1. Theodor Herzl was an Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist, lawyer, writer, playwright and political activist who was the father of modern political Zionism.
66 Facts About Theodor Herzl
1. 2.
Theodor Herzl is specifically mentioned in the Israeli Declaration of Independence and is officially referred to as "the spiritual father of the Jewish State".
3.
Theodor Herzl was born in Pest, then part of Kingdom of Hungary, to a prosperous Neolog Jewish family.
4.
In 1896, Theodor Herzl published the pamphlet, in which he elaborated his visions of a Jewish homeland.
5.
Theodor Herzl's ideas attracted international attention and rapidly established Herzl as a major figure in the Jewish world.
6.
In 1897, Theodor Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, and was elected president of the Zionist Organization.
7.
At the Sixth Zionist Congress in 1903, Theodor Herzl presented the Uganda Scheme, endorsed by Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain on behalf of the British government.
8.
Theodor Herzl died of a heart ailment in 1904 at the age of 44, and was buried in Vienna.
9.
Theodor Herzl was born in the Dohany utca, a street in the Jewish quarter of Pest, Kingdom of Hungary, to a Neolog Jewish family.
10.
Theodor Herzl was the second child of Jeanette and Jakob Herzl, who were German-speaking, assimilated Jews.
11.
Theodor Herzl stated he was of both Ashkenazi and Sephardic lineage, predominantly through his paternal line and to a lesser extent through the maternal line, but there is no evidence for the claim of Sephardic origins.
12.
Theodor Herzl had a sister, Pauline, who was a year older; she died of typhus on 7 February 1878.
13.
Theodor Herzl lived with his family in a house next to the Dohany Street Synagogue located in Belvaros, the inner city of the historical old town of Pest, in the eastern section of Budapest.
14.
Theodor Herzl believed that through Bildung Hungarian Jews such as himself could shake off their "shameful Jewish characteristics" caused by long centuries of impoverishment and oppression, and become civilized Central Europeans, a true Kulturvolk along the German lines.
15.
In 1878, after Pauline's death, the Theodor Herzl family moved to Vienna, Austria-Hungary, and lived in the 9th district, Alsergrund.
16.
Theodor Herzl later resigned in protest at the organisation's antisemitism.
17.
Theodor Herzl later became literary editor of Neue Freie Presse, and wrote several comedies and dramas for the Viennese stage.
18.
Theodor Herzl was witness to mass rallies in Paris following the Dreyfus trial.
19.
Jacques Kornberg claims that the Dreyfus influence was a myth that Theodor Herzl did not feel necessary to deflate and that he believed that Dreyfus was guilty.
20.
Theodor Herzl grew to believe that antisemitism could not be defeated or cured, only avoided, and that the only way to avoid it was the establishment of a Jewish state.
21.
Around this time, Theodor Herzl started writing pamphlets about A Jewish State.
22.
Theodor Herzl claimed that these pamphlets resulted in the establishment of the Zionist Movement, and they did play a large role in the movement's rise and success.
23.
Theodor Herzl's ideas spread rapidly throughout the Jewish world and attracted international attention.
24.
Theodor Herzl began to energetically promote his ideas, continually attracting supporters, Jewish and non-Jewish.
25.
In London's East End, a community of primarily Yiddish-speaking recent Eastern European Jewish immigrants, Theodor Herzl addressed a mass rally of thousands on 12 July 1896 and was received with acclaim.
26.
On 10 March 1896, Theodor Herzl was visited by Reverend William Hechler, the Anglican minister to the British Embassy in Vienna.
27.
In Istanbul, Ottoman Empire, 15 June 1896, Theodor Herzl saw an opportunity.
28.
Theodor Herzl failed to obtain an audience but did succeed in visiting a number of highly placed individuals, including the Grand Vizier, who received him as a journalist representing the Neue Freie Presse.
29.
Theodor Herzl presented his proposal to the Grand Vizier: the Jews would pay the Turkish foreign debt and help Turkey regain its financial footing in return for Palestine as a Jewish homeland.
30.
On 1 March 1899 Yousef Al-Khalidi, the mayor of Jerusalem, sent a letter to Zadok Kahn, the chief rabbi of France, with the intention to reach Theodor Herzl and ask Zionists to leave the area of Palestine in peace.
31.
Theodor Herzl perceived the danger Zionism could expose Jews to throughout the domains of the Ottoman Empire.
32.
On 17 May 1901, Theodor Herzl met with Sultan Abdul Hamid II and offered to consolidate the Turkish debt while praising his host for his benevolence towards the Jews.
