Theodor Herzl

Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), Jewish writer and journalist, founder of modern political Zionism, who is regarded as one of the greatest influences in the movement that led to the creation of the state of Israel.

Herzl was born in Budapest, Hungary, on May 2, 1860. Although he studied law in Vienna, Herzl devoted himself to a literary career. He soon became a well-known playwright and essayist, and in 1891 he was appointed Paris correspondent for the Vienna Neue Freie Presse (New Free Press). The violent anti-Semitism that erupted in France in 1894 as a result of the court-martial of the Jewish army officer Alfred Dreyfus deeply affected Herzl (see Dreyfus Affair). Until that time he had believed that gradual assimilation of the Jews with the Christian peoples of Europe was the best solution to anti-Semitism; the repercussions of the court-martial convinced him that the problem could be solved only if the Jews became a separate national group with sovereignty over their own territory.

In 1896 Herzl published a pamphlet, Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State, 1896), advocating the establishment of a Jewish state. Although this solution to the problem of anti-Semitism had been previously suggested by other Jewish leaders, Herzl was the first to call for immediate political, internationally recognized action. To help implement his plan he called for a Zionist congress in 1897, which met in Basel, Switzerland. As a result of the congress, Palestine was chosen as the site of the future Jewish state because of its associations with Jewish history. The World Zionist Organization was also established to help lay the economic foundation for the proposed state.

Because Palestine was then part of the Ottoman Empire, Herzl attempted to negotiate with Sultan Abd al-Hamid II, who was sympathetic to the Zionist cause. These negotiations proved fruitless, however, as did Herzl's interviews with other rulers, statesmen, and financiers. Herzl died on July 3, 1904, before he could see his dream of a Jewish homeland fulfilled. In 1949 his remains were transferred to a mountain west of Jerusalem that was named Mount Herzl; it is also the site of a memorial to the Jewish victims of World War II. Herzl wrote a novel, Old-New Land (1902; trans. 1941), which describes a utopian Jewish state in Palestine, and The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl (3 volumes, 1922; trans. 5 volumes, 1961).