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Theodor Herzl's Conversion to Zionism Author(S): Henry J. Cohn Source: Jewish Social Studies, Vol Theodor Herzl's Conversion to Zionism Author(s): Henry J. Cohn Source: Jewish Social Studies, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Apr., 1970), pp. 101-110 Published by: Indiana University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4466575 Accessed: 27-11-2015 11:51 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Indiana University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Jewish Social Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Fri, 27 Nov 2015 11:51:42 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Theodor Herzl'sConversion to Zionism by Henry J. Cohn On January 5, 1895 Theodor Herzl witnessed the military degradationof Alfred Dreyfus. On May 14, 1895 the city council of Vienna chose as its mayor Karl Lueger, leader of the antisemiticparty of United Christians;Austria was plungedinto political crisis for over a year, while confirmationof this appointment by the Emperorremained in the balance.About the beginningof May 1895, Herzl was seized by the idea which led him early in June to begin composinghis book, The JewishState, in which he proposedthe organizedexodus of Jews to an auton- omous territoryof their own, not necessarilyPalestine. Standardaccounts of his sudden conversionto this Zionist solution for the Jewish problem stress the im- mediate shock of the trial and condemnationof Dreyfus, but underestimatethe backgroundof virulentantisemitism in Herzl's adopted home town, Vienna. This article seeks to reverse the emphasis in evaluatingthe tangled skein of motives influencingthe founderof Zionism. With very few exceptions,almost any recent book or article which alludes to Herzl'sconversion to Zionism,whether it is aboutJewish, French, or Austrianhistory, and whetherwritten by a Jew or a non-Jew,ascribes a leadingrole to the Dreyfus Affair.All are agreedon its paramountinfluence; variations occur only in assessing the directnessof that influence.Despite the time lag of three months between the degradationof Dreyfus and the beginningof May, when Herzl first drafteda letter seeking an interview with the philanthropistBaron Hirsch for the purpose of outliningthe ideas later amplifiedin The JewishState, many authorshave seen that work as an instant response to Herzl's experienceof the Paris crowd baying for the blood of Dreyfus.' Others, while not mentioningthe Paris mob, ascribe an immediacyto the impactmade on Herzl by the trial of Dreyfuswhich amountsto a quite similarinterpretation.2 1 See, for example, Hannah Arendt, "From the Dreyfus Affair to France Today," in Essays on Antisemitism, ed. by Koppel S. Pinson (2d ed.; New York 1946), p. 213; Josef Patai, Star over Jordan: The Life of Theodor Herzl (New York 1946), p. 56; Arthur Hertzberg, ed., The Zionist Idea: A Reader (New York 1959), p. 202; Norman Bentwich, The Jews in our Time (London 1960), p. 44; James Parkes, A History of the Jewish People (London 1964), p. 184; Barbara Tuchman, The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World before the War, 1890-1914 (London 1966), p. 184. 2 See, for example, Adolf Boehm, Die Zionistische Bewegung (2 vols.; 2d ed.; Vienna 1935), vol. i, p. 157; Max Grunwald, Vienna (Philadelphia 1936), p. 451; Cecil Roth, A Short History of the Jewish People (3d ed; London 1948), p. 410; Robert F. Byres, Antisemitism in Modern France, vol. i: The Prologue to the Dreyfus Af,air (New Jersey, 1950), p. 99; Malcolm 101 This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Fri, 27 Nov 2015 11:51:42 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 102 JEWISH SOCIALSTUDIES Very few scholars have made qualifications to, or expressed doubts about, this point of view, and their arguments have undeservedly been submerged in the continuing flood of contrary opinions. Alex Bein, author of the standard biography of Herzl, was much more cautious in his formulation than many other writers who afterwards relied on his book; for Bein it is only true in a limited sense that "Herzl could say later that the Dreyfus affair had made him a Zionist": it had caused him to become more deeply conscious of his Jewishness, but the question remained of how he should express that reaction.3 At the time of the first Dreyfus case, Herzl . telegraphedlong despatches on the events when they occurred, but no word about Dreyfus appearsin his account of how he came to the Zionist idea, when he sought to analyze the process in his diaries only four months after the degradation scene. In truth there was no Dreyfus Affair to impress him in 1895; there was only the arrest and condemnation of an officer who chanced to be a Jew. Observers, Herzl among them, were quick to suspect that Dreyfus was innocent and that nevertheless "the Jew must be burnt." But not until 1896, well after the Jewish State had been