JOURNALIST, PLAYWRIGHT, POLITICAL ACTIVIST AND WRITER – THEODOR (BINYAMIN ZE’EV) HERZL
Theodor (Binyamin Ze’ev) Herzl was born into a Jewish family in the eastern part of Budapest (in the Jewish quarter of Pest) on 2 May 1860. At that time, the city was the capital of the Kingdom of Hungary, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His education took him along a humanities line, leading to the beginnings of a career in journalism.
As a young man in the predominantly German-speaking Austro-Hungarian Empire, Herzl embraced the ideal of Bildung, the tradition of self-cultivation in which philosophy and education are linked in a process of both personal and cultural maturation. He was an ardent Germanophile, believing in Jewish assimilation, and through Bildung Herzl believed that Jews could shake off centuries of impoverishment and oppression and become cultured Central Europeans.
In 1878, the family had moved to Vienna, and Theodor studied law at the University of Vienna. While a student he became a member of one of the Burschenschaften, German nationalist fraternities (these were significantly involved in the ambition for German unification). Later on though he would resign his membership over anti-semitism within the organisation.
Herzl was awarded a doctorate in law in 1884 and worked in courts in Vienna and Salzburg, but he began devoting himself to journalism and literature and wrote from Paris for the Viennese title Neue Freie Presse. While in Paris, Herzl followed the notorious Dreyfus Affair, a political scandal that divided the Third French Republic from 1894 until its resolution in 1906. He witnessed mass rallies in Paris following the Dreyfus trial, in which a Jewish French army captain was falsely convicted of spying for Germany.
Herzl came to reject his early ideas regarding Jewish assimilation, now believing that Jews must remove themselves from Europe. Anti-semitism, he held, could not be defeated or cured, only avoided, and that the only way to avoid it was the establishment of a Jewish state. He started started writing pamphlets about the goal of ‘a Jewish State’, and from late-1895 he began his work Der Judenstaat (The State of the Jews), which was published February 1896.
In his book, Herzl argued that Jews should leave Europe if they wished to, either for Argentina or, preferably, for Palestine, their historic homeland. The Jews, he wrote, possessed a nationality but lacked a nation and a state of their own. Only through a Jewish state could they avoid anti-semitism, express their culture freely and practice Judaism without hindrance.
Der Judenstaat brought immediate acclaim and controversy, and Herzl’s ideas spread rapidly throughout the Jewish world, attracting international attention. Existing Zionist movements allied with Herzl but some Jews vilified him and regarded his ideas as a threat to their attempts at integration. Others regarded them as a rebellion against God.
Herzl began to energetically promote his ideas, continually attracting supporters, Jewish and non-Jewish, and in London in May 1896, the English translation of Der Judenstaat was published. In 1896, Herzl went to Istanbul to present his case to officials of the Ottoman Empire, requesting access to Turkish Palestine, and in 1901 he met the Sultan himself, but his requests were turned down.
In July 1896, Herzl addressed a rally of Jews in London during which he was granted the mandate to lead the cause of Zionism, and the movement grew rapidly. The following year, in 1897, he founded the Zionist newspaper Die Welt in Vienna, and planned the First Zionist Congress which was held in Basel, Switzerland. Herzl was elected president of the Zionist Congress (a position he held until his death in 1904), and on his initiative the World Zionist Organisation was founded.
In 1898 he began a series of diplomatic initiatives to build support for a Jewish country. In October, he visited Jerusalem for the first time and deliberately co-ordinated his visit with that of the German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, in order to plead the Zionist cause. While he met the Emperor, he did not secure support. In 1902–03, Herzl was invited to give evidence before the British Royal Commission on Alien Immigration. This brought him into close contact with members of the British government, particularly with Joseph Chamberlain who was then Secretary of State for the Colonies.
Since neither the Sultan nor the Kaiser had supported Jewish access to Palestine, through Chamberlain, Herzl negotiated with the Egyptian government for a charter for the settlement of the Jews in El Arish in the Sinai Peninsula, adjoining southern Palestine.
After the collapse of the El Arish scheme, came an offer from the British government to facilitate a large Jewish settlement, with autonomous government and under British suzerainty, in British East Africa – the ‘Uganda Project’. In Basel, August 1903, Herzl brought the British offer before the Sixth Zionist Congress and called for serious consideration to the plan even though he appreciated that it could not replace Palestine as the Jewish Homeland.
Jewish National Fund) showing Theodor Herzl looking towards Jerusalem, though the image of Herzl himself is most likely him looking over the balcony of his hotel in Basel, Switzerland, possibly during the Sixth Zionist Conference (and his last) in 1903
In 1905, the Seventh Zionist Congress resumed the debate on the ‘Uganda Project’ but in the end voted against a national home anywhere except Palestine and its immediate vicinity.
At the early age of 44, Theodor Herzl died of cardiac disease in Edlach, part of Reichenau-an-der-Rax (now in Austria) on 3 July 1904, before rejection of the ‘Uganda Project’ was formalised. His will stipulated that he be buried alongside his father, ‘and to lie there till the Jewish people shall take my remains to Israel’. Herzl was initially interred in Vienna, but in 1949 his remains were brought to the newly independent Israel and they were re-interred on the highest hill in west Jerusalem. This was symbolic, because from the internment site all of the city could be seen, and all of the citizens could see the hill.
In his work Altneuland he wrote about being buried in Haifa, on Mt. Carmel, and when he died the country was still 44 years away from independence. It wasn’t until Israel’s statehood in 1948 that the country’s leaders began discussing Herzl’s reburial in Jerusalem, the capital, with Herzl becoming the symbol of the new land.
