HERZL, THEODOR (186o-1904), founder of modern political Zionism (q.v.), was born in Budapest on May 2, 186o, and died at Edlach on July 3, 1904. He received a legal education at Vienna, where he afterwards acquired high repute as a literary journalist and a dramatist. All his other claims to renown, how ever, sink into insignificance when compared with his work as the reviver of Jewish hopes for a restoration to political auton omy. The new nationalism of 1848 did not deprive the Jews of political rights, but it denied them both the amenities of friendly intercourse and the opportunity of distinction in the university, the army and the professions. Many Jews refused to see in the new anti-Semitism (q.v.) which spread over Europe in 1881 any more than a temporary reaction against the cosmopolitanism of the French Revolution. In 1896 Herzl published his famous pam phlet "Der Judenstaat." Holding that the only alternatives for the Jews were complete merging by intermarriage or self-preser vation by a national re-union, he boldly advocated the second course. He did not at first insist on Palestine as the new Jewish home, nor did he attach himself to religious sentiment ; his solution was economic and political. The influence of his pamphlet, the progress of the movement he initiated, the subsequent modifi cations of his plans, are told at length in the article ZIONISM.
Herzl rallied the masses with sensational success, and un expectedly gained the accession of many Jews by race who were indifferent to the religious aspect of Judaism, but he failed to convince the leaders of Jewish thought, who (with such con spicuous exceptions as Nordau and Zangwill) remained deaf to his pleading. He assembled several congresses at Basle (begin ning in 1897), and at these congresses were enacted remarkable scenes of enthusiasm for his ideal of "establishing for the Jewish people a publicly and legally assured home in Palestine." Diplo matic interviews, exhausting journeys, impressive mass meetings, brilliant literary propaganda—all these methods were employed by him to the utmost limit of self-denial. In 19o1 he was re ceived by the sultan ; the pope and many European rulers and statesmen gave him audiences. In 1903, the British Government offered land for an autonomous settlement in East Africa, but an extra-Palestinian site for the Jewish State was strongly opposed by many Zionists. This somewhat embittered "territorial" con troversy told on Herzl's failing health, and he died in the summer of 1904.
See Theodor Herzls Tagebiicher (3 vols., 1922). See also A. Friede mann, Des Leben Theodor Herzls (1914) ; B. Hagani, Le Sionisme politique et son fondateur T. Herzl (0918).