written, did evidence of foul play begin to come to light and the anti-Semiticimplications unfold. Even though Herzl expressly stated in 1899 that the Dreyfus case had made him a Zionist, it was at best an appropriatemyth, a dramaticforeshortening of the facts.4 Such arguments must have even greater force now that Herzl's diaries have for the first time been published in full, in an English translation which contains hundreds Hay, Europe and the Jews (Boston 1960), originally published under the title The Foot of Pride (Boston 1950), pp. 209-10; Ludwig Lewisohn, ed., Theodor Herzl: A Portrait for this Age (Cleveland 1955), p. 52-53; Israel Cohen, Theodor Herzl: Founder of Political Zionism (New York and London 1959), pp. 65-67; The Standard Jewish Encyclopaedia (1959), p. 893; Max I. Dimont, Jews, God and History (New York 1962), p. 397; Leslie Derfler, ed., The Dreyfus Affair: Tragedy of Errors? (Boston 1963), p. ix; Andre Chouraqui, L'Alliance Israelite Universelle et la renaissance juive contemporaine, 1860-1960 (Paris 1965), p. 141; Barnet Litvinoff, The Road to Jerusalem (London 1965), p. 65; Arthur J. May, The Hapsburg Monarchy, 1867-1914 (Cambridge, Mass. 1965), p. 181; Douglas Johnson, France and the Dreyfus Affair (London 1966), p. 224; Friedrich Heer, Gottes erste Liebe: 2000 Jahre Juden- tum und Christentum. Genesis des osterreichischen Katholiken Adolf Hitler (Munich 1967), pp. 202, 231-32; Frank Field, The Last Days of Mankind: Karl Kraus and his Vienna (London 1968), pp. 45, 64; Martin Gilbert, Jewish History Atlas (London 1969), map 60, no. 5. 3 Alex Bein, Theodor Herzl: Biographie (Vienna 1934), p. 190; idem, Theodor Herzl: A Biography, abridged trans. by Maurice Samuel (Philadelphia 1941), pp. 116-17. Josef Fraenkel, "Simon Dubnow and the History of Political Zionism," in Simon Dubnow: The Man and his Work, ed. by Aaron Steinberg (Paris 1963) argued more specifically that "Herzl's statement: 'The Dreyfus affair in Paris, which I witnessed in 1894, turned me into a Zionist' ... really meant . that the Dreyfus affair had been, so to speak, the final link in the chain of events. Herzl's ideas were not suddenly conceived and formulated; they took years to evolve and ripen like fruit on a tree" (pp. 153-54). This statement may also be found in Josef Fraenkel, Dubnow, Herzl and Ahad Ha-am: Political and Cultural Zionism (London 1963), pp. 18-19. See also idem, Theodor Herzl: A Biography (2d ed.; London 1948), pp. 44, 52; Abram L. Sachar, A History of the Jews (4th ed.; New York 1960), p. 353; Howard M. Sachar, The Course of Modern Jewish History (London 1958), p. 270. Carl E. Schorske, "Politics in a New Key: an Austrian Triptych,"Journal of Modern History, vol. xxxix (1967), pp. 374-77, stresses the importance of the elections in Vienna for Herzl's change of mind, but also assigns considerable weight to the Dreyfus Affair. 4 Marvin Lowenthal, ed., The Diaries of Theodor Herzl (New York 1956), p. xix; cf. Alex Bein, "Herzl und der Dreyfus-Prozess," Die Stimme (Vienna), Oct. 5, 1934, p. 7. This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Fri, 27 Nov 2015 11:51:42 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Herzl's Conversionto Zionism 103 of passages,some of them severalpages long, which were omittedfrom the original Germanedition of 1922-23.5 The startingpoint for any discussionof the connectionbetween the Dreyfus Affair and Herzl's conversionto Zionismis the frequentlycited article on Zionism which he is generallypresumed to have publishedin the North AmericanReview in 1899, althoughin fact it never appearedin that periodical;the original manu- script has disappearedand a Germanversion was first publishedin 1920.6 There Herzlwrote: I was turnedinto a Zionistby the DreyfusCase. Not the presentone in Rennes [August7 - September19, 1899],but the originalone in Paris,of whichI was a witnessin 1894.... For the Jews thereis no other help and salvationthan to returnto theirown nationhoodand settlein theirown land and territory.That is whatI wrotein my book TheJewish State in 1895under the shatteringimpression of thefirst Dreyfus Case.7 It was understandablefor Herzl to write in such terms about the first Dreyfus case while attendingthe retrialat Rennes; the Dreyfus Affair had meanwhilebecome a raging political issue and had induced many other Jews to adopt Herzl's Zionist ideals.At the beginningof the previousyear, however,in a shortbiographical sketch in the Jewish Chronicle,Herzl had given a brief account of his four years in Paris and his compositionof The Jewish State without ever mentioningDreyfus.8 The diary which he began to keep in the first days of June 1895 opens with a detailed discussion of his interest in the Jewish problem since 1881 or 1882, an interest which culminatedin a sudden realizationof the Zionist solution: "It took at least thirteen years for me to conceive this simple idea.
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