Dr. Nordau's Eulogy on Herzl.
Delivered at the eventh Zionist Congress.
On July 3rd, last year, Theodor Herzl closed his eyes forever. On the day of his death he had barely completed forty-four years and two months of life. The loud wail of surprise, the long moan, which were the thousandfold echo of the news of his decease, were the measure of what he had been to his people. For thirty-five years, quite unknown to the Jewish people, he became for nine years its pride and its hope. That he should have won this place in Jewish thought and feeling is one of the wonders of his wonderful life.
He had waded far through the water of assimiliation—through deep parts where he almost lost his depth; in the sunniest years of his existence he was completely taken up with interests that showed no sign of Jewish character. He became quite devoted to artistic objects; he wearied himself in literary work. He had but one goal of fame, to win the stage and to stand firm on the conquered ground. Nothing guided him in the direction of his own life-work; nothing prompted his soul to take up the Jewish questions till the day came when the position of the Jewish people made him greatly conscious of his own Judaism.
He lived in the middle of the nineties in Paris. It was the tragic moment when the French social organism began to echo with the cries: "Death to the Jews!" Then Herzl paused sharply. One of the most sensitive parts of his being had been hit in the raw—his pride.
For Herzl was a proud man, not supercilious, not vain: proud. That is, he had the definite consciousness of a moral worth and that self-respect of all noble natures which makes one readily think of the Fathers. He felt his blood to be a precious
heritage, his origin to be a distinction. This through and through prominent Jew, who, as representative of the Neue Freie Presse in Paris, because of his profession, had to go daily into the Chamber of Deputies and read the anti-Semitic journals and writings, looked shudderingly into the abyss of anti-Semitic bestiality which gaped before him. He could not bear that his forefathers should be libelled in him and his successors be despised. He rose with the complete sense of his strong nature against reckless Luegers, who included him together with all Jews in the net of collective libel in order to drag him to moral annihilation, and he, in position and development up till then an all-around free original personality, accepted at once with courageous pride the common obligation with his own in face of the foe who would thrust the Jews out of the pale of human society because of their race.
He thought of his relation to the Jewish people—of the relations of the Jews to other people, and arrived at the conviction that this relation is intolerable, and since he was of a strong and resolute character he embraced at once the purpose of radically changing the constitution and position of his people whose fate he must share and from then onwards would share willingly.
No one, not even himself, had, up to then, suspected that he had qualities which he applied to his new object. Herzl literally grew with his great aims. He grew so strong that his acquaintances could no longer follow him with the usual measure, and opposed him with absurd scorn or libellous small talk, for he had grown away beyond the reach of their short yard measure.