Old-New Land

Front matter

OLD-NEW LAND

("ALTNEULAND")

BY THEODOR HERZL

Preface

PREFACE

If Theodor Herzl’s Judenstaat was a promise, his later, indeed last, book became prophecy. Between the writing of these two Jewish classics, the author had found himself. In The Jewish State he had drawn with a somewhat unsure touch the Jewish scene, that is to say, the scene in which the Jews and the world affect each other. In this volume, Herzl had almost ceased to ponder upon the interplay of the Jew and the world, and as his valediction, he indulged in forecast of what the Jewish State was likely to become, how it would develop. True, it is novel or romance, but it is more than that. His brilliant and daring imagination clothes itself in novel form, but his vision expresses itself in the manner and mood of unafraid prophecy.

Old-New Land becomes Herzl’s tribute to his friends, firm and unwavering, his memorial of his enemies, who never wavered save as expediency bade. Herzl tells the of Old-New Land with such infinite charm as to forbid any attempt to sketch its contents. Enough to say that within a few years of the appearance of his diagnosis of the Jewish disease and the remedy he prescribed, he tells the story of how Old-New Land came to pass. What power had come to Theodor Herzl in the few years between the appearance of the two books! Such power derived from his own matur­ing strength and from the heartening support of the Jew­ish masses. Such support, growing into an almost mystic faith, neither the little Jewish politicians within nor the big Jewish philanthropists outside the frame-work of the movement were able to alienate or divert.

The greatness of Judenstaat lay in its daring and vision. The greatness of Old-New Land is seen after forty years to lie in the accuracy of its prognosis and the little less than miraculous truth of its prophecy. Thus did the dreamer reveal how valid is his byword, Wenn Ihr wollt, dann ist es kein Maerchen. And if ye truly will it, it need not remain a dream. The prophet-seer had become the architect-builder of the edifice that was to become the Jewish State.

The publication of Old-New Land in the competent translation of Lotta Levensohn is another sign of Herzl’s coming to his own. Bein’s admirable biography, the re­print of “Excerpts from Herzl’s Diaries," the appearance of this English version of the second of his two Zionist classics, testify alike to the deepening understanding and appreciation of the foremost Jew of centuries. Such Theodor Herzl was. Let him who would reserve that place for Moses Mendelssohn or Baruch Spinoza read these out­lines of Old-New Land of which Herzl dreamed, only to translate his dream into such outline of the future as he moved his people to reshape. Palestine, upon the soil of which Herzl stood only once, in the fall of 1898, in fruit­less hope of negotiation with an unworthy, long dethroned monarch of his people, is become Old-New Land.

If Herzl could speak, he would repeat a thousand times, “And if you truly will it, it need not remain dream or parable." Half a million pioneers have by the miracle of toil and sweat and faith transmuted Old-New Land into that fact of unimpeachable significance today, the Pales­tine re-settlement, the foundations of the morrow’s Jewish Commonwealth of Palestine. Herzl, poet, seer, prophet, rests secure in his people’s self-ennobling hope of Old-New Land.

Stephen S. Wise

New York, April, 1941

Translator's Introduction

TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION

Though Herzl’s single visit to Palestine lasted half a week perhaps, and was no journalistic expedition in search of local color, it is probable that the idea of writing a novel with the future of Palestine as the theme occurred to him then. The squalor of Jaffa did not frighten him, nor the degradation of Jerusalem, though, as he reports, “the once royal city could have sunk no lower.” Nor did swamps and sand-wastes dishearten him as they had many a lesser man. He knew how to take in the future as well as the present into his embracing but prophetic glance. Not that he looked at the land through roseate glasses—he had too true an eye for that—but rather through the somber, brown-tinted ones that are a necessity to dull the white glare of the sun on buildings and roads and the too intense blue of the skies. Everything needed to be done, but nothing impossible was required. “If you will it, it is no fable!” Thus his call to the Jews, who had every reason to will it. Was not their life made intolerable for them, here physically, there spiritually, by the clubs and pitch­forks of pogromstchiks, by the subtle, soul-penetrating refinements of “academic” anti-Semitism. Life could not be lived so; nor was there need.

