Theodor Herzl

Theodor Herzl was a Hungarian-born, Vienna-based journalist, playwright, and political writer. Trained in law at the University of Vienna (doctorate 1884), he briefly entered legal service as a court trainee in Salzburg before withdrawing in 1885 to devote himself to writing. He built a career in feuilleton journalism, serving as Paris correspondent for the Vienna newspaper Neue Freie Presse, where he reported on the Dreyfus affair. In 1896 he published the pamphlet Der Judenstaat ("The Jewish State"), arguing that Jewish emigration and statehood were a political question for international negotiation. He convened the First Zionist Congress at Basel in 1897 and became the founding president of the World Zionist Organization, pursuing diplomacy with European and Ottoman authorities. He also wrote the utopian novel Altneuland (1902).