In October 1912, the twenty-four-year-old Hebrew writer Shmuel Yosef Agnon embarked on a ship in the port of Jaffa, then Palestine, the destination of his trip being Germany, or, to be more exact, the city of Berlin. Agnon left for Germany in the company of Dr. Arthur Ruppin, known as the “father of Zionist settlement in Eres Yisra'el.” The friendship between Agnon and Ruppin had developed in Jaffa, where Agnon had tutored both Ruppin and his wife in Hebrew. And it was probably with the support of Dr. Ruppin, himself a native of Germany and a graduate of a German university, that Agnon decided to leave Palestine, where he had resided for more than three years, to see the world, which in those days meant Berlin.