KRAUSE, ELIYAHU

KRAUSE, ELIYAHU (1876–1962), agronomist and pioneer in Ereẓ Israel. Born in Berdyansk, Russia, Krause in 1892 went to the *Mikveh Israel Agricultural School in Ereẓ Israel. After further study at the Ecole Supérieure Agricole in France, he was employed by the *Jewish Colonization Association (ica) and founded the Or Yehudah Agricultural School in Smyrna, Turkey. When ica took over the management of the Jewish settlements in Ereẓ Israel from Baron Edmond de *Rothschild, it founded the *Sejera farm in Galilee for the training of settlers, and Krause was appointed farm manager (1901). At Sejera he met members of the Second Aliyah for the first time. His brother-in-law, Yehoshua *Hankin, persuaded him to accept Mania *Wilbushewitch-Shochat's proposal to hand over the farming of the land in Sejera for a year to a group of workers on their collective responsibility. This was the first step of collective agricultural labor in Ereẓ Israel. Early in 1914 he was appointed director of the Mikveh Israel Agricultural School. Many of these workers, in addition to the students, received agricultural training at Mikveh Israel and some of them went on to found moshavim and kibbutzim. In World War i Krause carefully protected the interests of his school. Subsequently he introduced Hebrew (instead of French) as the language of instruction and introduced Jewish labor and watch duty throughout the farm. From the 1930s Mikveh Israel was a center for training Youth Aliyah wards. His daughter, Judith (1907–1936), archaeologist, was born at Sejera. She took part in *Garstang's excavations at Jericho and from 1933 to 1935 directed the excavations at et-Tell (*Ai). Her description, Les Fouilles de Ay, 1933–1935, was published posthumously in 1949.

bibliography:

Mikveh Israel, Ish ha-Adamah (1939); R. Yanait-Ben Zvi, Eliyahu Krause (Heb., 1963).

[Israel Klausner]