2 5 0 D O C U M E N T 1 4 2 D E C E M B E R 1 9 2 5 Einstein and Chaim Weizmann were elected as presidents of the board, and Magnes and Norman Bentwich were elected as members of the executive committee, as chancellor and vice-chancellor, respectively. Two versions of the minutes were distributed in the wake of the meeting to members of the board. The first version was prepared by Leo Kohn and the second by Magnes himself. Even though most passages in the sections pertaining to the university’s planned constitution and provisional regulations were identical, there were several crucial differences between the two. In the first version, Kohn was identified as “secretary” (“Sekretaer”) of the meeting in the second version, as “acting secretary” of the meeting, as “secretary to the presidents,” and as “secretary of the Provisional Academic Council.” In the first version, the specific members of a committee to prepare a draft of the constitution for the university are cited. In the second version, a committee was mentioned without naming its members, and Weizmann was asked to prepare the draft of the constitution. In both versions, the BOGHU was defined as “the supreme body in charge of the University,” but only in the first version was the phrase, “which exercises its own power” added. In the first version, the board would meet twice a year in the second version, only once a year. In the first version, the location of the central office of the presiding committee was set in London, and the site of the executive committee was set in Jerusalem. Accord- ing to the second version, “[i]n view of the difficulties presented by the Provisional character of the present organization it was resolved not to select any one place as the Headquarters of the Board of Governors.” Only in the first version was the presiding committee defined as functioning as the office of the board and as its appellate authority in contrast, only in the second version was one of its duties defined as its being responsible for the university’s deficits. The first version repeatedly refers to the academic council (“Akademischer Rat”) the second version consistently refers to the “Provisional Academic Council.” The first version foresees a three-member committee to head the academic coun- cil, whose chairman will be one of the chairmen of the board. The bureau of the academic council will be the office of the presiding committee. In the second version, the provisional academic council will be headed by a chairman “elected from among its members.” In the second version, Magnes informed the meeting “that he would accept the office [of chancellor] with its title provisionally” and that he would need to consult with the committees in Palestine and the United States before he could “accept this office definitely.” Only the second version stated that Solomon Ginzberg had been elected “sec- retary of the Board of Governors and registrar of the University […] for a period of five years” and that he “was to be the senior administrative official of the University.” The two versions of the budget differed almost completely. Most significantly, according to the first version, definitive decisions on the budget were taken according to the second version, Magnes stressed the provisional nature of the budget and that it would have to be revised “upon his return to Jerusalem in accordance with the actual monies in hand.” In the first version, specific amounts for allocation were cited in the second version, they were not. The decisions made in regard to the development of specific institutes cited in the two versions varied considerably. The first version of the minutes is extant only in German (see “Protokoll der Zweiten Sitzung des Kuratoriums der Universitaet Jerusalem, abgehalten am 23. Sept. 1925 in Muenchen” [IL-JeCZA, L12/83/1/1]). The second version is extant in a draft in English and as a fragment in Hebrew (see “Draft. Minutes of the second Meeting of the Board of Governors of the He- brew University Held at Munich in the house of Dr. Eli Strauss September 23rd and 24th, 1925” [OC- AJA, Felix M. Warburg Papers, MS-457, box 220, folder 6], and “Minutes of the Second Meeting of the Board of Governors of the Hebrew University Held in Munich at the Home of Dr. Eli Straus, 23 and 24 September 1925” (in Hebrew) [IL-JeHUCA]). [2]The secretary at the Munich meeting was Leo Kohn. On Einstein’s displeasure with claims made by Solomon Ginzberg that he was the secretary of the BOGHU, see Doc. 117, especially note 7. [3]From this word onward the transcription is based on the TTrL [89 110] because the TLS is too obscured.
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