Richard Kauffmann

Richard Kauffmann was born in 1887 in Frankfurt

Kauffmann was born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1887. His father, Heinrich Yitzhak, was a merchant, and his mother was Helena, née Bleyweis.

He began studying art at the Städelschule in 1907 and moved to architecture studies in Amsterdam the next year. In 1909 he went to the Technical University of Munich, where he graduated in 1912. In 1914 he opened an office in Frankfurt.

During World War I he fought with the German army on the Eastern Front. There he learned of the persecution of East European Jews.

In 1919 Arthur Ruppin invited him to plan Jewish settlements, and he immigrated in 1920. Until 1932 he was chief architect of the Palestine Land Development Company, planning kibbutzim and moshavim such as Nahalal, Ein Harod and Kfar Yehoshua. He also planned Afula and Herzliya and neighborhoods in Jerusalem and Haifa, drawing on the garden city idea of Ebenezer Howard.

In 1922 he married Bat-Sheva Gelb, and they had two daughters, Ruth and Esther. He died in 1958 and was buried at Har HaMenuchot in Jerusalem.