Salman (Shlomoh Zalman) Schocken

Salman Schocken (Shlomo Zalman Schocken, שלמה זלמן שוקן) was born on 29 October 1877 in Margonin, in the Prussian province of Posen. Coming from a humble background, he moves to Zwickau in Saxony with his brother Simon and successfully founds retail businesses, which they develop together into one of the largest German department stores' groups - the Schocken department stores'.
In 1924, the family moved into a villa designed by architect Hermann Muthesius in the west of Berlin-Zehlendorf at Lessingstrasse 29, which was renamed Limastrasse in 1936. Salman builds up an important collection of modern art, manuscripts and books as well as a Judaica collection. He supports the Zionist movement in Germany as well as individual Jewish people and the Jewish settlement in Palestine. In 1931, he founded the Schocken publishing house in Berlin, which specialised in Jewish literature and the intellectual world.

From the summer of 1933, he prepared himself and his family for emigration, which was successful in the winter of 1933/1934 with a winter holiday in Switzerland. The family settled in Jerusalem. In 1938, the Schocken publishing house was closed by the National Socialists. In the same year, the family was stripped of its department stores' group and personal property. The group is forcibly sold to a German banking group under the leadership of Deutsche Bank AG and Reichs-Kredit-Gesellschaft AG, both based in Berlin. The parts of the company are later absorbed into the Horten Group after the Second World War (with the exception of those located in the Soviet occupation zone).
In Palestine, Salman becomes involved in the newly emerging Jewish state. He founds a new Schocken publishing house in Tel Aviv and acquires the Haaretz newspaper, which he and his children develop into a major publication. In 1940, he moved to New York with some of his children and his wife, where he founded another publishing house, Schocken Books. This also exists to this day.
Salman Schocken died on 6 August 1959 in the Swiss holiday resort of Pontresina.