33.
Theodor Herzl was elected president of the Congress, and in 1898 he began a series of diplomatic initiatives to build support for a Jewish country.
34.
Theodor Herzl was drawn to the mawkishness of Judaism rendered distinctively as German.
35.
Theodor Herzl fared best with Israel Zangwill, and Max Nordau.
36.
Theodor Herzl was disliked by the bankers and detested them.
37.
Theodor Herzl shared Pinsker's pessimistic opinion that the Jews had no future in Europe; that they were too antisemitic to tolerate because each country in Europe had tried antisemitic assimilation.
38.
Theodor Herzl therefore advocated a mass exodus from Europe to the Judenstaat.
39.
Theodor Herzl's vision was less about mental states of Jewry, and more about delivering prescriptive answers about land.
40.
Theodor Herzl visited Jerusalem for the first time in October 1898.
41.
Theodor Herzl had a second formal, public audience with the emperor at the latter's tent camp on Street of the Prophets in Jerusalem on 2 November 1898.
42.
The English Zionist Federation, the local branch of the World Zionist Organization, was founded in 1899, after Theodor Herzl had established in Austria in 1897.
43.
Theodor Herzl's appearance brought him into close contact with members of the British government, particularly with Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain through whom he negotiated with the Egyptian government for a charter for the settlement of the Jews in Al 'Arish in the Sinai Peninsula, adjoining southern Palestine.
44.
In 1903, following Kishinev pogrom, Theodor Herzl visited St Petersburg and was received by Sergei Witte, then finance minister, and Viacheslav Plehve, minister of the interior, the latter placing on record the attitude of his government toward the Zionist movement.
45.
On that occasion Theodor Herzl submitted proposals for the amelioration of the Jewish position in Russia.
46.
The plan became known as the "Uganda Project" and Theodor Herzl presented it to the Sixth Zionist Congress, where a majority agreed to investigating this offer.
47.
On 26 January 1904, Theodor Herzl was received in audience by Pope Pius X at the Holy See in Rome, in the hope of convincing the Vatican at supporting the Zionist movement.
48.
Theodor Herzl did not live to see the rejection of the Uganda plan.
49.
At 5 pm 3 July 1904, in Edlach, a village inside Reichenau an der Rax, Lower Austria, Theodor Herzl, having been diagnosed with a heart issue earlier in the year, died of cardiac sclerosis.
50.
Theodor Herzl had a strong attachment to his mother, who was unable to get along with his wife.
51.
Theodor Herzl imagined himself as a great statesman creating a dynasty for his family in Palestine once a Jewish state was established, where his father would be its foundational senator, and his son a doge.
52.
Theodor Herzl died in 1930 at the age of 40 of a heroin overdose.
53.
Theodor Herzl sought a personal salvation for his own religious needs and a universal solution, as had his father, to Jewish suffering caused by antisemitism.
54.
Theodor Herzl married Richard Neumann, a man 17 years her elder.
55.
At the request of his father Richard Neumann, Trude's son, Stephan Theodor Neumann, was sent for his safety to England in 1935 to the Viennese Zionists and the Zionist Executive in Israel based there.
56.
Zionism had not been a significant part of his background in Austria, but Stephan became an ardent Zionist, was the only descendant of Theodor Herzl to have become one.
57.
Theodor Herzl's last literary work, Altneuland, is a novel devoted to Zionism.
58.
Theodor Herzl occupied his free time for three years in writing what he believed might be accomplished by 1923.
59.
Theodor Herzl envisioned a Jewish state that combined modern Jewish culture with the best of the European heritage.
60.
Theodor Herzl did not envision the Jewish inhabitants of the state as being religious, but there was respect for religion in the public sphere.
61.
Theodor Herzl assumed that many languages would be spoken, and that Hebrew would not be the main tongue.
62.
Theodor Herzl envisioned the future Jewish state as curing the ills of capitalism without resorting to authoritarian socialist means, with a developed welfare program and public ownership of natural resources, the latter of which was not adopted by Israel.
63.
Theodor Herzl called his economic model "mutualism", a term derived from French utopian socialist thinking.
64.
Theodor Herzl summed up his vision of an open society:.
65.
Theodor Herzl directed his wrath against the nationalist party, which wished to make the Jews a privileged class in Palestine.
66.
Altneuland was written both for Jews and non-Jews: Theodor Herzl wanted to win over non-Jewish opinion for Zionism.