The ancestral land lay waiting for them to reclaim it. First, the proper political framework must be created with the assent and support of the Great Powers; and these would be forthcoming once the Jews provided the funds for the “charter” to Palestine as an autonomous province for Jewish settlement under Ottoman suzerainty. (Herzl did not foresee the radical changes that were destined to be made in the political geography of half the world, Palestine included, within the ensuing twenty years; but is it not as though he were guided to enlist the friendship of England, preparing the minds and hearts of her states­ men for the day when the fate of Palestine depended upon them?) Modern engineering, agricultural methods, com­mercial and industrial efficiency would do the rest, and the Jews had all those things to give, together with the initial investment capital. Everything depended upon their will to do so, and he was as certain of that as of his own. If he appended an “if,” it was a mere form of speech; he believed in no “ifs.”

Conceiving his Zionism in protest against anti-Semitism, he gives a constructive answer to the anti-Semites through Old-New Land. It is intended to convince the anti-Zionist Jews too, of course, and also to enhearten his declared followers. The vision was so crystal-clear to himself that it seemed as if the ideal Jewish commonwealth had already been achieved when he so accurately described it as an accomplished fact. It does not matter whether he really thought that a prosperous, autonomous, co-operative commonwealth with all its problems solved could be established within twenty years (though, like many others, he expected miracles of the dawning twentieth century), or that a Jewish majority could be achieved within that space, or that within a year or two of laying down his pen a mass migration could be begun with half a million souls? He knew that wished-for achievement must be projected into the present; for the blue haze of the distant future fatally blurs the will. And so he crowded those twenty years to superhuman capacity, knowing that it might take longer perhaps ten years, perhaps twenty—but that it must all come true in the main as he envisioned it. And already, slowly, too slowly, but surely enough, the facts are bearing him out, even though those years have lacked his dynamic, obsessing propulsion.

So Herzl wove his vision of the model commonwealth in Palestine, where the intellectual proletariat of Central Europe would exercise their skill in law, medicine, jour­nalism, administration, engineering, architecture, art, mu­sic and philosophy for the upbuilding and progress of the land, and the proletarian masses of Eastern Europe drop their peddlers’ packs to become straight-backed, sun-bronzed peasants and artisans. Then the Jew, degraded to less than man’s estate by anti-Semitism, would regain the full stature of manhood on his old soil, renewing it with his love and his labor, the old yellow badge of shame be­ coming the insignia of Jewish honor, and Palestine lead­ing the way toward resolving industrial and international strife into the sweet concord of brotherhood.

Altneuland—Old-New Land—is assumed by the spring of 1923 to be basking in its reclaimed place in the sun. Both Palestine and the Turkish Government have profited by the terms of the concession granted to the Jews, and the political future of the country is guaranteed. The Haifa harbor is finished, the system of highroads and rail­ways is complete to the last detail, the Dead Sea is yielding up its treasures to agriculture and industry, the falls of the Jordan have been harnessed, the Valley of Jezreel is a great complex of field, orchard, and forest, the cities have been rebuilt, and the “Zion” university graces the brow of Scopus.

If these things today are still in what might be called their advanced beginnings, and if some of his forecasts are not yet fulfilled in any tangible form, it is not Herzl’s reasoning or his capacity for prophetic apprehension that are at fault. At most he can but be charged with the gen­erous error of imagining that all of Jewry burned with the same imperative haste as he to put an end to Kishineffs, physical and spiritual, forever.

Though Herzl’s approach to social, economic, and cul­tural problems does not, indeed, always tally with that of the Palestine of today, yet his advocacy of national ownership of land, of a comprehensive system of pro­ducers’ and consumers’ associations that would still leave a free field to certain types of private initiative, of fraterni­zation with the Arabs, and of an autonomous common­wealth without an army or military service, has the whole­hearted support of many of the best elements in the Yishuv. That he did not, and really could not grasp the implications of Ahad Ha’am’s Merkaz Ruchani, the cul­tural-spiritual center without which Palestine might at best become a prosperous ghetto, was not only the handi­cap of a leader without a folk-background and traditions, but the tragedy of the Diaspora: that it produced leaders, gifted, valiant champions with such handicaps.

