Theodor Herzl, a Hungarian by birth, a Jew by religion, and a German by culture and mother tongue, was a cultured Jew with little time for religious practices. For many years, he housed contradictory feelings of pride and self-hatred towards his own Judaism: though he once toyed with the idea of baptizing his son "Hans" to avoid shouldering the boy with the "burden" of being Jewish, he never actually did so. He would always refuse to change his byline in the press so as to sound less Jewish, as some counselled him to do. Beset by the growing anti-Semitic sentiment of Vienna at the end of the century, he proposed solutions for putting an end to hatred of the Jews as outlandish as the mass conversion of Jews to Catholicism or a duel with a well-known anti-Semite in order to show the entire world that Jews had honor. Finally, the failed playwright-turned-famous journalist played a pivotal role in founding the Zionist movement. In the wake of the movement's inaugural gathering in 1897, which sought to create a Jewish State in Palestine, he wrote in his personal journal: "Today, I founded the Jewish State ... in 50 years, it will be a reality". Indeed, fifty years down the line, his prophecy came true: the newly created United Nations gave the go-ahead to a new State, Israel: Theodor Herzl was its prophet. Through an in-depth study of the man's memoirs and writings, the author of this biography explains how it was that a man whose highest ambition was to make it big in the world of theater in gentile society came to be the cornerstone of the creation of the world's one and only Jewish state. A broad-ranging book in academic terms, it maintains the air of an epic page-turner when portraying the inner world, not to mention the frenetic political and diplomatic efforts, of a figure whose legacy was and continues to be of paramount importance when it comes to understanding the last sixty years of world history.
About the Author: Pedro J. Cobo Pulido studied nursing in Granada, a profession he practiced for thirteen years. He then went on to earn his doctorate degree in Contemporary History. He has appeared in various media outlets as a specialist on the Middle East, and currently teaches at the Academic Division of General Studies and International Studies at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico.