Theodor Herzl

Early life

Theodor Herzl was born on Dohány utca, or Tobacco Street (also known as Tabakgasse in German), a street in the Jewish quarter of Pest (now the eastern part of Budapest), in what was then the Kingdom of Hungary (now Hungary), to a Neolog Jewish family. He was the second child of Jeanette (née Diamant) and Jakob Herzl, who were German-speaking, assimilated Jews. Herzl stated he was of both Ashkenazi and Sephardic lineage, predominantly through his paternal relations, and to a lesser extent through his maternal ones, but there is no evidence to support his claims of Sephardic ancestry or family 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 of Loebl (from the Hebrew word lev, or 'heart') to Herzl (meaning 'little heart', a diminutive form of the German word for 'heart', Herz).

Herzl's father Jakob was a highly successful businessman. He had a sister, Pauline, who was a year older than him, but 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 the 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 aspired to follow the footsteps of Ferdinand de Lesseps, builder of the Suez Canal, but did not excel at science, and instead developed a growing enthusiasm for poetry and the humanities. This passion later developed into a successful career in journalism and a less-celebrated foray into playwrighting. According to Amos Elon, as a young man Herzl was an ardent Germanophile, viewing the Germans as the best Kulturvolk ('cultured people') in Central Europe; he embraced the German ideal of Bildung, whereby reading great works of literature by authors and playwrights such as Goethe and Shakespeare could allow one to appreciate the beautiful things in life, which in turn would result in the building and improvement of character, intellect and morality (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", which were the result of long centuries of impoverishment and oppression, and become civilized Central Europeans, a true Kulturvolk established along the German lines.

In 1878, after Pauline's death, the Herzl family moved to Vienna, then serving as the other capital of Austria-Hungary, where they lived in the 9th district, known as 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.

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 Alfred Dreyfus, 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 Jewish lawyer who tries unsuccessfully to break through the social ghetto enforced on Western Jews.

According to Henry Wickham Steed, Herzl was initially "fanatically devoted to the propagation of Jewish-German 'Liberal' assimilationist doctrine." However, Herzl came to reject his early ideas regarding Jewish emancipation and assimilation and to believe that the Jews must remove themselves from Europe. Herzl grew to believe that antisemitism could not be defeated or cured, only avoided, and that the only way to avoid it was the establishment of a Jewish state. In June 1895, he wrote in his diary: "In Paris, as I have said, I achieved a freer attitude toward anti-semitism ... Above all, I recognized the emptiness and futility of trying to 'combat' anti-semitism." Herzl's editors at Neue Freie Presse refused any publication of his Zionist political activities. A mental clash gripped Herzl, between the craving for literary success and a desire to act as a public figure. Around this time, Herzl started writing pamphlets about A Jewish State. Herzl claimed that these pamphlets resulted in the establishment of the Zionist Movement, and they did play a large role in the movement's rise and success. His testimony before the British Royal Commission reflected his fundamental, romantic liberal view on life as the 'Problem of the Jews.'

Diplomatic liaison with the Ottomans

Herzl began to energetically promote his ideas, continually attracting supporters, Jewish and non-Jewish. According to Norman Rose, Herzl "mapped out for himself the role of martyr ... as the Parnell of the Jews." Herzl saw an opportunity in the mid-1890s anti-Armenian Hamidian massacres which severely tarnished the public image of the sultan in Europe. He proposed that in exchange for Jewish settlement in Palestine, the Zionist movement could work to improve Abdul Hamid II's reputation and shore up the empire's finances. Bernard Lazare harshly criticized this position, arguing that Herzl and other delegates of the Zionist Congress "have sent their blessing to the worst of murderers."

Returning from Istanbul, Herzl traveled to London to report back to the Maccabeans, a proto-Zionist group of established English Jews led by Colonel Albert Goldsmid. In November 1895 they received him with curiosity, indifference and coldness. Israel Zangwill bitterly opposed Herzl, but after Istanbul, Goldsmid agreed to support Herzl. In London's East End, a community of primarily Yiddish-speaking recent Eastern European Jewish immigrants, Herzl addressed a mass rally of thousands on 12 July 1896 and was received with acclaim. They granted Herzl the mandate of leadership for Zionism. Within six months this mandate had been expanded throughout Zionist Jewry: the Zionist movement grew rapidly.

On 10 March 1896, Herzl was visited by Reverend William Hechler, the Anglican minister to the British Embassy in Vienna. Hechler had read Herzl's Der Judenstaat, and the meeting became central to the eventual legitimization of Herzl and Zionism. Herzl later wrote in his diary, "Next we came to the heart of the business. I said to him: (Theodor Herzl to Rev. William Hechler) I must put myself into direct and publicly known relations with a responsible or non responsible ruler – that is, with a minister of state or a prince. Then the Jews will believe in me and follow me. The most suitable personage would be the German Kaiser." Hechler arranged an extended audience with Frederick I, Grand Duke of Baden, in April 1896. The Grand Duke was the uncle of the German Emperor Wilhelm II. Through the efforts of Hechler and the Grand Duke, Herzl publicly met Wilhelm II in 1898. The meeting significantly advanced Herzl's and Zionism's legitimacy in Jewish and world opinion.

In May 1896, the English translation of Der Judenstaat appeared in London as The Jewish State. Herzl had earlier confessed to his friend Max Bodenheimer that he "wrote what I had to say without knowing my predecessors, and it can be assumed that I would not have written it [Der Judenstaat] had I been familiar with the literature."

World Jewish Congress

In 1897, at considerable personal expense, he founded the Zionist newspaper Die Welt in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, and planned the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland. He was elected president of the Congress (a position he held until his death in 1904), and in 1898 he began a series of diplomatic initiatives to build support for a Jewish country. He was received by Wilhelm II on several occasions, one of them in Jerusalem, and attended the Hague Peace Conference, enjoying a warm reception from many statesmen there.

His work on Autoemancipation was pre-figured by a similar conclusion drawn by Marx's friend Moses Hess, in Rome and Jerusalem (1862). Leon Pinsker had never yet read it, but was aware of the distant and far off Hibbat Zion. Herzl's philosophical instruction highlighted the weaknesses and vulnerabilities. To Herzl each dictator or leader had a nationalistic identity, even down to the Irish from Wolfe Tone onwards. He was drawn to the mawkishness of Judaism rendered distinctively as German. But he remained convinced that Germany was the centre (Hauptsitz) of antisemitism rather than France. In a much quoted aside he noted "If there is one thing I should like to be, it is a member of old Prussian nobility." Herzl appealed to the nobility of Jewish England—the Rothschilds, Sir Samuel Montagu, later cabinet minister, to the Chief Rabbis of France and Vienna, the German financier Maurice de Hirsch who had created the Jewish Colonization Association in 1891 to encourage mass emigration of Russian Jews to North and South America, and would later be repurposed as the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association in 1924, and especially French philanthropist and art collector Edmond James de Rothschild who was already independently funding the establishment of Jewish colonies in Ottoman Palestine, and to whom Herzl wrote a 65-page long pitch in 1895.

He fared best with Israel Zangwill, and Max Nordau. They were both well-known writers or 'men of letters'—imagination that engenders understanding. The correspondence to Hirsch, who had died in 1896, led nowhere. Baron Albert Rothschild was not interested in Herzl's plan. Herzl was disliked by the bankers (Finanzjuden) and detested them. Herzl was defiant of their social authority. He also shared Pinsker's pessimistic opinion that the Jews had no future in Europe; that they were too antisemitic to tolerate because each country in Europe had tried antisemitic assimilation. In Berlin they said Juden raus in a well worn phrase. Herzl therefore advocated a mass exodus from Europe to the Judenstaat. Pinsker's manifesto was a cry for help; a warning to others Mahnruf, a call for attention to their plight. Herzl's vision was less about mental states of Jewry, and more about delivering prescriptive answers about land. "The idea that I have developed is a very old one; it is the restoration of the Jewish State" was a follow-up of Pinsker's early weaker version Mahnruf an seine Stammesgenossen von einem nassichen Juden.

Zionism and the Holy Land

Herzl visited Jerusalem for the first time in October 1898. He deliberately coordinated his visit with that of Wilhelm II to secure what he thought had been prearranged with the aid of William Hechler—namely public world power recognition of himself and Zionism.

Herzl and Wilhelm II first met publicly on 29 October at Mikveh Israel, near present-day Holon, Israel. It was a brief but historic meeting. He had a second formal, public audience with the emperor at the latter's tent camp on Street of the Prophets in Jerusalem on 2 November 1898. The English Zionist Federation, the local branch of the World Zionist Organization, was founded in 1899 after Herzl had established in Austria in 1897.

