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August 29-31, 1897Primary source · 2 sourcesWell documented

Herzl Convenes the First Zionist Congress

'At Basel I founded the Jewish State,' a journalist writes in his diary, decades before it happens

On the timeline · around August 29-31, 1897 · Early Modern and EmancipationEarly Modern and EmancipationModern JudaismHerzl Convenes the First Zionist Congress1775180018251850187519001925

Quick facts

Dates
August 29-31, 1897
Location
Basel, Switzerland
Delegates
c. 200, from 17 countries
Organization founded
World Zionist Organization

What happened

Theodor Herzl, an Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist who had covered the Dreyfus Affair in France and concluded that European antisemitism could not be reasoned away, convened the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, from 29 to 31 August 1897. Some 200 delegates from 17 countries attended. The Congress adopted the Basel Program, formally calling for the establishment of a home for the Jewish people in Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire, to be secured under public law with international recognition, and it founded the World Zionist Organization to pursue that goal. Herzl recorded his own assessment privately in his diary days later: that he had founded the Jewish state at Basel, and that the world would recognize it within five, or at most fifty, years.

Why it matters

The Basel Congress transformed Zionism from scattered religious longing and isolated settlement efforts into an organized political movement with institutions, a program, and international ambitions, laying the direct organizational groundwork for the state that would in fact be declared just over fifty years later, in 1948, close to Herzl's own prediction.

How we know

The Congress and the Basel Program are documented in the World Zionist Organization's own institutional records and in Herzl's personal diaries, published after his death, both primary accounts from participants in the events described.

Sources

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Herzl Convenes the First Zionist Congress · History of Judaism · SourcedStory