Among the characters in Old-New Land are a number of obvious portraits of his own lieutenants, and, it is to be feared, of people in his own Viennese milieu whom he did not like. Friedrich Loewenberg is obviously a partial portrait of himself as a struggling young doctor of laws denied opportunity for a career in his field by Austrian anti-Semitism. The peddler-boy who rises to the presidency of the Old-New Land is in many senses identifiable with David Wolfsohn, Herzl’s successor as head of the Zionist Organization. Under paraphrased names we recog­nize the architect Marmoreck and his brother the bacteri­- ologist who do distinguished work in building up the country, and also the eye-specialist of Kieff, Dr. Mandelstamm. As for “Tschoe Levy,” director-general of the whole colonization enterprise, not many guesses are needed to penetrate a description so charmingly and affectionately drawn. Most delightful of all is old Kingscourt, the lovable German misanthrope, who must have been drawn from life, and who declares with the cavalry oaths he claims to have unlearned that he cannot understand why the Jews are not tremendously proud of their past, and why they don’t bring to Palestine the shade and the water that are all it needs. And they can hardly blame the anti-Semites, he scolds, when they think so little of them­selves and of their own land!

Over and over again Herzl assures us, as he explains how the transformation came about, that the Jews did nothing new in the Old-New Land; merely transplanted facilities and institutions existent in all civilized countries at the end of the nineteenth century: trees, plants, electric plows, clinics, research institutes, machinery, co-opera­tives, theaters, barracks, transmission of power over wires, engineering skill, commercial experience. Obviously he wished to emphasize the point that everything needful was already available, that there was no need to make new things; but he labored it so much that it was clear he attributed no creative powers whatever to the Jews. Adapt and develop existing facilities, ideas and institutions they could and did in the Old-New Land, and with superb re­sults. But in all those years no new ideas or schools are born in any field of thought or activity. Culturally and every other way, the country is a collection of copied models. A “Mosaic mosaic” teases old Kingscourt. And, though his Jewish friend Loewenberg says it is that, plus something more, the plus is left abruptly undefined.

Nowhere in the Old-New Land is there anything crea­tively Jewish. In all the vigorous life with which it teems, there has not been sufficient spiritual energy to revive the Hebrew language, even though the practical exigencies of the ingathering of so many diasporas must have demanded it, to put the matter in terms of the lowest common de­nominator. A formal place is assigned to the language, but nothing more: there is Hebrew opera and drama among the English, French, Italian, Spanish, German and Yiddish productions; school children sing Hebrew songs for distinguished visitors. But the sturdy peasants speak the Russian or Galician Yiddish dialect, and give German names to their model villages; cultured people (the lan­guage question has been left vague, but the inference seems clear from the text) speak literary German. Herzl, then, did not foresee a Hebrew press, Hebrew assemblies, Hebrew schools, Hebrew-speaking grocers and servant-maids, a life, in brief, that is tinctured through and through with the Hebrew idiom. There a miracle has been achieved, and this dreamer who was not of the ghetto, thought himself one who dealt only with “practi­cal” potentialities. If he himself could not muster up enough Hebrew to purchase a railway ticket, how imagine a ticket-seller twenty years later whose native idiom it would be?

Granting all this, it is still only fair to ask ourselves: Who would have been prouder or happier than Herzl could he have heard the little ones chattering Hebrew in town and village, the young people singing Hebrew love songs, calling wild flowers by their Hebrew names? It would have added a cubit to his stature, made him sick with joy.

Further, for reasons that form part of the Jewish tragedy, Herzl did not have the key to Jewish national psychology. For him Judaism meant, aside from traditional custom and synagogue worship, only Judenschmerz. Yet, when he fashioned a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine in the image of his own Weltanschauung, its major features were psychologically and historically true. In Old-New Land there is neither war nor preparation for war (there are hints in it that he hoped all the nations had unlearned the arts of war by 1923!). There is no tinge of imperialistic desire throughout the borders of the land. Toleration for the stranger goes to such lengths that the Jewish coloring of the Utopia seems at times to fade out altogether! Its form of economic organization makes impossible the grinding of the faces of the poor, and from every other paragraph tacitly speaks the keen desire that all mankind may profit by the lessons the Jews have learned through their own travail without demanding impossible things from human nature.

