Diamant, Paul Joseph
DIAMANT, PAUL JOSEPH
DIAMANT, PAUL JOSEPH (1887–1966), Israeli genealogist and historian of Austrian Jewry. Diamant, who was born in Vienna into a landowning family, was a devoted Zionist, and after World War i he turned his inherited estate into a training center for ḥalutzim. He subsequently became a leading member of the *Revisionist movement in Austria. After the Anschluss (1938), he took part in organizing illegal immigration. After his arrival in Palestine, he acquired a farm at Moẓa near Jerusalem. His interest in genealogy, heraldry, and history was stimulated by the fact that his family descended from Simon Michael and he was related to both Heinrich *Heine and Theodor *Herzl. He worked on a book (unpublished) on ennobled families of Jewish descent in order to refute the antisemitic Semi-Gotha. The material he gathered was deposited in the General *Archives for Jewish History. Diamant founded the short-lived Archiv fuer juedische Familienforschung; Kunstgeschichte und Museumswesen (1912–13), and in Jerusalem collaborated in establishing the Herzl Museum. He published a volume of letters written by Minna Diamant (1815–1840), Ein Briefwechsel aus der Biedermeierzeit (1962), and several articles in periodicals.
bibliography:
I. Klausner, in: mb (June 10, 1966); B. Brilling, in: awjd (July 5, 1966), 14.