Moritz Hall

Moritz Hall (14 March 1838 – 27 January 1914) was a Polish Jewish-born Christian missionary, metalworker, timber merchant, and hotel proprietor.

He was born in the then tripartitely controlled Free City of Cracow, in 1846 annexed to the Austrian Galicia and Lodomeria, and served briefly in the Russian Army before emigrating to Ethiopia.

He worked with the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews in Ethiopia and the Chrischona Brethren and married Wälättä (Katarina) Iyäsus Zander, an Ethiopian-German.

The mission was run by the Swiss-German Chrischona Brethren, a group of "artisan missionaries" who taught crafts and skills to locals as part of their attempt to attract converts.

He ordered the Gaffat mission to produce artillery pieces for his army; the missionaries complained they had no knowledge of such matters but were compelled to start work.

Claiming to have received no reply to a letter he sent to the British Queen Victoria he imprisoned all English missionaries in the state, extending this to all foreigners by 1867.

They were offered passage to India but refused and travelled to Syria, and perhaps Baghdad, before settling at Jaffa in the Holy Land, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire.

Despite his conversion Hall became involved with helping newly arrived Jews to settle in the town and is regarded as a founding father of the German colony there.

[8] The Halls had eleven more children born during their time in the Near East: Daniel (1870-1943), Pauline (1872-1874), Christina (1874-1964), David (1876-1971), Friedrich Salomon (1879-1964), Joseph (1882-1964), Augusta (1884-1936), Vera (1886-1983), Immanuel (1888-1917), Katia (1891-1978) and Olga (1895-1911).

[6] In 1883, Hall was appointed to manage the London missionary society's colony at Artouf, west of Jerusalem, which was used to house potential Jewish converts to Christianity.