The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig Page A

those moments that change an entire life. As Paris correspondent, he had been present at the official degradation of Alfred Dreyfus. He had seen the epaulettes torn from the pale man’s uniform as he cried out aloud, “I am innocent.” And he had known in his heart at that moment that Dreyfus was indeed innocent, and only the fact that he was Jewish had brought the terrible suspicion of treason down on him. As a student,Theodor Herzl had already suffered in his straightforward and manly pride from the fate of the Jews—or rather, thanks to his prophetic insight, he had anticipated all its tragic significance at a time when it hardly seemed a serious matter. At that time, with a sense of being a born leader, which was justified by both his extremely imposing physical appearance and the wide scope of his mind and his knowledge of the world, he had formed the fantastic plan of bringing the Jewish problem to an end once and for all by uniting Jews and Christians in voluntary mass-baptism. Always inclined to think in dramatic terms, he had imagined himself leading thousands upon thousands of Austrian Jews in a long procession to St Stephen’s Cathedral, there to liberate his persecuted, homeless people for ever from the curse of segregation and hatred in an exemplary symbolic act. He had soon realised that this plan was impracticable, and years of his own work had distracted him from the problem at the heart of his life, although he saw solving it as his true vocation. However, at the moment when he saw Dreyfus degraded the idea of his own people’s eternal ostracism went to his heart like a dagger. If segregation is inevitable, he said to himself, why not make it complete? If humiliation is always to be our fate, let us meet it with pride. If we suffer from the lack of a home, let us build ourselves one! So he published his pamphlet on The Jewish State , in which he pronounced all adaptation through assimilation and all hope of total tolerance impossible for the Jewish people. They would have to found a new home for themselves in their old homeland of Palestine.
    When this pamphlet, which was short but had the power and forcefulness of a steel bolt, was published I was still at school, but I remember the general astonishment and annoyance it aroused in bourgeois Jewish circles in Vienna. What on earth, they said angrily, has that usually clever, witty and cultivated writer Herzl taken into his head? What stupid stuff is he saying and writing? Why would we want to go to Palestine? We speak German,not Hebrew, our home is in beautiful Austria. Aren’t we very well off under good Emperor Franz Joseph? Don’t we make a respectable living and enjoy a secure position? Don’t we have equal rights, aren’t we loyal, established citizens of our beloved Vienna? And don’t we live in a progressive time which will do away with all religious prejudice within a few decades? If he’s a Jew who wants to help other Jews, why does he present our worst enemies with arguments, trying to segregate us from the German-speaking world when every day unites us more closely with it? Rabbis waxed indignant in their pulpits, the managing director of the Neue Freie Presse banned even the mention of the word Zionism in his allegedly progressive newspaper. Karl Kraus, the Thersites of Viennese literature and a past master of venomous mockery, wrote a pamphlet entitled A Crown for Zion , and when Theodor Herzl entered the theatre sarcastic murmurs ran through the rows of spectators: “Here comes His Majesty!”
    At first Herzl could reasonably feel misunderstood—Vienna, where he thought himself most secure after enjoying years of popularity, was abandoning him, even laughing at him. But then the answer came thundering back with such a weight of approval that he was almost alarmed to see what a mighty movement, far greater than his own person, he had called into being with his few dozen pages. Admittedly the answer did not come from the