Daniel Blumenthal (politician)
Daniel Blumenthal (25 January 1860 – 25 March 1930) was a lawyer and politician from Alsace-Lorraine. He served as mayor of Colmar from 1905 to 1914 and was a member of the German Reichstag from 1903 to 1907. He was born in Thann, Haut-Rhin, to Russian parents who had moved to France in 1858, and he became a German citizen in 1882. In 1895 he founded the democratic People’s Party of Alsace-Lorraine and was its first president. He joined Colmar’s city parliament in 1899 and sat in the district parliament (Upper Alsace) from 1900 to 1914. In 1903 he won the Reichstag seat for Alsace-Lorraine constituency No. 9, and in 1907 he ran in two constituencies but finished second in both.
Blumenthal was elected mayor of Colmar in 1905. In 1911 he tried to enter the Alsace-Lorraine state parliament but did not win; the emperor later appointed him as a non-elected member of the upper house. After World War I began, he left Alsace for France and pushed for Alsace-Lorraine to rejoin France. The German government sentenced him to death eight times and gave him a total of 500 years in prison after his escape.
He wrote Alsace-Lorraine – a study of the relations between the two regions and their claims, published in 1917. He presented the book to the U.S. Congress to seek support for freeing Alsace-Lorraine and reuniting it with France without a local vote. Blumenthal’s father had converted from Judaism to Calvinism and worked as a Bible distributor in Alsace-Lorraine. He married Lydia Knoeri; they had three children: Lydia Tolstoy, Jeanne Therese Stepanoff, and André Blumenthal. He is buried in Metzeral cemetery in Alsace, and his descendants now live in Australia. Colmar honors him with rue Daniel Blumenthal.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 16:16 (CET).