Alex Bein

Alex Bein was born in 1903 in Steinach

Bein was born on 21 January 1903 in Steinach an der Saale in Bavaria, Germany. He studied at the University of Berlin and the University of Erlangen. He earned a doctorate in philosophy with a thesis on Alexander Hamilton, supervised by the historian Friedrich Meinecke.

From 1927 to 1933 he worked as an archivist at the state archive in Potsdam. He also helped edit the Brockhaus encyclopedia. In 1933 he moved to Palestine and settled in Jerusalem, where he began editing Herzl's writings and writing his biography.

In 1936 he became deputy director of the Central Zionist Archives, and in 1955 its director, a post he held until 1971. In 1956 he was appointed the first State Archivist of Israel. He also chaired the Israel Archives Association and taught archival studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

His books covered Zionism, Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel, modern antisemitism and the Jewish question. He wrote biographies of Herzl, Leo Motzkin, Franz Oppenheimer and Arthur Ruppin. He received the Israel Prize in 1987 for Zionist historiography and died on 20 June 1988 during a visit to Stockholm.