Moritz Hall

Moritz Hall (14 March 1838 – 27 January 1914) was a Polish Christian missionary, metalworker, timber merchant, and hotel proprietor.

He was born in the then tripartitely controlled Free City of Cracow, in 1846 annexed to the Austrian Galicia and Lodomeria, and served briefly in the Russian Army before emigrating to Ethiopia. He worked with the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews in Ethiopia and the Chrischona Brethren and married Wälättä (Katarina) Iyäsus Zander, an Ethiopian-German. Whilst at the mission station at Gaffat he was compelled by the Ethiopian Emperor Tewodros II to cast artillery pieces for his army. Tewodros later turned against foreigners resident in Ethiopia and imprisoned Hall at his fortress in Mäqdäla. He was rescued by the British Expedition to Abyssinia and afterwards moved to the Middle East.

Hall settled in Jaffa where he became a mission station manager, timber merchant and hotel proprietor. Considered an elder among the German colony in the town, he was appointed an honorary dragoman at the German consulate. Hall was friends with the Nobel Prize-winning author Shmuel Yosef Agnon and was included as a character in his 1945 historical novel Temol Shilshom.