There was a special holy of holies in this temple of progress, the section known as the ‘feuilleton’ which, like the great daily papers of Paris, Le Temps and Le Journal des Débats, published the best and soundest essays on poetry, the theatre, music and art under a line at the bottom of the page, keeping it clearly distinct from the ephemera of politics and the news of the day. Only authorities who had proved their worth could write for this section. Nothing but sound judgement, wide experience over many years and perfect artistic form could get an author who had proved himself over the course of time into this sanctuary. Ludwig Speidel, a master essayist, and Eduard Hanslick had the same papal authority in the fields of the theatre and music as Sainte-Beuve in his columns known as les Lundis in Paris. The thumbs-up or thumbs-down of these critics determined the success in Vienna of a musical work, a play, a book, and often of its author or composer himself. At the time every one of these feuilleton essays was the talk of the town in educated circles; they were discussed and criticised, they aroused admiration or hostility, and when now and then a new writer’s name appeared among the long-acknowledged feuilletonists, it created a sensation. Of the younger generation, only Hofmannsthal had sometimes found his way into the feuilleton with some of his best essays; other young authors had to be satisfied if they could contrive to get themselves into the separate literary supplement of the paper. As Vienna saw it, an author writing in the feuilleton on the front page had his name carved in marble.
How I found the courage to submit a small essay on poetry to the Neue Freie Presse, which my father regarded as an oracle and the abode of the Lord’s anointed, is more than I can understand today. But after all, nothing worse than rejection could happen to me. The editor of the feuilleton interviewed would-be essayists only once a week, between two and three o’clock, since the regular cycle of famous and firmly established contributors very seldom left any room for an outsider’s work. With my heart racing, I climbed the little spiral staircase to his office and sent in my name. A few minutes later the servant came back—the editor of the feuilleton would see me, and I entered the small, cramped room.
The editor of the feuilleton of the Neue Freie Presse was Theodor Herzl, and he was the first man of international stature whom I had met in my life—not that I knew what great changes he would bring to the destiny of the Jewish people and the history of our times. His position at that point was rather contradictory and indeterminate. He had set out to become a writer, had shown dazzling journalistic talents at an early age, and became the darling of the Viennese public first as Paris correspondent of the Neue Freie Presse, then as a writer for its feuilleton. His essays are still captivating in their wealth of sharp and often wise observation, their felicity of style and their high-minded tone, which never lost its natural distinction even when he was in cheerful or critical mood. They were the most cultivated imaginable kind of journalism, and delighted a city that had trained itself to appreciate subtlety. He had also had a play successfully produced at the Burgtheater, and now he was a highly esteemed man, idolised by us young people and respected by our fathers, until one day the unexpected happened. Fate can always find a way to track down the man it needs for its secret purposes, even if he tries to hide from it.
Theodor Herzl had had an experience in Paris that shook him badly, one of 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 well-situated, middle-class Western Jews with their comfortable lives, but from the great masses in the East, the Galician, Polish and Russian proletariat. Without knowing it, Herzl’s pamphlet had fanned the heart of Judaism into flame. The Messianic dream, two thousand years old, of the return to the Promised Land as affirmed in the holy books, had been smouldering among the ashes of foreign domination. It was a hope and at the same time a religious certainty, the one thing that still gave meaning to life for those downtrodden and oppressed millions. Whenever someone, whether prophet or impostor, had plucked that string in the millennia of exile, the soul of the people had vibrated in sympathy, but never so powerfully as now, never echoing back with such a clamorous roar. One man, with a few dozen pages, had shaped a scattered and disunited throng into a single entity.