Theodor Herzl: From Assimilation to Zionism

by Jacques Kornberg

Overview

"An original and brilliant thesis, exposing a long misunderstood
figure. A great book." -- Bernard Avishai

"Excellent...
a highly revealing portrait that demolishes Herzl-the-icon." -- Michael
Marrus

"Other biographers... have illuminated aspects of
[Herzl's] life, but none has been able to produce the kind of intellectual biography
that we have here. Jacques Kornberg has done an admirable job of plumbing the depths
of Herzl's mind to try to come to an understanding of just why he became a Zionist
and why he was literally consumed with promoting Zionist goals." --
Cithara

"With compassion and critical balance, placing his
subject well within his Austrian milieu, Kornberg analyzes Herzl's rhetoric,
tergiversations, and profound ambivalence over his politics and identity."Â  --
Choice

"... a masterful display of the sources... " --
American Historical Review

"... stimulating, provocative and
agreeably iconoclastic... powerful and compelling." -- German
History

A novel and provocative explanation of Theodor Herzl's
founding of Zionism as a way of resolving his personal crisis over his Jewish
identity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253112590
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	11/22/1993
Series:	Jewish Literature and Culture
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

JACQUES KORNBERG teaches history at the University of Toronto. The author
of articles on German intellectual history and on Zionism, he is editor of At the
Crossroads: Essays on Ahad Ha-Am.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: From Austro-German Assimilationist
to Zionist

Part I
Herzl in the 1880s

1.
Herzl as Assimilationist
2. Herzl as German Nationalist
3. Herzl,
an Ambivalent Jew

Part II
Vienna in the
1890s

4. Herzl and Vienna, the New Capital of
Antisemitism

Part III
Herzl in the
1890s

5. The Reabsorption of the Jews
6. The New
Ghetto
7. The Jewish State
8. The Dreyfus
Legend

Abbreviations
Notes
Selected
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

In 1899, Herzl claimed that he became a Zionist under the influence of the Dreyfus trial, which he witnessed as a journalist. This revealing volume, which covers Herzl's life from 1878 to 1896, demolishes that claim, arguing that ``mounting political anti-Semitism, chiefly in his Austrian homeland, intensified a longstanding inner conflict in Herzl, at the heart of which was his ambivalence over his Jewishness.'' Kornberg (history, Univ. of Toronto) offers an illuminating portrait of Herzl as a young German nationalist and shows how this youthful experience influenced his Zionism. But he pays scant attention to the significance of Herzl's first 18 years in Budapest, analyzed in Andrew Handler's Dori (Univ. of Alabama Pr., 1983); overlooks evidence contrary to his arguments; and exaggerates his disagreements with recent scholars, on whose work he actually builds. For academic libraries.-- Jonathan D. Sarna, Brandeis Univ., Waltham, Mass.

Library Journal