Theodor Herzl

Austro-Hungarian journalist who founded political Zionism and the Zionist Organization (1860–1904)

Theodor Herzl
Image	Herzl on a balcony in Basle (detail of a 1934 print issued by Keren Kayemeth Lejisrael)
Born	2 May 1860 Budapest, Hungary
Died	3 July 1904 Edlach, Lower Austria
Occupation	Journalist, playwright, Zionist leader
Known for	Der Judenstaat (1896); founding the Zionist Organization

Theodor Herzl (Hebrew name Binyamin Ze'ev; 1860–1904) was a Vienna journalist and writer who founded political Zionism. His 1896 pamphlet Der Judenstaat argued that Jews could only be emancipated through a state of their own. In 1897 he convened the First Zionist Congress in Basle, which set up the Zionist Organization (today the World Zionist Organization) and elected him its first president.

Herzl was the movement's founder rather than a sympathiser. He spent the last nine years of his life seeking a Jewish state through the great powers, and he set up the bank that became Bank Leumi. His diaries record a plan to move the poor inhabitants of the land to be acquired across its borders. He also wrote that a Jewish state in Palestine would be "a portion of a rampart of Europe against Asia".

Early life and journalism

Herzl was born in Budapest on 2 May 1860. He began studying law at Vienna University in September 1878, and gave up a legal career to write on 5 August 1885. On 5 October 1891 the Vienna daily Neue Freie Presse appointed him its Paris correspondent. He returned to Vienna as the paper's feuilleton (literary section) editor on 27 July 1895.

Herzl later said that the trial and public degradation of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, which he reported from Paris (the degradation took place on 5 January 1895), turned him to Zionism. The historian Steven Beller notes that there is "scant evidence" for this. Herzl's Zionist diary of 1895, which details how he reached his new belief in April that year, does not mention Dreyfus at all.

Der Judenstaat and the Zionist Organization

On 2 June 1895 Herzl met the philanthropist Baron Maurice de Hirsch, who had funded Jewish settlements in Argentina. The meeting went badly, and Herzl began his Zionist diary the same day. He first drafted his plan as a "Speech to the Rothschilds" and published it as Der Judenstaat on 2 February 1896. Beller summarises its thesis: antisemitism would survive in the modern world, so assimilation was an illusion, and Jews could only be freed through "the establishing of a state of Jews, for Jews".

The pamphlet asked whether the state should be in Palestine or Argentina. It offered the Ottoman Sultan a deal for Palestine:

"If His Majesty the Sultan were to give us Palestine, we could in return undertake to regulate the whole finances of Turkey. We should there form a portion of a rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism."

Herzl launched the Zionist weekly Die Welt on 4 June 1897. From 29 to 31 August 1897 he held the First Zionist Congress in Basle. Its programme set the aim of "a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured by public law". The congress founded the Zionist Organization, with Herzl as its first president. He convened six congresses between 1897 and 1902. They created the movement's tools: the Jewish Colonial Trust (Otzar Hityashvut Hayehudim), the Jewish National Fund and Die Welt. The Jewish Colonial Trust was created on 20 March 1899. In 1902 it set up the Anglo-Palestine Company, the forerunner of Bank Leumi.

Diplomacy

Herzl tried to win a state through the great powers. According to Beller, he approached the Ottoman Sultan, the British government, the Russian tsarist government, the Pope and the Italian government. In 1898 he travelled to Palestine to pursue a Jewish homeland under the protection of the German emperor Wilhelm II, who received him there on 2 November 1898. On the voyage out in October 1898, Herzl noted the demands he and Max Bodenheimer would put: "Area: from the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates."

On 18 May 1901 Sultan Abdul Hamid II received him in Constantinople. In January 1902 Herzl wrote to the British imperialist Cecil Rhodes to seek his backing. He explained that he was turning to Rhodes "because it is something colonial". His novel Altneuland, which set out his vision of the Jewish state in more detail, appeared in October 1902.

On 16 August 1903 the British government formally offered territory in "Uganda", in fact in what is now western Kenya, as a Jewish refuge (the Uganda Scheme). When Herzl proposed accepting it at the Sixth Zionist Congress (23–28 August 1903), Russian Zionists revolted. They insisted that the homeland could be in Palestine and nowhere else. The offer was withdrawn. Herzl had audiences with King Victor Emmanuel III and Pope Pius X on 23–24 January 1904.

Plans for the existing population

On 12 June 1895, early in his Zionist diary, Herzl wrote of the land to be acquired:

"We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country. The property-owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly."

Death and reburial

Herzl suffered from a worsening heart condition. He died of heart failure at Edlach, Lower Austria, on 3 July 1904, a few months after the Uganda crisis, and was buried in Vienna on 7 July. His will asked for his remains to be moved to the Jewish state he hoped would be created. On 17 August 1949 they were reburied on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem. Federation of Zionist Youth tours to 'Israel' include guided visits to the Herzl Museum and to the Mount Herzl Military Cemetery.

See also

• World Zionist Organization
• Zionism
• Bank Leumi
• Balfour Declaration
• Herzl Zionist Institute
• Jewish, Zionist and Israeli connections to Kenya
• Jewish, Zionist and Israeli connections to Turkey
• Jewish, Zionist and Israeli connections to Argentina