Theodor Herzl

**Theodor Herzl**, (born May 2, 1860, Budapest, Hungary, Austrian Empire [now in Hungary]—died July 3, 1904, Edlach, Austria), founder of the political form of Zionism, a movement to establish a Jewish homeland. His pamphlet *The Jewish State* (1896) proposed that the Jewish question was a political question to be settled by a world council of nations. He organized a world congress of Zionists that met in Basel, Switzerland, in August 1897 and became first president of the World Zionist Organization, …