Theodor (Binyamin Ze’ev) Herzl
(1860-1904)
“In Basle I founded the Jewish state . . . Maybe in five years, certainly in fifty, everyone will realize it.”
Theodor (Binyamin Ze’ev) Herzl, the visionary of Zionism, was born in Budapest in 1860. He was educated in the spirit of the GermanJewish Enlightenment of the period, learning to appreciate secular culture. In 1878 the family moved to Vienna, and in 1884 Herzl was awarded a doctorate of law from the University of Vienna. He became a writer, a playwright and a journalist. The Paris correspondent of the influential liberal Vienna newspaper Neue Freie Presse was none other than Theodor Herzl.
Herzl first encountered the anti-Semitism that would shape his life and the fate of the Jews in the twentieth century while studying at the University of Vienna (1882). Later, during his stay in Paris as a journalist, he was brought face-to-face with the problem. At the time, he regarded the Jewish problem as a social issue and wrote a drama, The Ghetto (1894), in which assimilation and conversion are rejected as solutions. He hoped that The Ghetto would lead to debate and ultimately to a solution, based on mutual tolerance and respect between Christians and Jews.
The Dreyfus Affair
In 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army, was unjustly accused of treason, mainly because of the prevailing anti-Semitic atmosphere. Herzl witnessed mobs shouting “Death to the Jews” in France, the home of the French Revolution, and resolved that there was only one solution: the mass immigration of Jews to a land that they could call their own. Thus, the Dreyfus Case became one of the determinants in the genesis of Political Zionism.
Herzl concluded that anti-Semitism was a stable and immutable factor in human society, which assimilation did not solve. He mulled over the idea of Jewish sovereignty, and, despite ridicule from Jewish leaders, published Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State, 1896). Herzl argued that the essence of the Jewish problem was not individual but national. He declared that the Jews could gain acceptance in the world only if they ceased being a national anomaly. The Jews are one people, he said, and their plight could be transformed into a positive force by the establishment of a Jewish state with the consent of the great powers. He saw the Jewish question as an international political question to be dealt with in the arena of international politics.
Herzl proposed a practical program for collecting funds from Jews around the world by a company to be owned by stockholders, which would work toward the practical realization of this goal. (This organization, when it was eventually formed, was called the Zionist Organization.) He saw the future state as a model social state, basing his ideas on the European model of the time, of a modern enlightened society. It would be neutral and peace-seeking, and of a secular nature.
In his Zionist novel, Altneuland (Old New Land, 1902), Herzl pictured the future Jewish state as a socialist utopia. He envisioned a new society that was to rise in the Land of Israel on a cooperative basis utilizing science and technology in the development of the Land.
He included detailed ideas about how he saw the future state's political structure, immigration, fundraising, diplomatic relations, social laws and relations between religion and the state. In Altneuland, the Jewish state was foreseen as a pluralist, advanced society, a “light unto the nations.” This book had a great impact on the Jews of the time and became a symbol of the Zionist vision in the Land of Israel.
A Movement Is Started
Herzl's ideas were met with enthusiasm by the Jewish masses in Eastern Europe, although Jewish leaders were less ardent. Herzl appealed to wealthy Jews such as Baron Hirsch and Baron Rothschild, to join the national Zionist movement, but in vain. He then appealed to the people, and the result was the convening of the First Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland, on August 2931, 1897.
The Congress was the first interterritorial gathering of Jews on a national and secular basis. Here the delegates adopted the Basle Program, the program of the Zionist movement, and declared “Zionism seeks to establish a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law.” At the Congress the World Zionist Organization was established as the political arm of the Jewish people, and Herzl was elected its first president.
Herzl convened six Zionist Congresses between 1897 and 1902. It was here that the tools for Zionist activism were forged: Otzar Hityashvut Hayehudim; the Jewish National Fund and the movement's newspaper Die Welt.
After the First Zionist Congress, the movement met yearly at an international Zionist Congress. In 1936 the center of the Zionist movement was transferred to Jerusalem.
Uganda Isn't Zion
Herzl saw the need for encouragement by the great powers of the aims of the Jewish people in the Land. Thus, he traveled to the Land of Israel and Istanbul in 1898 to meet with Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. When these efforts proved fruitless, he turned to Great Britain, and met with Joseph Chamberlain, the British colonial secretary and others. The only concrete offer he received from the British was the proposal of a Jewish autonomous region in east Africa, in Uganda.
The 1903 Kishinev pogrom and the difficult state of Russian Jewry, witnessed firsthand by Herzl during a visit to Russia, had a profound effect on him. He requested that the Russian government assist the Zionist Movement to transfer Jews from Russia to Eretz Yisrael.
