Herzl, Theodor

views updated

HERZL, THEODOR

early years in budapest
career developments in vienna
paris and the dreyfus affair
the realization of a dream
bibliography

HERZL, THEODOR (1860–1904), Hungarian founder of the modern Zionist movement.

Though best known for his role as the primary mobilizer for the eventual creation of the State of Israel in 1948, Theodor Herzl's career trajectory encompassed a great deal more than politics. In fact, his early activities as an influential journalist, playwright, novelist, and essayist proved crucial for fulfilling his later political agenda, while his immersion in the cultural and social worlds of fin-de-siècle central Europe combined with his upbringing in an assimilated Jewish family undeniably helped shape his plan for a Zionist state. Despite a century of scholarly inquiry into his life and times, the central paradox concerning how this thoroughly assimilated Viennese cosmopolitan came to be the most passionate—and successful—advocate for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine remains under debate.

early years in budapest

Born on 2 May 1860 in Budapest, Herzl is often described as having had a childhood typical of many assimilated central European Jews of the time. His father, Jacob Herzl (1833–1902), a businessman, and mother, Jeannette Diamant Herzl (1836–1911), while not particularly religiously observant, belonged to an economically established, assimilated Jewish subculture that remained firmly devoted to fostering German culture and language. Though Herzl received training in Hebrew language and Biblical history in preparation for his bar mitzvah, his family referred to the ceremony as a "Konfirmation," in order to emphasize its parallel to the Christian rite of passage. Due to rising anti-Semitism, Herzl soon transferred to Budapest's Evangelical Gymnasium

where, ironically, most students were Jewish, and where he developed his love for German literature. A careful and elegant dresser, as well as a romantic dreamer with an ironic wit, Herzl fostered his passion for writing with the founding of the student literary group Wir (We) in 1874, though the influence of his sister Pauline (1859–1878), an actress who died of illness at an early age, also inspired his later desire to write for the theater.

career developments in vienna

Soon after Pauline's death, the family moved to Vienna, where Herzl entered the university to study law. Faced with the rise of violent anti-Semitism and the establishment of nationalist student groups, Herzl indicated his growing desire for the achievement of social status and rank; one of his diary entries notes his longing to become a member of the Prussian nobility. In 1881 he joined Albia, a nationalist Burschenschaft (student dueling fraternity), from which he angrily resigned only two years later after the organization's enthusiastic reception of an anti-Semitic speech by fellow member Hermann Bahr (1863–1934) on the occasion of the death of Richard Wagner (1813–1883). After graduating from the university in 1884 and serving as a law clerk, Herzl soon realized that, due to anti-Semitism, he would never be able to become a judge and focused instead upon his career as a writer. As early as 1882, he wrote diary entries indicating that Jews had been prevented both externally and internally from improvement of their "race" and noted that behind his dandyish exterior he hid mounting doubt and despair for his situation as a Jew.

At that time, early turn-of-the-century Vienna was rapidly becoming a world-class center of arts and culture as well as host to the poets, dramatists, novelists, and essayists of the Jung Wien circle of writers, including Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874–1929), Bahr, and Richard Beer-Hofmann (1866–1945). Many of these were secular Jews like Herzl, who broke away from their successful professional fathers, rejecting jobs in business and law in favor of pursuing careers in literature and journalism; they tended to spend much of their time congregating in Vienna's now-famous coffeehouses to discuss the latest topics in art, literature, and politics. Herzl, however, actually did not become close to this illustrious coffeehouse set save for a lasting friendship with Arthur Schnitzler (1862–1931). Instead, he remained an aloof cosmopolitan who spoke German, French, Hungarian, Italian, and English, and actually spent more time traveling abroad than anchored in Vienna, casting doubt on the common assumption that both Herzl's background and political goals stemmed from a thoroughly "Viennese" outlook on life, culture, and politics. In fact, it has been argued compellingly that Herzl's time away from Vienna is not only indicative of his overall discomfort with the typical world of assimilated Jewish life in central Europe, but also that it is an important factor in explaining Herzl's rejection of assimilation as a solution to the problems of anti-Semitism and his "conversion" to Zionism.

