The Hungarian-born Austrian Jewish author Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) founded the World Zionist Organization and served as its first president.

Theodor Herzl, son of Jacob and Jeanette Herzl, was born on May 2, 1860, in Budapest, Hungary, where he attended elementary and secondary schools. In 1878 he was admitted as a law student to the University of Vienna, but after a year of legal studies he switched to journalism. He worked for the Allgemeine Zeitung of Vienna until 1892, when he took an assignment in Paris as correspondent for the Vienna Neue Freie Presse. In this capacity he reported on the Dreyfus Affair in 1894, and he was greatly troubled by the anti-Semitism he saw in France at the time. In 1896 Herzl started his political career with the publication of his pamphlet The Jewish State: An Attempt at a Modern Solution of the Jewish Question.

According to The Jewish State, persecution could not destroy...