Continuing with the logic of the answers about emancipation (Question 25), we stated that journalist Theodore Herzl (1869-1904) was part of the group that wanted to assimilate to the national European identity.
Hertzl was raised in a Yiddish-speaking, bourgeois Jewish family from the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. He grew up in a comfortable environment, liberal and secular. During his youth he participated in the Burschenschaft association, which aimed for the German unification, so his first works were not focused on Jewish issues. His first important job was as a correspondent in Paris for the influential liberal newspaper from Vienna, Neue Freie Presse.
In 1894, as part of his job, he covered the “Dreyfuss Case”. A Jewish captain serving the French Army, Alfred Dreyfuss, was unfairly accused of treason and charged of spying for Germany. Throughout the trial, and in an act of humiliation, the masses yelled “Death for Dreyfuss!” Death to the Jews!” The anti-Semitic agitation so impressed Hertzl that he was disappointed in assimilationism.
In February 1896 he published his new Zionist vision in the book “The Jewish State: proposal of a modern solution to the Jewish question”, where he proposes to organize a political movement to seek a Jewish state, with worldwide support, as a means to solve the anti-Semitism suffered by the Jews.
His international diplomatic efforts had limited success. Moreover, he squandered a large amount of the fortune provided by his wife to bribe mediators that rendered him diplomatic interviews. In 1897, he organized and presided over the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland.
In 1920 he published his work Altneuland (The Old New Land), where he presented the future Jewish state as a utopia of a modern nation, democratic and prosperous. Theodor Hertzl represents the idea of political Zionism. His great accomplishment was to convince the Jews of the world that the Zionist ideal was achievable.