Herzl, Theodor (redirected from Theodor Herzl)

Herzl, Theodor (tā`ōdôr hĕr`tsəl), 1860–1904, Hungarian Jew, founder of modern Zionism. Sent to Paris as a correspondent for the Vienna Neue Frei Presse, he reported on the Dreyfus affair. Appalled by the vicious anti-Semitism he observed, he decided that Jewish assimilation in Europe was impossible and that the only solution to the Jewish problem was the establishment of a Jewish national state. He stated his ideas in his famous pamphlet, Der Judenstaat, first published in 1896. Herzl organized the first Zionist World Congress (1897) and served as its president from its inception until his death. In 1949 his body was moved from Vienna to Jerusalem, for burial with the highest honors by the Israeli nation.

Bibliography

See his diaries (ed. by R. Patai, tr. 1960); biographies by A. Bein (tr. 1962), D. Stewart (1974), and N. H. Finkelstein (1987); I. Friedman and H. M. Sacher, ed., Herzl's Political Activity, 1897–1904 (1988).

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Herzl, Theodor

(born May 2, 1860, Budapest, Hungary—died July 3, 1904, Edlach, Austria) Hungarian Zionist leader. Growing up Jewish in Hungary, he believed that assimilation was the best strategy to deal with the anti-Semitism he encountered. He became a Zionist while covering the Alfred Dreyfus affair as a journalist in Paris. In 1897 he organized a world congress of Zionism, which was attended by about 200 delegates, and he became the first president of the World Zionist Organization, established by the congress. Herzl's indefatigable organizing, propagandizing, and diplomacy had much to do with making Zionism a political movement of worldwide significance. Though he died more than 40 years before the establishment of the state of Israel, his remains were moved to Jerusalem in 1949 and entombed on a hill now known as Mount Herzl.