1) His Biography:
Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), a Hungarian-born Austrian Jewish author, formed the World Zionist Organization and served as its first president. Theodor Herzl was born on May 2, 1860, in Budapest, Hungary, to Jacob and Jeanette Herzl. He attended elementary and secondary schools in Budapest. He was admitted to the University of Vienna as a law student in 1878, but after a year, he changed his major to journalism.
He worked for the Allgemeine Zeitung of Vienna until 1892, when he was assigned to the Vienna Neue Freie Presse as a reporter in Paris. He covered the Dreyfus Affair in this role in 1894, and he was very concerned by the anti-Semitism he witnessed in France at the time. With the publishing of his pamphlet The Jewish State: An Attempt at a Modern Solution of the Jewish Question in 1896, Herzl began his political career.
Persecution, according to The Jewish State, would not destroy the Jewish people, but rather strengthen Jewish identity. Because of the long history of prejudice and competition between the non-Jewish and Jewish middle classes, Herzl believed that effective assimilation of Jews would be impossible. Some communities may perish as a result of conditions in the Jewish Diaspora, but the Jewish people as a whole will always endure.
According to Herzl, the Jews had no choice but to begin concentrating their people in one location under their own sovereign authority. In order to do this, he convened the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, in August 1897. The World Zionist Organization was founded at this meeting, with its executives serving as the Zionist movement’s diplomatic and administrative representatives. Herzl rose to become the organization’s president, a position he held until his death.
The World Zionist Organization’s stated purpose was to establish “a secure homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine.” Because Palestine was a part of Turkey, and Germany had a unique relationship with Turkey, Herzl visited with Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1898 in an unsuccessful attempt to gain his support. Abdul-Hamid II, the Sultan of Turkey, received Herzl in May 1901.
However, this summit yielded no significant results because Turkey refused to authorize unrestricted mass immigration to Palestine. Because the condition of eastern European Jews was deteriorating, Herzl examined different territorial solutions to the Jewish dilemma. The British government proposed Uganda as a destination for Jewish mass immigration, but the Fourth Zionist Congress in 1903 rejected the notion, reiterating Zionism’s ultimate goal of establishing a Jewish national home in Palestine.
Theodor Herzl revealed signs of serious sickness during the Uganda polemics. He died on July 3, 1904, and was buried in Vienna. His bones were relocated to Jerusalem by the government of the
independent state of Israel in 1949 and buried on Mt. Herzl, Israel’s national cemetery, in accordance with his wishes.
2) The Jewish State:
Herzl began writing Der Judenstaat (The State of the Jews) in late 1895.. M. Breitenstein’s Verlags-Buchhandlung first released the small book on February 14, 1896, in Leipzig, Germany, and Vienna, Austria. It’s titled “Proposal of a modern solution for the Jewish question”. The framework and ideals of political Zionism were proposed in Der Judenstaat. The foundation of a Jewish state was Herzl’s solution. He articulated his rationale for the need to recreate the historic Jewish state in the book.
The Jews of Europe have been reduced to living in ghettos after centuries of varied restrictions, wars, and periodic pogroms. The upper class is compelled to cope with enraged mobs, which causes them much trouble; the lower class is in despair. Middle-class professionals are distrusted, and the phrase “don’t buy from Jews” causes Jewish individuals a great deal of concern. It’s safe to anticipate that the Jews will not be allowed to live in peace.
Neither a shift in non-Jewish attitudes nor a push to integrate into Europe’s surroundings gives the Jewish people any hope: “The Jewish question persists wherever Jews live in substantial numbers.” It is brought in with Jewish immigration wherever it does not exist. We are naturally drawn to regions where we are not persecuted, and our mere presence causes persecution. This is the situation, and it will continue to be the case, even in highly civilized countries like France, as long as the Jewish question is not resolved on a political level.
Herzl offered Argentina and Palestine as suitable settlement areas, but acknowledged in Der Judenstaat that colonization in either would be difficult: Important colonizing experiments have been carried out in both nations, albeit on the erroneous premise of progressive infiltration of Jews. An infiltration is almost always doomed to fail. It goes on until the native population feels endangered, at which point the government is forced to stop any further entry of Jews. As a result, immigration is meaningless unless we have the sovereign right to sustain it. (Herzl)
As a result, Herzl focused his efforts, both in Der Judenstaat and in his political work on behalf of Zionism, on obtaining official legal permission from “the present masters of the land, putting itself under the protectorate of the European Powers, if they prove friendly to the plan,” as he phrased it. Negotiations with the Ottoman authorities were unsuccessful, but with the Ottoman empire’s collapse at the end of World War I and the subsequent creation of Mandatory Palestine under British control, the Zionists were successful: Britain issued the Balfour Declaration, which supported the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.
As Michael Stein points out, Herzl accurately predicted what happened next: the influx of Jews into Mandatory Palestine in the 1930s made the native Arab population feel threatened, leading to the 1936–1939 Arab revolt, which forced the British government to announce a halt to further influx of Jews in the White Paper of 1939.
Herzl’s instrument of that he dreamed of was “The Jewish Company” – partially fashioned after a large land-acquisition firm. It could be referred to as a Jewish Chartered Company – i.e., following in the footsteps of the numerous Chartered Companies that have played a key part in various European powers’ outward development from the 16th century.
The Jewish Company envisioned by Herzl would be in control of all Jews’ current possessions as well as the lands and properties in the future Jewish State; it would dispose of the former and furnish every Jew with similar properties in the new land. “the Jewish Company will be founded as a joint stock company subject to English jurisdiction, framed according to English laws, and under the protection of England” Herzl stated emphatically, the City of London being recognized at the time as the world’s financial capital.
