The Zionist visionary’s diaries are now freely available in the original, hand-written German and French, inviting readers to discover how the movement was born. Surprisingly, not all entries are in Herzl’s hand

From the summer of 1895 to the spring of 1904, Theodor Herzl documented all his Zionist activities in eighteen notebooks. Over thousands of pages, in German or French, he listed his diplomatic encounters, plans for the Jewish state, successes, dilemmas and difficulties. These diaries are thus living testimony to the formation of the Zionist movement. Now they’ve been made available online, in a digitized version of the original handwritten manuscript and reset in German/French with translation in English and Hebrew. The English text is taken from The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl, (trans. Harry Zohn, 1960).

 

From Dream to Reality 

Herzl’s very first page describes his feelings upon immersing himself in “the Jewish Question:”

For some time past I have been occupied with a work of infinite grandeur. At the moment I do not know whether I shall carry it through. It looks like a mighty dream. But for days and weeks it has possessed me beyond the limits of consciousness; it accompanies me wherever I go, hovers behind my ordinary talk, looks over my shoulder at my comically trivial journalistic work, disturbs me and intoxicates me. It is still too early to surmise what will come of it. (vol. 1, p. 1)

Herzl summarizes the idea’s various forms as it gestated in his mind during his stint as a journalist in Paris. He describes his meetings and conversations with Baron Maurice de Hirsch, philanthropist and founder of the Jewish Colonization Association, as well as his deliberations on how to approach the Rothschilds. Herzl’s planned “Address to the Rothschilds” later served as the basis of his landmark work The Jewish State (1896).

The word Zionist (actually coined by writer Nathan Birnbaum in 1890) doesn’t crop up in the diaries until page 57, as a digital search reveals: 

Woe to the swindlers who may try to enrich themselves through the Jewish cause. We shall set up the most severe punishments for them, involving the loss of civil rights and of the right to acquire real estate. For the Society [of Jews] must not become a Panama. We shall unite all Zionists.