Frederick Accum and the “Death In the Pot”

That time the immigrant chemist from Germany decided to rock the boat and change the English food industry forever.

Melody Barron | 10.06.18

Frederick Accum qutoes the Book of Kings 2 on the cover of his treatise, 1820

In 1820, an essay about the fraudulent additives put in food was published in England, by one Frederick Accum. It was titled, A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons, and it sold over one thousand copies in the first month.

Frederick Accum was a pharmacist in Hanover who immigrated on his own to England at the age of 24. He made his way into the the world of apothecary and chemistry in England and was soon mastering English and the science field in which he was apprenticing.

At the turn of the 19^th century, Compton Street in London was the center of scientific research in England and it was there that Accum situated himself selling lab equipment and taking his own risks in the lab while working on gas and gaslight. It was that audaciousness in the lab that would lead him on his crusade against the liars in the food industry.

Title page of “A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons”. From the Sidney Edelstein Collection, the National Library of Israel

“Adulteration of Bread.

This is one of the sophistications of the articles of food most commonly practiced in this metropolis, where the goodness of bread is estimated entirely by its whiteness. It is therefore usual to add a certain quantity of alum to the dough; this improves the look of the bread very much, and renders it whiter and firmer. Good, white, and porous bread, may certainly be manufactured from good wheaten flour alone; but to produce the degree of whiteness rendered indispensable by the caprice of the consumers in London, it is necessary (unless the very best flour is employed,) that the dough should be bleached; and no substance has hitherto been found to answer this purpose better than alum.”

His risk taking and seemingly condescending attitude was clear when he went after those he considered food tainters and fraudsters. In 1820, Accum’s treatise denounced the use of toxic food additives and marked the beginning of a social consciousness in the approach to food. Accum’s publication addressing the issue of food adulteration by companies became a best seller, with three editions come out in the same year.

The treatise contained methods of detecting the additives, explained in what foods they were found, and the harm they could do if and when consumed.

“Poisonous Soda Water.

The beverage called soda water is frequently contaminated both with copper and lead; these metals being largely employed in the construction of the apparatus for preparing the carbonated water, and the great excess of carbonic acid which the water contains, particularly enables it to act strongly on the metallic substances of the apparatus; a truth, of which the reader will find no difficulty in convincing himself, by suffering a stream of sulphuretted hydrogen gas to pass through the water.”

While his treatise became immensely popular, London’s food producers viewed him as enemy number one.

In the second edition of the book, Accum writes in the foreword that he had received threats from the businesses whose reputation he had “tarnished” by publishing the truth about their dealings. Accum would continue to report the crimes of these businesses and the cheats who were not only guilty of lying to the public, but who were in fact, poisoning the public.

“Poisonous Cheese.

Several instances have come under my notice in which Gloucester cheese has been contaminated with red lead, and has produced serious consequences on being taken into the stomach. In one poisonous sample which it fell to my lot to investigate, the evil had been caused by the sophistication of the anotta, employed for colouring cheese.”

Accum continued publishing more works on food that the public consumed much like the recipes contain within “A Treatise on the Art of Brewing,” “A Treatise on the Art of Making Wine,” and “A Treatise on the Art of Making Good and Wholesome Bread”.

“A Treatise on the Art of Making Good and Wholesome Bread”. From the Sidney Edelstein Collection, the National Library of Israel

Though he was forced to return to Germany after being persecuted by his poisonous enemies, his works continued to be printed and reprinted and were then translated into French, Italian and German, reaching a wide readership in Europe and in the United States.

Frederick was born in 1769 to a father and a French mother who had fled from France with her family due to the persecution of Protestants by Catholics. His father had converted from Judaism to Christianity and had changed his name from Markus Herz to Christian Accum at the time of his baptism in 1755. Beyond picking the name “Christian”, Accum’s father made the interesting choice of changing his surname to a word derived from the Hebrew “Akum”, an acronym meaning “a worshiper of stars and signs”, which was traditionally used to refer to Gentiles.

Portrait of Frederick Accum, 1820. From the Sidney Edelstein Collection, the National Library of Israel

This article was written with the help of Chaya Meier Herr, curator of the the Sidney Edelstein Collection, the National Library of Israel.

How the German-Jewish Refugees Flourished in the Kenyan Farmlands

These rare photos show the story of the Jewish refugees who settled in Kenya in the 1930s.

