Oskar Cohn

When news about the Tel Aviv and Jaffa deportation reached Berlin, Cohn brought up the issue in the Reichstag on 7 May 1917.

Along with Hugo Haase, Karl Kautsky, and Luise Zietz, he met Angelica Balabanoff and the Russian delegation on 3 July 1917.

[6] After the restoration of diplomatic relations between Germany and Russia, Cohn became legal advisor of the Russian delegation in Berlin.

On the night of 5 to 6 November, Adolph Joffe, the Russian ambassador in Berlin, rendered him about 1 million Mark and a 10.5 million Russian ruble mandate for a bank account at Mendelssohn & Co. After the delegation returned to Russia, Joffe claimed to have paid this money to the USPD to support the revolutionary activities and to purchase weapons.

[7] While the leading USPD politicians Hugo Haase and Emil Barth denied the payment, Cohn admitted the receipt and regretted that he was not able yet to spend the complete sum to spread the idea of the revolution.

He was however criticised, also by socialist newspapers like Die Freiheit and Vorwärts, because his actions stood in contrast to a USPD party resolution, which ruled out the acceptance of foreign money for revolutionary purposes.

[10] These payments led to the demission of Wilhelm Solf as German minister of foreign affairs, who refused further cooperation with the USPD.

His motions to replace the term "Reich" by "Republic" and to address German Jews as a national minority in the Weimar Constitution were denied by the Assembly.

[22] In 1934 Arnold Zweig reported the "Oskar-Cohn-library" in Neve Haim, the library however does not exist anymore, its fate is unknown.