In 1902–03, Herzl was invited to give evidence before the British Royal Commission on Alien Immigration. His appearance brought him into close contact with members of the British government, particularly with Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain through whom he negotiated with the Egyptian government for a charter for the settlement of the Jews in Al 'Arish in the Sinai Peninsula, adjoining southern Palestine. The project was blocked as impractical by Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer, the Consul General in Egypt.

In 1902, he wrote a letter to Cecil Rhodes, attempting to get his support for the Jewish state. Then, in 1903, Herzl attempted to obtain support for the Jewish homeland from Pope Pius X, an idea broached at the Sixth Zionist Congress. Palestine could offer a safe refuge for those fleeing persecution in Russia. Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val ordained that the Catholic Church's policy was explained non possumus on such matters, decreeing that as long as the Jews denied the divinity of Jesus, the Catholics could not make a declaration in their favour.

In 1903, following Kishinev pogrom, Herzl visited Saint Petersburg and was received by Sergei Witte, then finance minister, and Viacheslav Plehve, minister of the interior, the latter placing on record the attitude of his government toward the Zionist movement. On that occasion, Herzl submitted proposals to ameliorate the Jewish position in Russia.

At the same time, Joseph Chamberlain floated the idea of a Jewish colony in what is now Kenya. The plan became known as the "Uganda Project", and Herzl presented it to the Sixth Zionist Congress in Basel in August 1903, at which a majority (295 ayes, 178 nays, and 98 abstentions) agreed to investigate the offer. The proposal faced strong opposition, particularly from the Russian delegation, which stormed out of the meeting. In 1905, the Seventh Zionist Congress, after investigations, decided to decline the British offer and firmly committed itself to a Jewish homeland in Palestine. A Heimstatte—a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine secured by public law.

Death and burial

Herzl did not live to see the rejection of the Uganda plan. At 5 p.m. 3 July 1904, in Edlach, a village inside Reichenau an der Rax, Lower Austria, Theodor Herzl, having been diagnosed with a heart issue earlier in the year, died of cardiac sclerosis. A day before his death, he told the Reverend William H. Hechler: "Greet Palestine for me. I gave my heart's blood for my people."

His will stipulated that he should have the poorest-class funeral without speeches or flowers and he added, "I wish to be buried in the vault beside my father, and to lie there till the Jewish people shall take my remains to Israel." Nevertheless, some six thousand followed Herzl's hearse, and the funeral was long and chaotic. Despite Herzl's request that no speeches be made, a brief eulogy was delivered by David Wolffsohn. Hans Herzl, then thirteen, who by his father's choice had not been circumcised at birth, and only did so later at the behest of Zionist leaders, read the kaddish.

First buried at the Viennese cemetery in the district of Döbling, his remains were brought to Israel in 1949 and buried on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, which was named after him. The coffin was draped in a blue and white pall decorated with a Star of David circumscribing a Lion of Judah and seven gold stars recalling Herzl's original proposal for a flag of the Jewish state.

Legacy and commemoration

Herzl Day (Hebrew: יום הרצל) is an Israeli national holiday celebrated annually on the tenth of the Hebrew month of Iyar, to commemorate the life and vision of Herzl.

In 1927, his former secretary and collaborator, Jacob de Haas published a well-received two-volume biography, Theodor Herzl, a biographical study.

Family

Herzl's grandfathers, both of whom he knew, were more closely related to traditional Judaism than were his parents. In Zimony (Zemlin), his grandfather Simon Loeb Herzl "had his hands on" one of the first copies of Judah Alkalai's 1857 work prescribing the "return of the Jews to the Holy Land and renewed glory of Jerusalem." Contemporary scholars conclude that Herzl's own implementation of modern Zionism was undoubtedly influenced by that relationship. Herzl's grandparents' graves in Semlin can still be visited. Alkalai himself witnessed the rebirth of Serbia from Ottoman rule in the early and mid-19th century and was inspired by the Serbian uprising and subsequent re-creation of Serbia.

On 25 June 1889, he married Julie Naschauer, the 21-year-old daughter of a wealthy Jewish businessman in Vienna. The marriage was unhappy, although three children were born to it: Paulina, Hans and Margaritha (Trude). One of his biographers suggests that Herzl infected his wife with gonorrhea which he contracted in 1880. Herzl had a strong attachment to his mother, who was unable to get along with his wife. These difficulties were increased by the political activities of his later years, in which his wife took little interest. Julie died in 1907, 3 years after Herzl, aged 39.

Herzl imagined himself as a great statesman creating a dynasty for his family in Palestine once a Jewish state was established, where his father would be its foundational senator, and his son a doge.