It is thus from a position of social isolation that Herzl pursued his career as a freelance journalist and playwright, first publishing a series of travel pieces and short essays entitled Neues von der Venus (News from Venus) in 1887 and Das Buch der Narrheit (The book of folly) in 1888. Already in 1889 Herzl had achieved a long dreamed of success with the performance of one of his plays at Vienna's esteemed Burgtheater. That same year, Herzl married Julie Naschauer, daughter of a Jewish oil magnate; they had three children: Pauline (1890), Hans (1891), and Margarethe (1893); by most accounts, however, his marriage was an unhappy one. During this time, he began to develop stronger Zionist tendencies; however, his political goals at this point remained firmly relegated to the stage. By 1897 he achieved his first theatrical success with Das Neue Ghetto (The new ghetto), a politically themed play written three years before in Paris bemoaning the condition of modern Jews who, though emancipated, continued to live in a "new ghetto" without walls.

paris and the dreyfus affair

However, it was as a feuilletonist (writer of magazine-style essays with a personal perspective) that Herzl first achieved significant renown in the Viennese public sphere; he was appointed Paris correspondent for the Viennese newspaper Neue Freie Presse in 1891. Herzl remained in Paris until 1895, by which time he had gained much exposure to increasing political anti-Semitism, including the infamous Dreyfus affair of 1894–1900, when French army captain Alfred Dreyfus (1859–1935) was tried on fabricated charges of high treason and sentenced to life imprisonment, though later pardoned. Until the affair, French Jewry had enjoyed the reputation of being the most successfully assimilated and stable Jewish community in western Europe. The reports Herzl sent back to Vienna indicated just how distraught and unsettling he found these anti-Semitic events, particularly as they occurred, to everyone's astonishment, in "republican, modern, civilized France." Yet, despite the common myth that the affair remained the decisive turning point in the solution to the problems of anti-Semitism—indeed, Herzl himself later stated in his diary that the Dreyfus trial made him a Zionist—recent scholarship emphasizes that while certainly a key event, the affair instead represented a moment in which Herzl cemented his goal to find a workable political solution. Herzl's previous responses had been restricted to romantic fantasies: challenging leading anti-Semitic Viennese politicians such as Georg von Schönerer (1842–1921), Karl Lueger (1844–1910), and Prince Alois von Lichtenstein to a duel; or, as a 1893 diary entry suggested, entering into an imaginary "pact" with the Vatican according to which, in exchange for their help battling anti-Semites, Jews would convert to Christianity on the steps of St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna. This shift from such theatrical solutions to equally romantic yet increasingly viable political plans indicates how Herzl's early aesthetic sensibilities continued to inform his later plans for the formation of a Jewish homeland.

the realization of a dream

In 1895, Herzl completed his outline for the political realization of his Zionist ideals in The Jewish State: An Attempt at a Modern Solution of the Jewish Question. Identifying Jews as a community of fate, the tract rejects assimilation as a political solution to anti-Semitism. On 29 August 1897 Herzl delivered the keynote speech to the first Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, cementing the passion for his firm political and ideological goals. Continually drawn to drama and to self-promotion, Herzl enthusiastically proclaimed in his diary, "At Basel I founded the Jewish State." As president of the Zionist organization and founder of Die Welt, its weekly newspaper that soon gained a circulation of ten thousand, Herzl committed himself fully to the Zionist cause. Though visits with foreign heads of state such as the German kaiser, William II (r. 1888–1918), and Pope Leo XIII (1878–1903) in far-flung cities such as Constantinople and Jerusalem yielded no immediate political results, his activities raised awareness of Zionism as a cause of serious international importance. At the same time, he continued to function as a writer, completing his utopian novel Altneuland, describing in detail how the future state will function, in 1902. By 1903, his meetings with the British government resulted in an offer for an autonomous Jewish colony in Uganda. While this suggestion was never realized, it represented the first substantial step on the path of political recognition for the Zionists.

On 3 July 1904, Herzl died of cardiac sclerosis in Edlach bei Wien. Until the end, his dual commitment to art and politics made possible the advancement of his Zionist plan. It remains debatable to what extent Herzl's transformation from detached bourgeois dandy to ideologically driven Zionist leader stemmed from a deep hatred of his own situation as an assimilated Jew; some twenty-first-century scholars tend to view his acts more positively from the position of Herzl's role as a quintessential modern cosmopolitan Jew. Whatever the case, his passion undeniably stemmed from the complex intertwining of the personal with the political in fin-de-siècle central Europe.