Mayer Ebner

Mayer Ebner was born in 1872 in Chernivtsi

Ebner was born in Czernowitz, Bukovina, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His parents were Jacob and Malka Ebner. He had a traditional Jewish education and also attended a general gymnasium in the city.

He earned a doctorate in law at Czernowitz University and worked as a lawyer alongside his politics. In 1891 he helped found Hasmonea, a Zionist student group that opposed assimilation. In 1897 he was a delegate to the First Zionist Congress in Basel, where he spoke about the Jews of Bukovina.

After Bukovina became part of Romania, he led the Zionist Organization there. He founded and edited the German-language newspaper Ostjüdische Zeitung, which ran from 1919 until the government closed it in 1937. He promoted a policy of Jewish political representation and minority rights in Europe together with support for a national home in Palestine.

He was elected to the Romanian Chamber of Deputies in 1926 and to the Senate in 1928, as a member of the Jewish Party. He led the Jewish parliamentary group and headed the Jewish community of Czernowitz. In 1933 he became vice president of the Congress of European Nationalities.

In 1940 he immigrated to Mandatory Palestine and settled in Tel Aviv, where he stayed on the Zionist Executive. He attended the 1948 Declaration of Independence ceremony and wrote for Haaretz and Davar. He died in 1955 and was buried in Nahalat Yitzhak Cemetery.