Theodor Herzl From Assimilation to Zionism [Hardcover]

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 [Herzls] 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 Herzls 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 Herzls rhetoric, tergiversations, and profound ambivalence over his politics and identity. 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 Herzls founding of Zionism as a way of resolving his personal crisis over his Jewish identity.

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

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.