Apostasy of a Prince: Hans Herzl and the Boundaries of Jewish Nationalism

Abstract

When Hans Herzl, son of Theodor Herzl, converted to Christianity in 1924 and committed suicide in 1930, he challenged the boundaries of the Zionist movement. Zionist responses to Hans’s conversion and suicide reveal underlying and conflicting assumptions regarding the religious, cultural, and ethnic boundaries of Jewish nationalism, both in the 1920s and 1930s, as well as in future Israeli state policy. This article traces responses in the press and among leadership of the World Zionist Organization to Hans’s conversion, as well as subsequent reactions to his suicide. To some, Hans’s anomalous life threatened Jewish unity and the Zionist movement; to others, Hans deserved not only a biography but a meaningful place in Zionist discourse. These conflicting definitions and priorities of Zionism in the 1920s and 1930s resurface within the legal and bureaucratic institutions of Israeli statehood, particularly in the 1962 Supreme Court case Rufeisen v. Ministry of the Interior.