Silberner, Edmund

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SILBERNER, EDMUND

SILBERNER, EDMUND (1910–1985), Israeli economist and historian. Silberner was born in Borislav, Poland. He taught at Geneva University during 1939–41. After teaching in the U.S. at Princeton University from 1946 to 1950, Silberner immigrated to Israel and joined the faculty of the Hebrew University (1951), where he was appointed professor of economics in 1956. Silberner's main work was an analysis of the relationship between European socialism and the Jewish people, with a special interest in Moses *Hess, the Jewish socialist who turned proto-Zionist.

Silberner published a bibliography on Hess (1958); edited his correspondence (1959); and wrote the comprehensive Moses Hess; Geschichte seines Lebens (1966). Of particular importance among Silberner's other works is Ha-Soẓyalism ha-Ma'aravi u-She'elat ha-Yehudim ("Western European Socialism and the Jewish Problem"; 1955).

[Michael A. Meyer]