His daughter Paulina suffered from mental illness and drug addiction. She died in 1930 at the age of 40 of a heroin overdose. His only son Hans was given a secular upbringing and the Herzls refused to allow him to be circumcised. On Herzl's early death, after reportedly being pressured to do so by his Zionist caretakers, Hans, then a ward, submitted to circumcision on 29 May 1905; he subsequently converted, resenting the way he had been persuaded to be circumcised, and became successively a Baptist, then a Catholic, and flirted with other Protestant denominations. He sought a personal salvation for his own religious needs and a universal solution, as had his father, to Jewish suffering caused by antisemitism. Hans shot himself to death on the day of his sister Paulina's funeral; he was 39 years old.

Hans left a suicide note explaining his reasons.

Writings

Beginning in late 1895, Herzl wrote Der Judenstaat (The State of the Jews). The small book was initially published 14 February 1896, in Leipzig, Germany, and Vienna, Austria, by M. Breitenstein's Verlags-Buchhandlung. It is subtitled "Versuch einer modernen Lösung der Judenfrage," ("Proposal of a modern solution for the Jewish question"). Der Judenstaat proposed the structure and beliefs of what political Zionism was.

Herzl's solution was the creation of a Jewish state. In the book he outlined his reasoning for the need to reestablish the historic Jewish state.

"The idea I have developed in this pamphlet is an ancient one: It is the restoration of the Jewish State ..."

"The decisive factor is our propelling force. And what is that force? The plight of the Jews ... I am profoundly convinced that I am right, though I doubt whether I shall live to see myself proved so. Those who today inaugurate this movement are unlikely to live to see its glorious culmination. But the very inauguration is enough to inspire in them a high pride and the joy of an inner liberation of their existence ..."

"The plan would seem mad enough if a single individual were to undertake it; but if many Jews simultaneously agree on it, it is entirely reasonable, and its achievement presents no difficulties worth mentioning. The idea depends only on the number of its adherents. Perhaps our ambitious young men, to whom every road of advancement is now closed, and for whom the Jewish state throws open a bright prospect of freedom, happiness, and honor, perhaps they will see to it that this idea is spread ..."

"It depends on the Jews themselves whether this political document remains for the present a political romance. If this generation is too dull to understand it rightly, a future, finer, more advanced generation will arise to comprehend it. The Jews who will try it shall achieve their State; and they will deserve it ..."

"I consider the Jewish question neither a social nor a religious one, even though it sometimes takes these and other forms. It is a national question, and to solve it we must first of all establish it as an international political problem to be discussed and settled by the civilized nations of the world in council.

Published works

Books

The Jewish State (Der Judenstaat), (1896) full text online

The Old New Land (Altneuland), (1902)

Hagenau (1881)

Plays

Kompagniearbeit, comedy in one act, Vienna 1880

Die Causa Hirschkorn, comedy in one act, Vienna 1882

Tabarin, comedy in one act, Vienna 1884

Muttersöhnchen, in four acts, Vienna 1885 (Later: "Austoben" by H. Jungmann)

Seine Hoheit, comedy in three acts, Vienna 1885

Der Flüchtling, comedy in one act, Vienna 1887

Wilddiebe, comedy in four acts, in co-authorship with H. Wittmann, Vienna 1888

Was wird man sagen?, comedy in four acts, Vienna 1890

Die Dame in Schwarz, comedy in four acts, in co-authorship with H. Wittmann, Vienna 1890

Prinzen aus Genieland, comedy in four acts, Vienna 1891

Die Glosse, comedy in one act, Vienna 1895

Das Neue Ghetto, drama in four acts, Vienna 1898. Herzl's only play with Jewish characters. Translated as The New Ghetto by Heinz Norden, New York 1955

Unser Kätchen, comedy in four acts, Vienna 1899

Gretel, comedy in four acts, Vienna 1899

I love you, comedy in one act, Vienna 1900

Solon in Lydien, drama in three acts, Vienna 1905

Other

Herzl, Theodor. Theodor Herzl: Excerpts from His Diaries (2006) excerpt and text search Archived 8 July 2014 at the Wayback Machine

Herzl, Theodor. Philosophische Erzählungen Philosophical Stories (1900), ed. by Carsten Schmidt. new ed. Lexikus Publ. 2011, ISBN 978-3-940206-29-9.

Herzl, Theodor (1922): Theodor Herzls tagebücher, 1895–1904, Volume: 1

Herzl, Theodor (1922): Theodor Herzls tagebücher, 1895–1904, Volume: 2