Charles Dreyfus (b.

Alsace Alsace (, ; ; Low Alemannic German/ gsw-FR, Elsàss ; german: Elsass ; la, Alsatia) is a cultural region and a territorial collectivity in eastern France, on the west bank of the upper Rhine next to Germany and Switzerland. In 2020, it had ...

, 1848 - d.

Menton Menton (; , written ''Menton'' in classical norm or ''Mentan'' in Mistralian norm; it, Mentone ) is a commune in the Alpes-Maritimes department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region on the French Riviera, close to the Italian border. Me ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

, 11 December 1935) was President of the Manchester Zionist Society, a member of Manchester City Council and a leading figure in the East Manchester Conservative Association during the time that

Arthur Balfour Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, (, ; 25 July 184819 March 1930), also known as Lord Balfour, was a British Conservative statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1902 to 1905. As foreign secretary in the ...

was

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members o ...

for the constituency and

Prime Minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister i ...

. At Dreyfus' suggestion Balfour and the Zionist leader

Chaim Weizmann Chaim Azriel Weizmann ( he, חיים עזריאל ויצמן ', russian: Хаим Евзорович Вейцман, ''Khaim Evzorovich Veytsman''; 27 November 1874 – 9 November 1952) was a Russian-born biochemist, Zionist leader and Israe ...

(later first President of the State of Israel) first met at a constituency meeting on 27 January 1905. Dreyfus had been introduced to Weizmann by the Zionist activist and writer Joseph Massel. Dreyfus was Weizmann's employer in Manchester and remained a friend until his death. Dreyfus was born in

and studied chemistry in Strasbourg. He emigrated to

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

in 1869, where he established the Clayton Aniline Company in 1876.Liedtke, Rainer (1998). ''Jewish Welfare in Hamburg and Manchester, c. 1850-1914''. Oxford University Press, , pp. 133-134. As a councillor he led the campaign for a Jewish hospital. Charles Dreyfus was a distant relative of Alfred Dreyfus, the young Jewish artillery officer at the centre of the notorious French political scandal, the

Dreyfus affair The Dreyfus affair (french: affaire Dreyfus, ) was a political scandal that divided the French Third Republic from 1894 until its resolution in 1906. "L'Affaire", as it is known in French, has come to symbolise modern injustice in the Francop ...

. Bermant, Chaim (1970). ''Troubled Eden: An Anatomy of British Jewry''. Basic Books, p. 45.

References

Bibliography

*Charles Dreyfus, Yellow Dyes and the Balfour Declaration, by Bob Weintraub
Chemistry in Israel. Bulletin of the Israel Chemical Society. issue 25, October 2010.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dreyfus, Charles 1848 births 1935 deaths Zionist activists 19th-century British chemists 19th-century British businesspeople French emigrants to England 19th-century French Jews People from Alsace Councillors in Manchester