I recently debunked the idea that was proposed to me on X/Twitter that TNT was somehow a ‘jewish invention’ and the same poster referred to TNT/dynamite as a ‘jewish invention’ so I thought we’d look at the claim here.
Now dynamite doesn’t have a specific ‘jewish invention’ myth associated with it, but I presume this is based on the incorrect claim that I have seen bandied around from time to time that Alfred Nobel – the inventor of dynamite in 1867 – (1) was jewish.
We know this isn’t true because Immanuel Noble Jr. – Alfred’s father – was a Swedish industrialist, engineer and inventor and had built the first rubber factory and whose father was a Swedish surgeon named Immanuel Noble and his mother – Brita Catarina Ahlberg – was the daughter of a sailor. (2)
Alfred’s mother was Andrietta Ahlsell; whose father was a Swedish head clerk/well-to-do accountant working for the Swedish government in Stockholm (3) and whose mother was a Swedish woman named Carolina Roospigg who came from peasant stock in Smaland. (4)
We can trace both sides of Nobel’s ancestry all the way back to the mid-late seventeenth century in Sweden (5) and there is absolutely no jewishness – or even non-Scandinavians – in it!
Thus because Alfred Nobel invented dynamite in 1867: dynamite is not a jewish invention either!
References
(1) Henrik Shuck, Ragnar Sohlman, 1929, ‘The Life of Alfred Nobel’, 1st Edition, William Heinemann: London, pp. 90; 103-105
(2) Ibid., p. 1
(3) Ibid., p. 5; Kenne Fant, 1993, ‘Alfred Nobel: A Biography’, 1st Edition, Arcade: New York, p. 18
(4) Fant, Op. Cit., p. 21
(5) Ibid, pp. 8-9