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Updated: June 6, 2025
He wrote to Rabbi Gudemann, Chief Rabbi of Vienna, the occasion being the anti-Jewish excesses which had occurred in Vienna. "This plan ... is a reserve against more evil days." Herzl, in his first visit to England, met and talked with Israel Zangwill, the novelist, whom he impressed without quite winning him over.
At the turn of the year 1892-93 there came a sharp clarification in his ideas. He had followed closely the evasive debates in the Austrian Reichstag debates which forever dodged the reality by turning the question into one of religion. "It is no longer and it has not been for a long time a theological matter. It has nothing whatsoever to do with religion and conscience," declared Herzl.
Herzl saw that the first task he had to fulfil was the organizing of a manifestation which should bring before the world, and the Jewish people itself, in modern, comprehensible form the fact of its national existence.
On the day of his conversation with Baron de Hirsch, Herzl wrote him a long letter in which he sought to supplement the information and impressions which had been the result of the meeting. "Please believe me, the political life of an entire people particularly when that people is scattered throughout the entire world can be set in motion only with imponderables floating high in the air.
Herzl does not seem to have thought this question of decisive significance; it was a scientific matter.
Looking on them, we understood where our forefathers got the strength to endure through the bitterest times." Immediately after the First Congress, Herzl grappled with his second task, the creation of the Jewish Colonial Bank. He wrote of the bank in Die Welt in November, 1898, "The task of the Colonial Bank is to eliminate philanthropy.
Herzl read Eugen Dühring's book The Jewish-Problem as a Problem of Race, Morals and Culture the first and most important effort to find a "scientific," philosophic, biologic and historical basis for the anti-Semitism which was sweeping through Europe in those days . Dühring saw the Jewish question as a purely racial question, and for him the Jewish race was without any worth whatsoever.
Little was known of his pamphlet, for it was kept out of the country by censorship in Russia. Only its title got their attention and the stories told of Herzl the Western Jew returning to his people gripped their hearts and stirred their imagination. He was greeted by one of the Galician Zionist societies as the leader who, like Moses, had returned from Midian to liberate the Jews.
The Bank could not be opened until it had at least 250,000 paid-up shares. After a great deal of effort, the minimum was finally obtained and the Trust was officially opened in time for the opening of the third Congress in August, 1899. Herzl addressed a mass meeting in London in October, 1899, under Dr. Gastner's chairmanship.
But at this time Herzl was not able to obtain an audience with the Sultan. Nevlinski reported that such an audience had been refused because the Sultan declined to discuss sovereignty over Palestine. Doubt was expressed as to the accuracy of the report. Whatever the fact may be, the first venture of Herzl in Constantinople was not successful.
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