Theodor Herzl

Theodor Herzl was born on Dohány utca, or Tobacco Street (also known as Tabakgasse in German), a street in the Jewish quarter of Pest (now the eastern part of Budapest), in what was then the Kingdom of Hungary (now Hungary), to a Neolog Jewish family. He was the second child of Jeanette (née Diamant) and Jakob Herzl, who were German-speaking, assimilated Jews. Herzl stated he was of both Ashkenazi and Sephardic lineage, predominantly through his paternal relations, and to a lesser extent through his maternal ones, but there is no evidence to support his claims of Sephardic ancestry or family origins. His father's family had migrated from Zimony (today Zemun, Serbia), to Bohemia in 1739, where they were required to Germanize their family name of Loebl (from the Hebrew word lev, or 'heart') to Herzl (meaning 'little heart', a diminutive form of the German word for 'heart', Herz).

Herzl's father Jakob was a highly successful businessman. He had a sister, Pauline, who was a year older than him, but she died of typhus on 7 February 1878. Theodor lived with his family in a house next to the Dohány Street Synagogue (formerly known as the Tabakgasse Synagogue) located in Belváros, the inner city of the historical old town of Pest, in the eastern section of Budapest.

In his youth, Herzl aspired to follow the footsteps of Ferdinand de Lesseps, builder of the Suez Canal, but did not excel at science, and instead developed a growing enthusiasm for poetry and the humanities. This passion later developed into a successful career in journalism and a less-celebrated foray into playwrighting. According to Amos Elon, as a young man Herzl was an ardent Germanophile, viewing the Germans as the best Kulturvolk ('cultured people') in Central Europe; he embraced the German ideal of Bildung, whereby reading great works of literature by authors and playwrights such as Goethe and Shakespeare could allow one to appreciate the beautiful things in life, which in turn would result in the building and improvement of character, intellect and morality (the Bildung theory tended to equate beauty with goodness). Herzl believed that through Bildung, Hungarian Jews such as himself could shake off their "shameful Jewish characteristics", which were the result of long centuries of impoverishment and oppression, and become civilized Central Europeans, a true Kulturvolk established along the German lines.

In 1878, after Pauline's death, the Herzl family moved to Vienna, then serving as the other capital of Austria-Hungary, where they lived in the 9th district, known as Alsergrund. At the University of Vienna, Herzl studied law. As a young law student, Herzl became a member of the German nationalist Burschenschaft (fraternity) Albia, which had the motto Ehre, Freiheit, Vaterland ("Honor, Freedom, Fatherland"). He later resigned in protest at the organisation's antisemitism.

After a brief legal career at the University of Vienna and in Salzburg, he devoted himself to journalism and literature, working as a journalist for a Viennese newspaper and a correspondent for Neue Freie Presse, in Paris, occasionally making special trips to London and Istanbul. He later became literary editor of Neue Freie Presse, and wrote several comedies and dramas for the Viennese stage. His early work did not focus on Jewish life. It was of the feuilleton order, descriptive rather than political.

Herzl's grandfathers, both of whom he knew, were more closely related to traditional Judaism than were his parents. In Zimony (Zemlin), his grandfather Simon Loeb Herzl "had his hands on" one of the first copies of Judah Alkalai's 1857 work prescribing the "return of the Jews to the Holy Land and renewed glory of Jerusalem." Contemporary scholars conclude that Herzl's own implementation of modern Zionism was undoubtedly influenced by that relationship. Herzl's grandparents' graves in Semlin can still be visited. Alkalai himself witnessed the rebirth of Serbia from Ottoman rule in the early and mid-19th century and was inspired by the Serbian uprising and subsequent re-creation of Serbia.

On 25 June 1889, he married Julie Naschauer, the 21-year-old daughter of a wealthy Jewish businessman in Vienna. The marriage was unhappy, although three children were born to it: Paulina, Hans and Margaritha (Trude). One of his biographers suggests that Herzl infected his wife with gonorrhea which he contracted in 1880. Herzl had a strong attachment to his mother, who was unable to get along with his wife. These difficulties were increased by the political activities of his later years, in which his wife took little interest. Julie died in 1907, 3 years after Herzl, aged 39.

Herzl imagined himself as a great statesman creating a dynasty for his family in Palestine once a Jewish state was established, where his father would be its foundational senator, and his son a doge.

His daughter Paulina suffered from mental illness and drug addiction. She died in 1930 at the age of 40 of a heroin overdose. His only son Hans was given a secular upbringing and the Herzls refused to allow him to be circumcised. On Herzl's early death, after reportedly being pressured to do so by his Zionist caretakers, Hans, then a ward, submitted to circumcision on 29 May 1905; he subsequently converted, resenting the way he had been persuaded to be circumcised, and became successively a Baptist, then a Catholic, and flirted with other Protestant denominations. He sought a personal salvation for his own religious needs and a universal solution, as had his father, to Jewish suffering caused by antisemitism. Hans shot himself to death on the day of his sister Paulina's funeral; he was 39 years old.

Hans left a suicide note explaining his reasons.