Old-New Land, though it is but a tract interwoven with a thin thread of romance, rewards the reader with an insight into the workings of a great soul that found mar­tyrdom when it tried to redeem its people, without ever knowing that the martyrdom achieved its purpose. And the study of the reality that is Eretz Israel today in the light of his vision must stir wonder, if not awe. As we ponder, let us not forget, that but for that vision, much of what has come to pass in Palestine would never have known its beginnings.

Lotta Levensohn

Jerusalem, August, 1929.

Book One

BOOK ONE

An Educated, Desperate Young Man

I

Sunk in deep melancholy, Dr. Friedrich Loewenberg sat at a round marble table in his café on the Alsergrund. It was one of the most charming of Viennese cafés. Ever since his student days he had been coming there, appear­ing every afternoon at five o’clock with bureaucratic punctuality. The sickly, pale waiter greeted him submissively, and he would bow with formality to the equally pale girl cashier to whom he never spoke.

After that, he would seat himself at the round reading table, drink his coffee, and read the papers with which the waiter plied him. And when he had finished with the dailies and the weeklies, the comic sheets and the profes­sional magazines—this never consumed less than an hour and a half—there were chats with friends or solitary musings.

That is to say, once upon a time, there had been light­hearted talk. Now only dreams were left, for the two good comrades with whom he had been wont to while away the idle, pleasant evening hours at this café had died several months previously. Both had been older than he; and it was, as Heinrich had written him just before sending a bullet into his temple, “chronologically reasonable” that they should yield to despair sooner than he. Oswald went to Brazil to help in founding a Jewish labor settlement, and there succumbed to the yellow fever.

So it happened that for several months past Friedrich had been sitting alone at their old table. Now, having worked through to the bottom of the pile of newspapers, he sat staring straight ahead without seeking out someone to talk to. He felt too tired to make new acquaintances, as if he were not a young man of twenty-three, but a gray­beard who had all too often parted with cherished friends. His gaze was fixed upon the light cloud of smoke that veiled the corners of the room.

Several young men stood about the billiard table, mak­ing bold strokes with their long poles. They were in the same boat as himself, but for all that not too unhappy—these budding physicians, newly baked jurists, freshly graduated engineers. They had completed their profes­sional studies, and now they had nothing to do. Most of them were Jews. When they were not too engrossed in cards or billiards, they complained how very hard it was to make one's way "these days." Meanwhile they passed “these days” in endless rounds of cards. Friedrich felt sorry for the thoughtless young fellows, though at the same time he rather envied them.

They were really only a kind of superior proletariat, victims of a viewpoint that had dominated middle-class Jewry twenty or thirty years before: the sons must not be what the fathers had been. They were to be freed from the hardships of trade and commerce. And so the younger generation entered the “liberal” professions en masse. The result was an unfortunate surplus of trained men who could find no work, but were at the same time spoiled for a modest way of life. They could not, like their Christian colleagues, slip into public posts; and became, so to say, a drug on the market. Nevertheless, they had the obliga­tions of their “station in life,” an arrogant sense of class distinction, and degrees that they could not back up with a shilling. Those who had some means gradually used them up, or else continued to live on the paternal purse. Others were on the lookout for eligible partis, facing the delicious prospect of servitude to wealthy fathers-in-law. Still others engaged in ruthless and not always honorable competition in pursuits where genteel manners were requisite. They furnished the curious and lamentable spectacle of men who, because they did not want to become merchants, dealt at "professionals" in secret diseases and unlawful legal affairs. Some who in their need became journalists trafficked in public opinion. Others ran about to public assemblies and hawked worthless slogans in order to make themselves known in quarters where they could make useful party connections.

Friedrich would not resort to any of these shifts. "You are not fit for life," poor Oswald had said grimly just before going off to Brazil. "You let too many things dis­gust you. One must be able to swallow things. Vermin, for example, or offal. So a man becomes strong and well-fleshed, and winds up in a good berth. But you—you are nothing but a noble ass. 'Get thee to a nunnery, Ophelia!' No one will believe that you are an honest man, because you are a Jew What will happen to you? Your few inherited shillings will melt away long before you can get a foothold in the law. Then you will be compelled either to do something disgusting—or to hang yourself. Buy yourself a rope, I beg you, while you still have a gulden. Don't count on me! For one thing, I shall not be here. For another, I am your friend!"

