Abstract
Theodor Herzl, looking back on the days of inspiration in which he wrote his first draft of The State of the Jews, noted that ‘my one form of relaxation in the evenings was to listen to Wagnerian music, especially Tannhäuser, an opera to which I listened as often as it was performed. Only on the evenings when there was no opera did I have doubts about the correctness of my ideas.’1 Given contemporary perceptions of Herzl and Richard Wagner, it has often seemed deeply ironic, even shocking, that the ‘father of the state of Israel’ should have relaxed to the music of the man who was an inspiration to German nationalist anti-Semitism (and eventually to Adolf Hitler) while writing the book that was to be the most important document in the history of Zionism as a political movement.
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Notes
Theodor Herzl, Zionistische Schriften, ed. Leon Kellner (Berlin, 1920), p. 9.
Amos Elon, Herzl (New York, 1986), pp. 142, 259
Desmond Stewart, Theodor Herzl: Artist and Politician (New York, 1974), pp. 182–3
Ernst Pawel, The Labyrinth of Exile: A Life of Theodor Herzl (New York, 1989), p. 360.
William J. McGrath, ‘Student Radicalism in Vienna’, in Journal of Contemporary History vol. 2, no. 3 (1967), pp. 184–200.
Schorske’s article is reprinted as ‘Politics in a New Key: An Austrian Trio’, in Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (London, 1980), pp. 116–80, esp. 146 ff.
Robert Wistrich, The Jews of Vienna in the Age of Franz Joseph (Oxford, 1989), p. 440, n. 72.
Peter Loewenberg, ‘Theodor Herzl: A Psychoanalytic Study in Charismatic Political Leadership’, in Benjamin B. Wolman (ed.), The Psychoanalytic Interpretation of History (New York, 1971), pp. 166–7.
Robert S. Wistrich, ‘Theodor Herzl: Between Theater and Politics’, in Jewish Frontier. June—July 1982. p. 9: Elon Herzl pp. 32 ff.
This is also the most recent conclusion of Robert Wistrich, who has written: ‘For Herzl, like ... other outstanding figures of fin-de-siècle Vienna, also transcended his time and place. Any account which overlooks just how un-Viennese Herzl was in so many ways will not do him justice.’ Cf. Robert S. Wistrich, ‘Herzl and Zionism’, E. Timms and R. Robertson (eds), Austrian Studies 1, Vienna 1900, from Altenberg to Wittgenstein (Edinburgh, 1990), pp. 170–4.
Andrew Handler, Dori: The Life and Times of Theodor Herzl in Budapest (1860–1878) (University of Alabama, 1983).
Theodor Herzl, Philosophische Erzählungen (Berlin, 1919), pp. 60–89.
The feuilleton is reprinted in Theodor Herzl, Das Palais Bourbon: Bilder aus dem französichen Parlamentsleben (Leipzig, 1895).
Herzl, Briefe und Tagebücher, eds A. Bein, H. Greive, M. Schӓrf and J.H. Schoeps, vol. 2 (Berlin, 1983), p. 127.
A Herzl, Palais Bourbon, pp. 73–88 ff. Also reproduced in K. Dethloff (ed.), Theodor Herzl, oder der Moses des Fin de Siècle (Vienna, 1986), pp. 157–68, and Dethloff’s comments, pp. 20–1.
Jacques Komberg, ‘Theodore Herzl: A Reevaluation’, in Journal of Modern History, vol. 52, no. 2 (June 1980), p. 252.
Arthur Hertzberg (ed.), The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader (New York, 1959), pp. 47–8; Schorske, Fin-de-siècle Vienna, p. 164.
The most cogent explication of this ideology of emancipation is to be found in David Sorkin, The Transformation of German Jewry 1780–1840 (Oxford, 1988).
Theodor Herzl, Das neue Ghetto (Vienna, 1903), p. 36.
Theodor Herzl, Altneuland (Leipzig, 1902) p. 298
Theodor Herzl, Der Judenstaat: Versuch einer modernen Lösung der Judenfrage (Vienna, 1896), p. 76; Herzl, Zionistische Schriften, p. 44.
See Robert S. Wistrich, ‘The German-Jewish symbiosis in Central Europe’, in European Judaism, no. 1, (1990), pp. 20–30, esp. p. 30.
Alex Bein, Theodor Herzl: Biographie (Vienna, 1934), p. 201; Schorske, Fin-de-siècle Vienna, p. 163.
Herzl, Feuilletons, with an introduction by Raoul Auernheimer, vol. 1 (Berlin, 1911), p. 174.
On Adler, see Willaim J. McGrath, Dionysian Art and Populist Politics in Austria (New Haven, Conn., 1974), pp. 208–37.
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Beller, S. (1992). Herzl’s Tannhäuser: The Redemption of the Artist as Politician. In: Wistrich, R.S. (eds) Austrians and Jews in the Twentieth Century. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22378-7_3
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