Theodor Herzl
Theodor Herzl (2 May 1860 – 3 July 1904) was an Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist and political activist who was the father of modern political Zionism. Herzl formed the Zionist Organization and promoted Jewish immigration to Palestine in an effort to form a Jewish state. Herzl was born in Pest, Kingdom of Hungary to a prosperous Neolog Jewish family. After a brief legal career in Vienna, he became the Paris correspondent for the Viennese newspaper Neue Freie Presse. Confronted with antisemitic events in Vienna – or, according to a now largely dismissed theory, due to his covering of the Dreyfus affair – he reached the conclusion that anti-Jewish sentiment would make Jewish assimilation impossible, and that the only solution for Jews was the establishment of a Jewish state.