Jerusalem: The Biography

In August 1897, Herzl presided over the first Zionist Congress in Basle and afterwards he boasted to his diary: ‘L’état c’est moi. At Basle, I founded the Jewish state. If I said this out loud today, I would be greeted by universal laughter. Perhaps in five years and certainly in fifty, everyone will know it.’ They did – and he was only five years out. Herzl became a new species of politician and publicist, riding the new railways of Europe to canvass kings, ministers and press barons. His relentless energy aggravated, and defied, a weak heart, liable to kill him at any moment.

Herzl believed in a Zionism, not built from the bottom by settlers, but granted by emperors and financed by plutocrats. The Rothschilds and Montefiores initially disdained Zionism but the earliest Zionist Congresses were ornamented by Sir Francis Montefiore, Moses’ nephew, ‘a rather footling English gentleman’ who ‘wore white gloves in the heat of the Swiss summer because he had to shake so many hands’. However, Herzl needed a potentate to intervene with the sultan. He decided that his Jewish state should be German-speaking – and so he turned to the very model of a modern monarch, the German Kaiser.

Wilhelm II was planning an Oriental tour to meet the sultan and then proceed to Jerusalem for the dedication of a new church built close to the Sepulchre on the land granted to his father, Kaiser Frederick. But there was more to the Kaiser’s plan: he prided himself on his diplomacy with the sultan and saw himself as a Protestant pilgrim to the Holy Places. Above all he hoped to offer German protection to the Ottomans, promote his new Germany and counter British influence.

‘I shall go to the German Kaiser [to say] “Let our people go”’, decided Herzl, and resolved to base his state on ‘this great, strong, moral, splendidly governed, tightly organized Germany. Through Zionism, it will again become possible for Jews to love this Germany.’

WILHELM: THE PARASITES OF MY EMPIRE

The Kaiser was an unlikely Jewish champion. When he heard that Jews were settling in Argentina, he said, ‘Oh if only we could send ours there too,’ and hearing about Herzl’s Zionism, he wrote, ‘I’m very much in favour of the Mauschels going to Palestine. The sooner they clear off the better!’ Although he regularly met Jewish industrialists in Germany, and became friends with the Jewish shipowner Albert Ballin, he was at heart an anti-Semite who ranted against the poisonous hydra of Jewish capitalism. Jews were the ‘parasites of my empire’ who he believed were ‘twisting and corrupting’ Germany. Years later, as a deposed monarch, he would propose mass extermination of the Jews using gas. Yet Herzl sensed that ‘the anti-Semites are becoming our most reliable friends’.

Herzl had to penetrate the Kaiser’s court. First he managed to meet the Kaiser’s influential uncle, Grand Duke Friedrich of Baden, who was interested in a scheme to find the Ark of the Covenant. Baden wrote to his nephew, who in turn asked Philipp, Prince of Eulenburg, to report on the Zionist plan. Eulenburg, the Kaiser’s best friend, ambassador to Vienna and political mastermind, was ‘fascinated’ by Herzl’s pitch: Zionism was a way to extend German power. The Kaiser agreed that ‘the energy, creativity and efficiency of the tribe of Shem would be diverted to worthier goals than the sucking dry of Christians’. Wilhelm, like most of the ruling class of that time, believed that the Jews possessed a mystical power over the workings of the world:

Our dear God knows even better than we do that the Jews killed Our Saviour and he punished them accordingly. It shouldn’t be forgotten that, considering the immense and extremely dangerous power which International Jewish capital represents, it would be a huge advantage to Germany if the Hebrews looked up to it in gratitude.

Here was the good news for Herzl: ‘Everywhere the hydra of the ghastliest anti-Semitism is raising its dreadful head and the terrified Jews are looking around for a protector. Well then, I shall intercede with the Sultan.’ Herzl was ecstatic: ‘Wonderful, wonderful.’

On 11 October 1898, the Kaiser and Kaiserin embarked on the imperial train with a retinue including his foreign minister, twenty courtiers, two doctors and eighty maids, servants and bodyguards. Anxious to impress the world, he had personally designed a special white-grey uniform with a full-length white Crusader-style veil. On 13 October, Herzl, with four Zionist colleagues, set out from Vienna on the Orient Express, packing a wardrobe that included white tie and tails as well as pith-helmet and safari suit.