HISTORY THEN AND NOW
251
Robert Wistrich:
I have chosen a vast topic: "A Comparison of the
Situation of the Jewish World as it was a Hundred Years Ago and Today."
I thought that it would be useful to begin by comtemplating the year 1896
and what I think was the most important single document or piece of
writing in terms of its long-term impact on the Jewish world, namely
Dey
Judel1Staat
by Theodor Herzl, which was published in February of 1896 in
Vienna. Although it could hardly be described as a bestseller at the time,
there is no doubt that this fairly compact and concise work was the begin–
ning of a historic process that even Herzl himself could not have envisaged
at the moment of publication. It was perhaps the founding document of
political Zionism and would set in motion the sequence of events which
eventually led to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Herzl, we may
recall, established the first Zionist congress in Basel in 1897.
If we look at the theses that Herzl put forth in
Dey Judenstaat
in the
context of the Jewish world as it then was, undoubtedly the single weight–
iest factor which he took into account was the rise of anti-Semitism as a
political force throughout most of Europe. Herzl could see before him the
spectacle of a triumphant anti-Semitic movement in his native Vienna. In
1896, the Christian social party, which had an anti-Semitic platform, was
the strongest single party in Vienna. It formally came to power a year later,
when Karl Lueger, the leader of that movement, was appointed mayor of
Viem1a. In France, where Herzl had spent four crucial years as a foreign
correspondent, he had witnessed the rise of French anti-Semitism and the
beginnings of what would come to be known as the Dreyfus affair. In
Germany there had been an anti-Semitic movement since the 1880s and it
enjoyed a significant representation in the Reichstag during the 1890s. Of
course Tsarist Russia, which was considered by most Jews at that time as
the most oppressive of the great powers, had already put into effect dra–
conian anti-Jewish laws. Russia was the scene of terrible pogroms in 1881;
the expulsion of Jews from Moscow at the beginning of the 1890s; the
Kishinev pogrom of 1903 which occurred in Herzl's lifetime; and the
pogrom wave of 1905-6, during the abortive revolution of those years. The
Jewish question, as Herzl and the Zionist movement understood it a hun–
dred years ago, was very much about finding a solution to the problem of
anti-Semitism. Zionists were aware that this had cast a long, deep shadow
over the emancipation of the Jews in Europe. But in the 1890s even those
Jews who did not share the Zionist view began to feel that in many
European countries (particularly in eastern and central Europe) they were
living in enemy
territory-Feindesland.
The rise of anti-Semitism
occurred, of course, in a certain context-there was a sense of impending
social and poli tical crisis, the decay of parliamentary ins ti tutions in Europe,
anarchist violence. There was a climate of instability and cultural deca–
dence, scandals, and the unraveling of liberalism, well-expressed by the
