death_date death_place home_town birth_place religion image_size ethnicity parents birth_date image article_title name death_cause
15 september 1914 homburg , german empire thumb darbėnai , russian empire judaism 150px lithuanian isaac wolffsohn feiga wolffsohn 9 october 1856 wolffsohn david.jpg david wolffsohn
 david wolffsohn heart disease
david wolffsohn

david wolffsohn -lrb- ; ; 9 october 1856 , darbėnai -lrb- -rrb- , kovno governorate - 15 september 1914 -rrb- was a lithuanian-jewish businessman , prominent early zionist and second president of the zionist organization -lrb- zo -rrb- .
wolffsohn was born in darbėnai , lithuania , to religious parents , isaac and feiga .
he received an observant religious education from his parents and in 1872 was sent to germany to avoid conscription into the russian army .
he settled in memel , east prussia where he met rabbi isaac rülf , who accepted him as a student .
rülf taught wolffsohn the german language and mathematics , and introduced him to the hovevei zion movement .
wolffsohn became a merchant and toured eastern germany .
there he met a. d. gordon , from whom he borrowed many of his ideas regarding zionism .
at the start of the 20th century , wolffsohn accompanied theodor herzl in his travels to the palestine and istanbul .
wolffsohn was elected as the vice president of the world zionist organization in the world zionist congress of 1905 , and in 1907 became its president .
he died in homburg , germany .