In 1949, Herzl’s body was flown to Israel, first over Haifa, and then to Tel Aviv, where he laid in state in Opera Square (Ha-Knesset Square), in the centre of the city. Thousands came to pay their respects before his body was taken to Jerusalem, where a siren was sounded on the radio. Representatives of 400 communities brought bags of soil from their land to put into the ground with him.
It was the World Zionist Organization – the institution founded by Herzl – that was in charge of the burial site, and still is the caretaker of it, along with the government. Originally they had planned a grand plaza with a roof supported by 44 columns, referring to Herzl’s age when he died. However, that part of the plan was never fulfilled because of a combination of financial and bureaucratic problems, and argument.
Today, Herzl’s grave sits in the middle of a wide open plaza near the front of the cemetery, a square of black marble with his name emblazoned on the front creating a quiet, stately square of contemplation.
Adjacent to Jerusalem Forest, and east of Yad Vashem which commemorates the Holocaust, Mt. Herzl (Har Herzl) is also known as the Mount of Remembrance, or Har ha-Zikaron. It is Israel’s national cemetery. Others buried on Mt. Herzl are Presidents Zalman Shazar, Chaim Herzog, and Shimon Peres, and Prime Ministers Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin and his wife Leah Rabin. Also on Mt. Herzl lie: Yosef Sprinzak, a leading Zionist activist in the first half of the 20th century, an Israeli politician, and the first Speaker of the Knesset (1949-1959); and, Eliezer Kaplan, a Zionist activist, Israeli politician, one of the signatories of the Israeli declaration of independence and the country’s first Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister. In 1964, the then Prime Minister Levi Eshkol took the decision for the reburial on Mt. Herzl of the remains of right-wing Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky who had died suddenly at Camp Betar, in Hunter, New York, in 1940.
Jabotinsky had been the embodiment of secular nationalism in the Zionist enterprise while David Ben-Gurion personified socialism, and there had been battle lines between the two. Indeed, Jabotinsky had been so vilified by Ben-Gurion – Israel’s first Prime Minister – that his remains were forbidden from being brought to Israel. prior to the decision taken by Levi Eshkol, Jabotinsky’s burial on Mt. Herzl was fiercely opposed by many Labour Party stalwarts, who claimed that he was an ultra-right nationalist undeserving of such an honour.
Also on Mt. Herzl is ‘The Victims of Acts of Terror Memorial’ (Monument to the Victims of Hostile Acts or Andartat Halalei Pe’ulot HaEiva), which is the main memorial for all victims of terrorism in Israel from 1851 until today. On the northern slopes of Mt. Herzl is the National Military Cemetery, the main cemetery for IDF members who have fallen in the line of duty. The Israel Police Cemetery, for police officers who have fallen in the line of duty, is also located there. There is also a ‘Garden of the Missing in Action’.
While Herzl is specifically mentioned in Israel’s Declaration of Independence, as the ‘spiritual father of the Jewish State’, the man who gave a concrete, practicable platform and framework to political Zionism, he was not the first Zionist theoretician or activist. Others before him, some of them religious scholars, included Yehuda Aryeh Leon Bibas (c.1789-1852) of Corfu, Zvi Hirsch Kalischer (1795-1874), a German rabbi, and Judah ben Solomon Chai Alkalai (1798-1878), born in Sarajevo.
Founded in 1924 as a semi-co-operative farming community (moshava, differing from a moshav or a kibbutz), Herzliya on the central coast, north of Tel Aviv, was named after Theodor Herzl. In 1931 the population of Herzliya was 1,217, in 1948 it was 5,300, in 1960 it had reached 25,000. Under plans today, the city of Herzliya will reach 290,000 by 2030. Notable residents of Herzliya have included Abba Eban (1915-2002), a statesman who was Foreign Affairs Minister, and US and UN ambassador, and Chaim Herzog (1918-1997), the 6th President of Israel.
Commemorating the life and vision of Theodor Herzl, Herzl Day is an Israeli national holiday celebrated annually on the tenth of the Hebrew month of Iyar – his birthday.
Herzl’s name has also been commemorated in the Herzl Forests at Ben Shemen and at Hulda, both in central Israel. After his death in 1904, the Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF) started an Olive Tree Donation project, for the collection of funds to buy land and plant olive trees. The Ben Shemen and Hulda lands were acquired by the fund, and designated for planting trees in memory of Herzl.
Named after Theodor Herzl was the 1957 sister ship of the ZIM shipping company vessel, SS Jerusalem. The SS Theodor Herzl was built at Deutsche Werft AG., in Hamburg, Germany.
Other literary works by Theodor Herzl include a drama, The Ghetto (1894), in which assimilation and conversion were rejected as solutions, but written with the hope that it would lead to debate and to mutual tolerance and respect between Christians and Jews. His Zionist novel, Altneuland (Old New Land, 1902), portrayed the future Jewish state as a socialist utopia – a new society founded on a co-operative basis utilising science and technology. The novel included detailed ideas about how the future state’s political structure, immigration, fundraising, diplomatic relations, social laws and relations between religion and the state would be organised. In Altneuland, the Jewish state was foreseen as a pluralist, advanced society, and one that would show the way, as it were – one that would be a ‘light unto the nations’.
The following sources were used in the construction of this post…: (1) Jewish Virtual Library generally; (2) the article For Israel’s early leaders, burials were all about location, Jessica Steinberg, in Times of Israel, published 16 October 2015 13:52; and (3), the article Like Lincoln for the Republicans, Jabotinsky has become the Likud’s mascot, by Elliot Jager, in the Jerusalem Post, published 25 September 2016 04:20
Israeli postage stamps בולי דואר ישראליים 