Herzl's Vision: Theodor Herzl and the Foundation of the Jewish State

Theodor Herzl had been a successful Viennese journalist and a less successful playwright with no political ambitions. That changed in 1896, when he published The Jewish State. The following year he convened a Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland. The Congress founded the Zionist Organization in order to establish a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, recognized and guaranteed by public international law. As Herzl transformed himself in just a few years from writer and editor into the leader of an international political movement, he learned politics and diplomacy on the run—and to great effect. In his efforts to gain broad support for his vision, Herzl met with the Ottoman sultan; the German emperor; the king of Italy; the pope; British, Russian, and German ministers; as well as a great number of other government and public opinion leaders of many European countries. By the time of his early death in 1904 at the age of forty-four, Herzl had transformed Jewish public discourse and made the idea of a Return to Zion into a reality, albeit still a weak one, in international politics.