Oswald had coaxed him to come along to Brazil, but he had not been able to decide to do so. He did not confide his secret reason to the friend who was going to an early death in a strange land. The "reason" was blond and dreamy, a marvelously sweet creature. Not even to these trusted comrades had he ventured to speak of Ernestine, fearing their jests. And now the two dear fellows were gone. He could not turn to them for sympathy or advice even if he wished. His situation was very difficult. What would they have said if he had told them? Suppose they had never gone away, and all three were now sitting to­gether at the old reading table? Closing his eyes, Friedrich held an imaginary conversation.

"My friends, I am in love. No, I love"

"Poor fellow!" Heinrich would have said.

Oswald, however: "Such stupidity is quite like you, dear Friedrich!"

"Oh, it’s more than stupidity, my friends. It’s fullfledged madness. If I were to ask Ernestine Loeffler’s father for her hand, he would probably laugh at me. I am a mere lawyer's assistant, with a salary of forty gulden a month. I have nothing left … nothing at all. These last few months have been my ruin. I have spent the last few hun­dred gulden of my inheritance. I know it was madness to strip myself of everything. But I wanted to be near her …to watch her graceful gestures, to listen to her sweet voice. I had to go to the spa where she was staying for the summer. There were plays, concerts, and all the rest of it. And a man has to dress well in that set. Now I have noth­ing left, but I love her as much as ever. No, more than ever!"

"And what do you want to do?" Heinrich was asking.

"I want to tell her of my love for her, and ask her to wait for me for a few years until I can establish myself."

Oswald's cynical laughter echoed through the reverie. "Yes, yes! To wait! Ernestine Loeffler wait for a starveling until she is passé. Ha! ha! ha!"…

Someone actually was laughing close to Friedrich’s ear. He opened his eyes with a start. Schiffmann, a young bank clerk whom he had met at the Loefflers, stood before him laughing heartily. “You must have gone to bed very late last night. Dr. Loewenberg, to be sleepy at this hour!”

Friedrich was embarrassed. “I was not asleep, he replied.

“Well, this will be another late night. Of course you’re going to the Loefflers’.” Schiffman lounged into a seat beside the reading table.

Friedrich cared little for the young fellow, but tolerated his company because he could speak to him of Ernestine, and often learned from him what plays she was to attend. (Schiffmann had his connections with theatrical box offices, and could secure tickets for the most crowded perform­ances.) “Yes,” he replied, “I also am invited there tonight.”

Schiffmann, who had picked up a newspaper, exclaimed suddenly, “I say, this is curious!”

“What is it?”

“This advertisement.”

“Ah, you read the advertisements, too!” commented Friedrich, with an ironic smile.

“Do I read the advertisements too?” retorted Schiffmann.

“I read the advertisements in particular. There’s nothing more interesting in the paper except the stock exchange reports.”

“Indeed! I never read the stock exchange reports.”

“Ah, yes, you . . . But I! After one glance at the ex­change rates, I can sum up the whole European situation. . . . But after that I turn at once to the advertisements. You’ve no idea of the things one finds there. Heaps of things and people are for sale. That is to say, everything in the world can be bought for a price, but one cannot always pay the price. From the advertising columns I always find out what opportunities there are. I say: Know everything, need nothingǃ … I have noticed a remarkable advertisement for the last few days, but I do not under­stand it.”

“Is it in a foreign language?”

“Well, just look at this.” Schiffmann handed the paper to Friedrich, and pointed to a small notice. It read:

"Wanted, an educated, desperate young man willing to make a last experiment with his life.

Apply N. O . Body, this office.”

“You are right,” said Friedrich. “That is a remarkable advertisement. 'An educated, desperate young man.’ Such a man might be found, of course, but the condition im­posed is a very difficult one. A man must be desperate indeed to throw away his life on a last experiment.”

“Well, Mr. Body seems not to have found him. He has been advertising for some time. But I should like to know who this Mr. Body is with his queer tastes.”

“It is no one.”

“No one?”

“N. O. Body—Nobody. Means no one in English.”

“Ah, yes. I had not thought of English. Know everything, need nothing But it’s time to go if we’re not to be late at the Loefflers’. We must be punctual this evening.”

“Why this evening particularly?”