Dr. Yochai Ben-Ghedalia | 29.05.18

When the first Kenyan Jews settled in Nairobi in 1903, it didn’t take long before they became a proper community, but they remained a small community of just a few dozen people for several decades.

All that changed when the Nazis took power in Germany and an exodus of German Jews found themselves seeking refuge in places they never would have expected.

Granted, the influx of Jews to Kenya was small, but that didn’t stop them from having to go through the British Colonial Office that was in charge of immigration to Kenya. In order to gain immigration status in Kenya, one had to be registered as a farm manager- something that was hard to come by for the Jewish immigrants and which limited their ability to settle. The local Jewish community worked hard to encourage Jewish immigration, but found much resistance from white European settlers and from the Indian community in East Africa that had backing from the British Colonial Office. Obviously, the opinion of the indigenous black population was not considered.

While the Jews of Nairobi were working hard on the local immigration initiative, British Jewry in England started their own widespread settlement campaign for thousands of Jews to relocate from Europe to the Kenyan Farmlands. They would settle in the White Highlands, which had already been designated for colonial farms.

In August 1938 the British initiative was registered as a private company limited by shares under the title Plough Settlements Association LTD that had an initial capital of 25,000 pounds. One of the partners for the British company was the JCA – Jewish Colonization Association – or as it is commonly known by its Hebrew initials: יק”א.

The initiative was presented as a colonial and financial enterprise and the hidden idea of rescuing Jews from the European continent was kept under wraps. The immigration activists met with established farmers in Kenya, the British Colonial Office officials, and other officiants in order to study and ready the ground, and gain traction and support for the immigration initiative.

The Jewish immigrants were not able to purchase farms upon their arrival, nor could they find ways to work on the farmlands where they could train as farm hands in order to eventually become farm managers. Many of the requests, and their rejections, were kept in the initiative’s archives.

This article is based on the Jewish Colonization Association archive kept in the Central Archive of the Jewish People.

Photographs courtesy of David Lichtenstein, Sydney, son of Henry (Heinz) Lichtenstein, a farmer in Kipkarren, Usain Gishu province, Kenya.

How a Man Named Saul Became King for a Day in Poland

This is the legend of how a tiny Torah was commissioned by a Jew who served as king of Poland for just one day.

Chen Malul | 28.05.18

סודות כתבי היד העבריים

The Torah scroll dedicated to Rabbi Saul Wahl

A Jewish King in Poland? An oxymoron if ever there was one. Yet, at the National Library of Israel, we have a small and rare Torah scroll, no taller than 10 centimeters, dedicated to one Saul Wahl, the crowned Jewish King of Poland- for just one day.

Saul Katzenellenbogen was born in 1541 into a well-off Jewish family from Venice. His father, Rabbi Samuel Yehuda Katzenellenbogen, was the chief rabbi of the prosperous Venetian Jewish community. After growing up and receiving his education in Italy, Saul was sent to Poland to teach in one of its prestigious yeshivot.

Saul’s religiosity did not prevent him from entering more earthly business ventures. He entered the trade business and in 1580, Saul moved to Krakow to run the salt mines of the King of Poland that were leased out to make a profit for the monarchy. Saul was extremely successful in his time in the salt mines and quickly became a close and loyal adviser to the king.

Stephen Báthory, the king to whom Saul Katzenellenbogen advised

However, this is not the whole story. How could it be? Well, when you combine the real story behind the man, and the legend of the man, the combination makes for a story so fantastic, it is almost unbelievable.

When the king of Poland died, a painful war of succession began. The holy constitution of the Kingdom of Poland determined that a new king can be coronated only after he is elected by the lords of the court – a process that must not take more than 21 days. The Polish lords sequestered themselves and tried to make sense of the process, but the deliberations went on and on and instability reigned. There was no hint of a resolution on the horizon and the deadline to crown a new king was coming due.

In order to uphold the sanctity of the constitution and to keep the kingdom from falling to anarchy, an ingenious idea was proposed: Saul Katzenellenbogen, the late king’s trusted adviser and loyal friend, would be crowned temporary king for one day. They reasoned that, because everyone knew Katzenellenbogen to be an honest man, he would not consider usurping the throne nor would he stay upon it longer than was necessary. Thus, Saul Katzenellenbogen became Saul “Wahl,” which means “The Chosen” in Polish, and he was crowned king.