At the Sixth Zionist Congress (1903), Herzl proposed the British Uganda Program as a temporary refuge for Jews in Russia in immediate danger. While Herzl made it clear that this program would not affect the ultimate aim of Zionism, a Jewish entity in the Land of Israel, the proposal aroused a storm at the Congress and nearly led to a split in the Zionist movement. The Uganda Program was finally rejected by the Zionist movement at the Seventh Zionist Congress in 1905.
Herzl died in Vienna in 1904, of pneumonia and a weak heart overworked by his incessant efforts on behalf of Zionism. By then the movement had found its place on the world political map. In 1949, Herzl's remains were brought to Israel and reinterred on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.
Herzl's books Der Judenstaat (“The Jewish State”) and Altneuland (“Old New Land”), his plays and articles have been published frequently and translated into many languages. His name has been commemorated in the Herzl Forests at Ben Shemen and Hulda, the world's first Hebrew gymnasium — “Herzlia” — which was established in Tel Aviv, the town of Herzliya in the Sharon and neighborhoods and streets in many Israeli towns and cities.
Herzl coined the phrase “If you will, it is no fairytale,” which became the motto of the Zionist movement. Although at the time no one could have imagined it, Zionism led, only fifty years later, to the establishment of the independent State of Israel.
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Bodies of Herzl's children to be moved to Israel
9/17/06
The Israeli government will disinter the bodies of two children of Theodore Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, and fly them to Israel to be buried near their father, in keeping with his century-old will, the government announced Sunday.
Herzl, who died in 1904 at age 44, was buried in Vienna, Austria, but specified in his will that he wanted his body, and those of his close relatives, moved to the Jewish state he hoped would one day be created.
In 1949, a year after Israel's founding, Herzl's body was brought to Jerusalem and buried in the national cemetery that bears his name. But his children remained buried in Europe.
The bodies of his daughter Pauline and his son, Hans, will be disinterred from their graves in Bordeaux, France, on Tuesday and flown to Israel, according to the Jewish Agency, a quasi-governmental body that deals with Israel's ties with the Jewish Diaspora.
Their bodies, which will be accompanied by representatives of Israel's prime minister ands chief rabbis, are to be reburied Wednesday at a state ceremony on Mt. Herzl, according to the Jewish Agency.
All three of Herzl's children died tragically. Pauline suffered from mental illness and died in 1930, apparently of a drug overdose. Hans committed suicide when he learned of her death. Herzl's youngest daughter, Trude, died in a Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust, and her body has never been found.
The story of Herzl's
son's missing coffin Paris: A somewhat macabre
drama almost threatened to undermine the exhuming of the remains of the
relatives of Zionist visionary Theodor (Binyamin Ze’ev) Herzl due to be
interred in Israel this week. Representatives of the Hevra
Kadisha Burial Societies in Bordeaux were astonished to discover that the coffin
in which Herzl's son Hans had been buried alongside his sister had gone missing.
Paulina, Herzl's eldest
daughter, passed away on September 14th 1930 at the age of 40. She was mentally
disturbed and apparently died from an overdose of morphine. Hans Herzl committed
suicide by shooting himself in the head upon hearing of his sister's death.
As per his request, he was
buried alongside his sister at the Jewish cemetery in Bordeaux, and registration
of the burial was documented. According to the documents, there were supposed to
be two coffins at the site.
On Thursday, representatives
of the Bordeaux Hevra Kadisha arrived at the cemetery to prepare the burial site
for the official ceremony of exhuming the remains of Herzl's son and daughter
buried 76 years ago. When opening the joint grave
they discovered it contained just one coffin marked as that of the daughter,
Paulina. Although a comprehensive search was carried out the missing coffin
could not found. Following consultations,
Hevra Kadisha representative decided to sieve the earth after which they found
two handles which apparently belonged to the coffin, as well as skeletal
remains. The bones were declared to be those of Hans Herzl and they were placed
in a coffin due to be flown to Israel on Tuesday along with his sister's coffin.H End of
journey On Wednesday, a formal
ceremony attended by the president and prime minister will be held in Jerusalem
where the coffins of Herzl's two children will be interred alongside their
father. Herzl was buried in a State
funeral on Mount Herzl, named after him, in August 1949, a little after the
founding of the State. In his will Herzl asked to have his children buried
alongside his own grave, and two plots were indeed allocated. Several years ago, however,
an academic study conducted by Dr Ariel Feldstein revealed that the graves had
remained empty. This was due to the embarrassment Herzl's offspring caused among
the Zionist leadership during the State's first years: Paulina, Herzl's eldest
daughter suffered from a mental disorder, whereas Hans converted to
Christianity, returned to Judaism and then committed suicide a day after his
sister passed away. The youngest daughter, Trude, died in the Holocaust and the
place of her burial is unknown.
Drama almost undermines effort to bring Herzl's son and
daughter's remains for burial in Israel
Sefi Hendler