Theodor Herzl: Comedy and Politics Mix: Comic Figures in Theodor Herzl’s Zionist Literary Writing

This article investigates the use of humour, particularly comic figures, by the Viennese journalist and author Theodor Herzl, best known as the founder of the Zionist movement. Examining the main issues faced by early Zionists in turn-of-the-century Austria, namely antisemitism, other Jews’ wary cynicism towards the project and the sheer enormity of what was then nothing short of a pipe-dream, it analyses the absurdities and incongruities that produce humour in Herzl’s writing, and the assumptions that these contradictions ultimately rest on. In doing so, it examines his understanding of his and his contemporaries’ Jewish identity, its failings and complications, and what, perhaps, may be done to improve it.