As the newly minted king of Poland, Saul Wahl Katzenellenbogen wasted no time. While the lords continued agonizing over the selection of a new king, King Saul put out multiple decrees aimed at improving the status of the Jews living in the Kingdom of Poland.

At the end of his first and only day as king, King Saul was asked to decide between the final two royal candidates and it was his choice that brought about the coronation of King Sigismund III Vasa of Poland.

The tiny Torah in the National Library’s collections dedicated to King Saul Wahl gives veracity to the idea that there really was a temporary Jewish King.

However, there is no true historical evidence to support this. The legend of the Jewish King of Poland comes to us from non-Jewish sources and may indeed be a fabrication, but does that truly matter?

Photos of the small Torah by Hanan Cohen, the National Library of Israel

The Red that Created a Revolution

In 1868, a German laboratory synthesized a color that changed the course of the Industrial Revolution.

The National Library of Israel | 27.05.18

History of Science

Friedrich Bayer & Co. Dye Label. 1865. From the Edelstein Collection in the National Library of Israel

The year 2018 marks the 150th anniversary of the first synthesis in a laboratory of a complex, naturally occurring organic chemical product. This was the important red dye known as alizarin, obtained from the root of the madder plant. The madder red, second in importance only to indigo blue, had been used as a versatile dye for hundreds of years and is best known for its application in production of the famous Turkey red cloth. By clever application of the agents used to fix the dye to cloth, various shades and hues could be achieved from the same dye.

Eduard Lauber, Praktisches Handbuch des Zeugdrucks, Moscow, 1887. From the Sidney Edelstein Collection, the National Library of Israel

The chemical synthesis of alizarin was achieved in early 1868 by Carl Graebe and Carl Liebermann (a relative of the artist Max Liebermann), who were research assistants of the chemist Adolf Baeyer. The significance of this achievement lay in the tremendous industrial importance of the natural dye, which was often applied using high-speed printing machines that colored millions of yards of cloth. As an outcome of the synthesis, alizarin was manufactured on vast scales in Britain and Germany, which in a flash, almost wiped out much of the cultivation and trade in the natural dye. This success was the main stimulus for the emergence of the synthetic dye industry, which transformed coal tar waste into alizarin and a myriad of other colored textile dyes. The early dyes were based on the chemical known as aniline, which gave its name to the industry.

Theodore Herzl was so impressed that, in 1896, he was inspired to write a short story, ‘The Aniline Inn’, in which, just like the transformation, or processing, of waste tar into ‘beautiful radiant colors’, the oppressed Jewish peoples could turn their despair into highly colorful achievement. This ‘refuse of human society’ was then waiting to be processed and given purpose in the Jewish State.

The synthesis of alizarin stimulated scientific studies into the chemical constitutions and molecular structures of both natural products such as alizarin and indigo, and others without analogous colors in nature. In 1868, only a partial structure could be drawn for alizarin. Six years later, the modern structure of alizarin was published by Adolf Baeyer and the industrial chemist Heinrich Caro at BASF, a chemical company based in Ludwigshafen.

This advance drew on, and in many ways reinforced, the acceptance of Kekulé’s famous six membered benzene ring of 1865. It also led to scientific studies into all novel colorants, such that within a few years it was possible to create color by design. This was a high point of the second industrial revolution, based on chemical industry and electricity. Synthetic dyes represented the very first high-tech science-based industry.

Badische Anilin & Soda Fabrik, Anilinfarben auf Halbwolle, Ludwigshafen, 1910. From the Sidney Edelstein Collection, the National Library of Israel

By the close of the 19^th century, Germany practically dominated the industry of making synthetic dyes. This success relied on the opening of dedicated research laboratories, and collaborations between industry and technical institutes. In 1897, two German firms, BASF and Hoechst, commenced the manufacture of synthetic indigo, which within a few years displaced the blue natural product imported into Europe from India.

This revolution in the production of textile dyes, which began with synthetic alizarin, and its implications for global industries and economies, as well as for progress in science and technology, is recorded in the magnificent collection of books, pamphlets, recipes and archival documents gathered together by Sidney M. Edelstein. Today these documents are held with the Sidney M. Edelstein Library for the History and Philosophy of Science, Technology and Medicine at the National Library of Israel.