Theodor Herzl was born on May 2, 1860, in Budapest, Hungary, (then in the Austrian Empire), into a middle class Jewish family. Herzl attended a scientific oriented German language school, but because of local anti-Semitism, moved in 1875 to another school that was attended mostly by Jews. The family moved to Vienna, Austria, then the capital city of Austria-Hungary, where Herzl attended the university gaining a doctorate in law, in 1884. He worked for short periods in Vienna and Salzburg, but abandoned a career in law practice and dedicated himself to writing, especially plays; some of them enjoyed a fair amount of success.
In 1889, Herzl married Julie Naschauer, daughter of a well-to-do Jewish businessman in Vienna and had three children.
Having been appointed the Paris correspondent of the Neue Freie Presse, a leading liberal Viennese newspaper, Herzl arrived in Paris, along with his wife in the fall of 1891, only to discover that France was haunted by the same anti-Semitism that he encountered in Austria. While in Paris, Herzl became preoccupied by politics. The Dreyfus affair convinced him that there should be only one solution to the Jewish question: mass emigration of Jews from Europe and the establishment of a Jewish homeland, preferably in the Land of Israel.
His thoughts and ideas crystallized in an essay that initially he intended to send to the Rothschilds, but he published his proposals in 1896 as Der Judenstaat (“The Jewish State”), a book that changed the course of the Jewish history. Herzl’s ideas were received warmly especially in Eastern Europe countries where masses of persecuted Jews were eager to find a way out of the situation. The Hovevei Zion (“Lovers of Zion”) movement called on Herzl to assume the leadership of the movement. In 1897, the First Zionist Congress convened in Basel, Switzerland, and the Zionist movement was established. Herzl was chosen as life president of the World Zionist Organization. He also founded Die Welt, a Zionist weekly. Altneuland (“Old New Country”), Herzl’s second book, a visionary novel describing the life in the future Jewish State to be established in the Land of Israel, was published in 1902.
During the following years, Herzl traveled extensively throughout Europe and the Middle East and conducted a long series of political meetings with prominent European leaders of the time trying to enlist them to the Zionist cause. He sought the support of the German Emperor, the King of Italy, and the Pope, tried to persuade the Sultan of Turkey to allow Jewish autonomy in the Land of Israel, and met the Russian ministry with the aim of convincing him to stop the violence against the Jews of Russia. The most sympathetic offer of support came from Great Britain. However, the Fourth Zionist Congress of 1903 rejected a British proposal calling for the establishment of a Jewish autonomy in East Africa that Herzl inclined to accept as a provisional refuge for the Jewish population of Eastern Europe. A year later, his heart condition aggravated and shortly afterwards, he died of pneumonia in a sanatorium in Edlach, Austria, on July 3, 1904 (20 Tammuz). Herzl was buried in Vienna and his funeral were attended by large crowds of bereaved Jews from all over Europe. In August 1949, following his will, the newly established State of Israel re-interred his remains in Jerusalem, on Mount Herzl, which was named in his honor, and 20 Tammuz has been declared a national memorial day in Israel.