Theodor Herzl Popular Books

Theodor Herzl Biography & Facts

Theodor Herzl (2 May 1860 – 3 July 1904) was an Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist, lawyer, writer, playwright and political activist who was the father of modern political Zionism. Herzl formed the Zionist Organization and promoted Jewish immigration to Palestine in an effort to form a Jewish state. Due to his Zionist work, he is known in Hebrew as Chozeh HaMedinah (חוֹזֵה הַמְדִינָה), lit. 'Visionary of the State'. He is specifically mentioned in the Israeli Declaration of Independence and is officially referred to as "the spiritual father of the Jewish State". Herzl was born in Pest, Kingdom of Hungary, to a prosperous Neolog Jewish family. After a brief legal career in Vienna, he became the Paris correspondent for the Viennese newspaper Neue Freie Presse. Confronted with antisemitic events in Vienna, he reached the conclusion that anti-Jewish sentiment would make Jewish assimilation impossible, and that the only solution for Jews was the establishment of a Jewish state. In 1896, Herzl published the pamphlet Der Judenstaat, in which he elaborated his visions of a Jewish homeland. His ideas attracted international attention and rapidly established Herzl as a major figure in the Jewish world. In 1897, Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, and was elected president of the Zionist Organization. He began a series of diplomatic initiatives to build support for a Jewish state, appealing unsuccessfully to German emperor Wilhelm II and Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid II. At the Sixth Zionist Congress in 1903, Herzl presented the Uganda Scheme, endorsed by Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain on behalf of the British government. The proposal, which sought to create a temporary refuge for the Jews in British East Africa following the Kishinev pogrom, was met with strong opposition and ultimately rejected. Herzl died of a heart ailment in 1904 at the age of 44, and was buried in Vienna. In 1949, his remains were taken to Israel and reinterred on Mount Herzl. Early life Theodor Herzl was born in the Dohány utca (Tabakgasse in German), a street in the Jewish quarter of Pest (now eastern part of Budapest), Kingdom of Hungary (now Hungary), to a Neolog Jewish family. He was the second child of Jeanette and Jakob Herzl, who were German-speaking, assimilated Jews. Herzl stated he was of both Ashkenazi and Sephardic lineage, predominantely through his paternal line and to a lesser extent through the maternal line, but there is no evidence for the claim of Sephardic origins. His father's family had migrated from Zimony (today Zemun, Serbia), to Bohemia in 1739, where they were required to Germanize their family name Loebl (from Hebrew lev, 'heart') to Herzl (diminutive of Ger. Herz; 'little heart'). Herzl's father Jakob (1836–1902) was a highly successful businessman. He had a sister, Pauline, who was a year older; she died of typhus on 7 February 1878. Theodor lived with his family in a house next to the Dohány Street Synagogue (formerly known as Tabakgasse Synagogue) located in Belváros, the inner city of the historical old town of Pest, in the eastern section of Budapest. In his youth, Herzl was aspired to follow the footsteps of Ferdinand de Lesseps, builder of the Suez Canal, but did not succeed in the sciences and instead developed a growing enthusiasm for poetry and humanities. This passion later developed into a successful career in journalism and a less-celebrated pursuit of playwrighting. According to Amos Elon, as a young man, Herzl was an ardent Germanophile who saw the Germans as the best Kulturvolk (cultured people) in Central Europe and embraced the German ideal of Bildung, whereby reading great works of literature by Goethe and Shakespeare could allow one to appreciate the beautiful things in life and thus become a morally better person (the Bildung theory tended to equate beauty with goodness). Herzl believed that through Bildung Hungarian Jews such as himself could shake off their "shameful Jewish characteristics" caused by long centuries of impoverishment and oppression, and become civilized Central Europeans, a true Kulturvolk along the German lines. In 1878, after Pauline's death, the Herzl family moved to Vienna, Austria-Hungary, and lived in the 9th district, Alsergrund. At the University of Vienna, Herzl studied law. As a young law student, Herzl became a member of the German nationalist Burschenschaft (fraternity) Albia, which had the motto Ehre, Freiheit, Vaterland ("Honor, Freedom, Fatherland"). He later resigned in protest at the organisation's antisemitism. After a brief legal career in the University of Vienna and Salzburg, he devoted himself to journalism and literature, working as a journalist for a Viennese newspaper and a correspondent for Neue Freie Presse, in Paris, occasionally making special trips to London and Istanbul. He later became literary editor of Neue Freie Presse, and wrote several comedies and dramas for the Viennese stage. His early work did not focus on Jewish life. It was of the feuilleton order, descriptive rather than political. Zionist intellectual and activist As the Paris correspondent for Neue Freie Presse, Herzl followed the Dreyfus affair, a political scandal that divided the Third French Republic from 1894 until its resolution in 1906. It was a notorious antisemitic incident in France in which a Jewish French army captain was falsely convicted of spying for Germany. Herzl was witness to mass rallies in Paris following the Dreyfus trial. There has been some controversy surrounding the impact that this event had on Herzl and his conversion to Zionism. Herzl himself stated that the Dreyfus case turned him into a Zionist and that he was particularly affected by chants of "Death to the Jews!" from the crowds. This had been the widely held belief for some time. However, some modern scholars now believe that – due to little mention of the Dreyfus affair in Herzl's earlier accounts and a seemingly contrary reference he made in them to shouts of "Death to the traitor!" – he may have exaggerated the influence it had on him in order to create further support for his goals. Jacques Kornberg claims that the Dreyfus influence was a myth that Herzl did not feel necessary to deflate and that he also believed that Dreyfus was guilty. Another modern claim is that, while upset by antisemitism evident in French society, Herzl, like most contemporary observers, initially believed Dreyfus was guilty and only claimed to have been inspired by the affair years later when it had become an international cause célèbre. Rather, it was the rise to power of the antisemitic demagogue Karl Lueger in Vienna in 1895 that seems to have had a greater effect on Herzl, before the pro-Dreyfus campaign had fully emerged. It was at this time that Herzl wrote his play "The New Ghetto," which shows the ambivalence and lack of real security and equality of emancipated, well-to-do Jews in Vienna. The protagonist is an assimilated Jew.... Discover the Theodor Herzl popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Theodor Herzl books.