"A Jew remains a Jew, no matter how eagerly he may submit himself to the disciplines of his new religion, how humbly he may place the redeeming cross upon his shoulders for the sake of his former coreligionists, to save them from eternal damnation: a Jew remains a Jew... I can't go on living. I have lost all trust in God. All my life I've tried to strive for the truth, and must admit today at the end of the road that there is nothing but disappointment. Tonight I have said Kaddish for my parents—and for myself, the last descendant of the family. There is nobody who will say Kaddish for me, who went out to find peace—and who may find peace soon... My instinct has latterly gone all wrong, and I have made one of those irreparable mistakes, which stamp a whole life with failure. Then it is best to scrap it."

In 2006 the remains of Paulina and Hans were moved from Bordeaux, France, and reburied not far from their father on Mt. Herzl.

Paulina and Hans had little contact with their young sister, "Trude" (Margarethe, 1893–1943). She married Richard Neumann, a man 17 years her elder. Neumann lost his fortune in the Great Depression. Burdened by the steep costs of hospitalizing Trude, who suffered from severe bouts of depressive illness that required repeated hospitalization, the Neumanns' financial life was precarious. The Nazis sent Trude and Richard to the Theresienstadt concentration camp where they died. Her body was burned. Her mother, who died in 1907, was cremated, and her ashes were lost by accident.

At the request of his father Richard Neumann, Trude's son (Herzl's only grandchild), Stephan Theodor Neumann (1918–1946), was sent for his safety to England in 1935 to the Viennese Zionists and the Zionist Executive in Israel based there. The Neumanns deeply feared for the safety of their only child as violent Austrian antisemitism expanded. In England he read extensively about his grandfather. Zionism had not been a significant part of his background in Austria, but Stephan became an ardent Zionist, was the only descendant of Theodor Herzl to have become one. Anglicizing his name to Stephen Norman, during World War II, Norman enlisted in the British Army rising to the rank of Captain in the Royal Artillery. In late 1945 and early 1946 he took the opportunity to visit the British Mandate of Palestine "to see what my grandfather had started." He wrote in his diary extensively about his trip. What most impressed him was the "look of freedom" on the faces of the children, which were not like the sallow look of those from the concentration camps of Europe.

Norman planned to return to Palestine following his military discharge. The Zionist Executive had worked for years through L. Lauterbach to get Norman to come to Palestine as a symbol of Herzl's returning.

Operation Agatha of 29 June 1946, precluded that possibility: local military and police fanned out throughout the Mandate and arrested Jewish activists. About 2,700 individuals were arrested. On 2 July, Norman wrote to Mrs.Stybovitz-Kahn in Haifa. Her father, Jacob Kahn, had been a good friend of Herzl and a well-known Dutch banker before the war. Norman wrote, "I intend to go to Palestine on a long visit in the future, in fact as soon as passport & permit regulations permit. But the dreadful news of the last two days have done nothing to make this easier." He never did return to Palestine.

Discharged from the army in late spring 1946, without money or job and despondent about his future, Norman followed the advice of Selig Brodetsky. H. Rosenblum, the editor of Haboker, a Tel Aviv daily that later became Yediot Aharonot, noted in late 1945 that Chaim Weizmann deeply resented the sudden intrusion and reception of Norman when he arrived in Britain. Norman spoke to the Zionist conference in London. Haboker reported, "Something similar happened at the Zionist conference in London. The chairman suddenly announced to the meeting that in the hall there was Herzl's grandson who wanted to say a few words. The introduction was made in an absolutely dry and official way. It was felt that the chairman looked for—and found—some stylistic formula which would satisfy the visitor without appearing too cordial to anybody among the audience. In spite of that there was a great thrill in the hall when Norman mounted on the platform of the praesidium. At that moment, Dr.Weizmann turned his back on the speaker and remained in this bodily and mental attitude until the guest had finished his speech." The 1945 article went on to note that Norman was snubbed by Weizmann and by some in Palestine during his visit because of ego, jealousy, vanity and their own personal ambitions. Brodetsky was Chaim Weizman's principal ally and supporter in Britain.

Weizmann secured for Norman a desirable but minor position with the British Economic and Scientific Mission in Washington, D.C. In late August 1946, shortly after arriving in Washington, he learned that his family had perished. Norman had re-established contact with his old nanny in Vienna, Wuth, who told him what happened. Norman became deeply depressed over the fate of his family and his inability to help the Jewish people "languishing" in the European camps. Unable to endure his suffering any further, he jumped to his death from the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge in Washington, D.C., on 26 November 1946.

Norman was buried by the Jewish Agency in Washington, D.C. His tombstone read simply, 'Stephen Theodore Norman, Captain Royal Artillery British Army, Grandson of Theodor Herzl, 21 April 1918 – 26 November 1946.' Norman was the only descendant of Herzl to have been a Zionist, been to Palestine and openly stated his desire to return.

On 5 December 2007, sixty-one years after his death, he was reburied with his family on Mt. Herzl, in the Plot for Zionist Leaders.

The Stephen Norman garden on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem—the only memorial in the world to a Herzl other than Theodor Herzl—was dedicated on 2 May 2012 by the Jerusalem Foundation and the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation.