), 178-197.
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