[JUDAICA]. -- HERZL, Theodor (1860-1904). Der Judenstaat. Versuch einer moernen Losung der Judenfrage. Leipzig and Vienna: M Breitenstein, 1896. 8vo. (Title-page slightly soiled.) Later cloth; morocco folding case. FIRST EDITION OF HERZL'S PROPOSAL FOR A JEWISH STATE. Herzl proposed that the Jewish question was a political matter (rather than religious) and should be settled by a world council of nations. "It was Herzl's book which really crystallized the idea of a national home for the Jews. Two conceptions had prevailed hitherto: either that of the ghetto, presupposing an unbridgeable gulf between Jews and Gentiles, or that of assimilation, which meant a complete acceptance by the Jews of their environment leading eventually to their becoming part of the people among whom they lived. Herzl took a different view. By his work he transformed the Jewish people from a passive community into a positive political force" (PMM). Herzl organized a world congress at Basel in August 1897, and he became the first president of the World Zionist Organization, which was influential in the establishment of a Jewish state. "That a Jewish State was created in Palestine within fifty years of his death was due to the vision and practical methods of Herzl, expressed in his manifesto of 1896" (PMM 381).