Herzl predicted that the company’s capital should be around a thousand million marks (approximately $200,000,000) for the Herculean duties envisioned for it. In truth, the Zionist Movement, both during Herzl’s time and later, could not even come close to achieving such lofty goals. A few years later, the Jewish Colonial Trust was established under Herzl’s guidance, based in London and incorporated under British law, but with a low capital of 250,000 Pounds, or approximately half of one percent of the envisioned Jewish Company. Despite this, the “Colonial Trust” and its subsidiary, the Anglo Palestine Company, played a major part in the actual implementation of the Zionist Project, eventually becoming Bank Leumi, Israel’s largest bank.
3) Main Themes in his works:
Herzl dreamed of a Jewish state that blended modern Jewish culture with the finest of European tradition. In order to adjudicate international disputes, a “Palace of Peace” would be created in Jerusalem, and the Temple would be restored on modern principles at the same time. Although Herzl did not see the state’s Jewish residents as religious, there was respect for religion in the public realm. He also believed that a variety of languages would be spoken, with Hebrew not being the primary language. Altneuland was criticized by proponents of a Jewish cultural renaissance, such as Ahad Ha’am.
Herzl predicted no violence between Jews and Arabs in Altneuland. Reshid Bey, a Haifa engineer and one of the organizers of the “New Society,” is one of the primary protagonists in Altneuland. He is grateful to his Jewish neighbors for helping Israel’s economy, and he sees no need for hostility. All non-Jews have equal rights, and a fanatical rabbi’s attempt to deprive non-Jewish citizens of their rights fails in the novel’s major political narrative, which revolves on an election.
The future Jewish state, according to Herzl, should be a “third way” between capitalism and socialism, with a well-developed welfare programme and public ownership of the major natural resources. Cooperation was used to organize industry, agriculture, and trade. Herzl, like many other progressive Jews of the time, including Emma Lazarus, Louis Brandeis, Albert Einstein, and Franz Oppenheimer, wanted to see the American political economist Henry George’s land reforms implemented. They specifically requested a land value tax. He coined the term
“mutualism” to describe his mixed economic approach, which is drawn on French utopian socialist ideology. Women would have equal voting rights in the Zionist movement, as they have since the Second Zionist Congress.
4) His Influence on the History of the Middle East:
Herzl began to vigorously promote his ideas, gathering both Jewish and non-Jewish admirers. Herzl “mapped out for himself the role of martyr… as the Parnell of the Jews,” according to Norman Rose. In the mid-1890s, when anti-Armenian Hamidian atrocities severely degraded the sultan’s popular image in Europe, Herzl saw a chance. He offered that the Zionist movement try to boost Abdul Hamid II’s reputation and strengthen the empire’s economy in exchange for Jewish settlement in Palestine. Bernard Lazare slammed this stance, claiming that Herzl and other Zionist Congress delegates have offered their support to the worst of murderers.
Reverend William Hechler, the Anglican clergyman to the British Embassy in Vienna, paid Herzl a visit on March 10, 1896. Hechler had read Herzl’s Der Judenstaat, and the meeting became pivotal in Herzl’s and Zionism’s eventual legitimization. “Next we came to the heart of the business,” Herzl later wrote in his journal. I told him: (Theodor Herzl to Rev. William Hechler) I have to establish direct and public relations with a responsible or non-responsible ruler — a minister of state or a prince. The Jews will trust in me and follow me after that.
In April 1896, Hechler organized a lengthy audience with Frederick I, Grand Duke of Baden. Wilhelm II, the German Emperor, was the Grand Duke’s uncle. In 1898, Herzl met Wilhelm II in public thanks to Hechler and the Grand Duke’s efforts. In Jewish and international opinion, the meeting considerably increased Herzl’s and Zionism’s legitimacy.
The English version of Der Judenstaat, titled The Jewish State, was published in London in May 1896. “I wrote what I had to say without knowing my predecessors,” Herzl had previously admitted to his friend Max Bodenheimer, “and it can be presumed that I would not have written it [Der Judenstaat] if I had been conversant with the literature.”
Herzl spotted an opportunity in Istanbul, Ottoman Empire, on June 15, 1896. Herzl attempted to visit Sultan Abdulhamid II with the help of Count Philip Michael von Nevlinski, a Polish émigré with political links in the Ottoman Court, in order to submit his solution of a Jewish State to the Sultan directly. He didn’t get an audience, but he did get to meet with a number of powerful people, including the Grand Vizier, who welcomed him as a journalist from the Neue Freie Presse.
In exchange for Palestine as a Jewish homeland, the Jews would settle the Turkish foreign debt and assist Turkey in regaining its financial footing, according to Herzl’s proposal to the Grand Vizier. Herzl was given a symbolic medal of honor before departing Istanbul on June 29, 1896. The medal, the “Commander’s Cross of the Order of the Medjidie,” was a public relations reinforcement of the seriousness of the discussions for Herzl and the Jewish community.
On May 17, 1901, Herzl met with Sultan Abdulhamid II, who declined Herzl’s offer to consolidate the Ottoman debt in exchange for a charter granting the Zionists access to Palestine. When Herzl returned from Istanbul, he went to London to report to the Maccabeans, a proto-Zionist organization commanded by Colonel Albert Goldsmid. They greeted him with curiosity, indifference, and coldness in November 1895. Zangwill was a vehement opponent of Herzl, but after Istanbul, Goldsmid agreed to back him.
On July 12, 1896, Herzl addressed a major demonstration of thousands in London’s East End, a neighborhood of primarily Yiddish-speaking recent Eastern European Jewish immigrants, and was warmly received. They entrusted Herzl with the leadership of Zionism. This mandate was quickly expanded throughout Zionist Jewry within six months, and the Zionist organization thrived swiftly.