Theodor Herzl and the creation of the Zionist movement, 1897–1917

Abstract

The man universally credited with founding the Zionist movement was Theodor Herzl (1860–1904). Herzl’s Zionism was purely political in theory and practice: the Jews as a nation did not need a new culture, language, or concept of the messianic era, but only a national polity of their own, whose creation would solve the problem of anti-Semitism both for the Jews themselves and for Europe as a whole. His book Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State) was a key publication, and he set up the First Zionist Congress in Basel in August 1897. This was a great success, but did not resolve the fundamental ideological divides within the Zionist movement.