“Sorry, but I can’t tellǃ Discretion is a point of honor with me But be prepared for a surprise Waiterǃ Checkǃ”

A surprise? Of a sudden Friedrich felt a vague anxiety.

As he left the car with Schiffmann, he noticed a ten-year-old boy standing in the outer doorway. The child’s shoulders were hunched up in a thin little coat. He held his arms tightly across his body, and stamped on the drifted snow in a sheltered nook. The hopping seemed almost like a pose, but Friedrich realized that with those torn shoes the child must be freezing bitterly. He picked three copper coins out of his pocket by the light of the street lamp. The boy thanked him shiveringly, and ran off.

“Whatǃ You encourage street begging!” cried Schiffmann indignantly.

“I don’t imagine the little fellow is running around in this December weather to amuse himself Seemed like a Jewish child too.”

“Then let him go to the Jewish Community or to the Israelitsche Allianz, and not loiter about cafés in the eve­ning!”

“Don’t get excited, Mr. Schiftmann. You gave him nothing.”

“My dear sir,” said Schiffmann firmly, “I am a member of the Society against Pauperization and Beggary. Annual dues, one gulden.”

II

The Loeffler family lived on the second floor of a large house on Gonzaga Street, the ground floor being occupied by the cloth firm of Moritz Loeffler & Co.

When Friedrich and Schiffmann entered the foyer they realized from the number of coats and wraps already hang­ing there that the evening’s gathering was larger than usual.

“Quite a clothing shop,” remarked Schiffmann.

Friedrich knew most of the people already assembled in the drawing room. The only stranger was the bald-headed man who stood next to Ernestine by the piano smiling at her confidentially.

The girl extended her hand cordially to the newcomer. “Doctor Loewenberg, come and be introduced to Mr. Leopold Weinberger.”

“Member of the firm of Samuel Weinberger and Sons of Bruenn,” supplemented Papa Loeffler, not without a touch of solemnity and benevolence.

The gentlemen shook hands politely. Friedrich noted that Mr. Weinberger of Bruenn had a decided squint and very damp palms. He was not sorry, because these char­acteristics banished the thought that had flashed into his mind as he entered the room. Ernestine and a man like that—simply impossible! She was enchanting as she stood there—slender, graceful, her lovely head a little bent. Friedrich feasted his eyes on her, but had to make room for other guests. Mr. Weinberger of Bruenn, however, kept somewhat obtrusively and persistently by her side.

Friedrich turned inquiringly to Schiffmann. “This Mr. Weinberger is probably an old family friend?”

“Oh, no. They know him only a fortnignt, but he is a fine cloth firm.”

“What is fine, Mr. Schiffmann—the cloth or the firm?” asked Friedrich, now elated and reassured. Certainly an acquaintance of a fortnight could not be a fiance.

“Both,” replied Schiffmann. “Samuel Weinberger and Sons can borrow all the money they want at four per cent. First rate Things are very elegant here tonight. Look over there That lean man with the staring eyes is Schlesinger, the confidential representative of Baron Gold­stein. He is obnoxious, but very popular.”

“Why?”

“Why ask, ‘why’? Because he is the agent of Baron Goldstein Do you know that gray mutton-chop whis­ker? Not him, either? Where do you come from? That’s Laschner, one of the most important men on the stock exchange—a large speculator. He’ll stake you a couple of thousand shares as if they were nothing at all. Just now he is very rich. Wish I had his money! Whether he’ll have a penny this time next year, I don’t know. Just now his wife has larger diamonds than any other woman They all envy her”

Mrs. Laschner sat in a corner with some equally over­ dressed women passionately discussing millinery. The other groups were still in the reserved ante-prandial mood. Some of the guests, who seemed to be informed as to the nature of the impending surprise, whispered discreetly to one another. Friedrich felt uneasy, without exactly know­ing why. Next to Schiffmann, he was the most insignificant guest of the evening. He had never before felt ill at ease in this circle because Ernestine had always kept him by her. But tonight she gave him not a word or glance. This Mr. Weinberger of Bruenn must be a very entertaining companion. Friedrich was suffering from an additional humiliation imposed on him by an unkind Fate. He and Schiffmann were conspicuous by their lack of formal eve­ning costume—a circumstance that marked them as the social pariahs of the gathering. He would have preferred to run away, but lacked courage.