Old new land
Altneuland is a utopian novel by the Austrian Jewish publicist Theodor Herzl (1860–1904), which was first published in 1902 in Leipzig.
Herzl was the founder of political Zionism and, six years after his factual, conceptual book The Jewish State, presented his utopia of a Jewish social order in Palestine in this novel .
title
Aḥad Haʿam sees the title of the novel in his book review as derived from the Prague Synagogue Altneuschul , whose name is a corruption of the original name Al Th'nai Schul . According to legend, this synagogue was built immediately after the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by emigrants from Jerusalem who used the stones they brought with them from the Jerusalem temple as a foundation. The Th'naj (condition) was agreed upon , "that as soon as the Messiah comes and the displaced people return to their homeland, the house will be demolished and the foundation stones brought back to Zion."
content
Plot of the novel
The unemployed young Jewish lawyer Friedrich Löwenberg from Vienna, for lack of professional prospects and because of lovesickness, enters into a contract with the embittered German-American engineer and millionaire Kingscourt (actually Adalbert von Königshoff) at the end of 1902 to accompany him to his property on an otherwise uninhabited Pacific island to stand by him there as a partner until his death. He gave the family of a Jewish beggar boy, David Littwak, whom he had met shortly before in front of the coffeehouse, an offer he had offered to settle his affairs. He fakes his landlady on a trip to mountaineering.
On the trip with Kingscourt's yacht through the Mediterranean Sea, they also visit Palestine, which, in the opinion of the millionaire, is after all the “home” of Löwenberg. From the coast they travel through the then desert, impoverished, dirty land to Jerusalem and back. They continue through the Suez Canal to the Pacific Island. There they spend 20 years alone with conversations, games and activities, regularly supplied by a ship from the mainland. They consciously forego newspapers and current literature.
After 20 years on the island, Kingscourt is curious about the social and particularly technical developments in the meantime, and in the spring of 1923 he decides to go back to Europe. They find out that shipping traffic in the Red Sea and through the Suez Canal has decreased considerably and learn that the cause lies in Palestine. They then visit the country again. At the port they meet the former Viennese beggar boy who believed Löwenberg dead and now plays an important role in the “ New Society for the Colonization of Palestine ”, which in the meantime has colonized the country under the leadership of Joseph Levy and with a modern one Has provided infrastructure.
David Littwak picks them up in his villa and guides them through the country. The description of the trip and the social, economic and technical infrastructure occupies the main part of the novel: In the meantime, many European Jews have settled in Palestine, which also attracts the upscale society of Central Europe in terms of culture and tourism. Among other things, Löwenberg also meets his once beloved, who is having a good time here with the society he has in unsympathetic memory from Vienna, and is suddenly healed.
In the course of the travels through the country and the clearly noticeable optimism, Löwenberg gradually regrets the lost years and wants to make himself useful in this project, but feels bound by his contract with Kingscourt. Littwak, in turn, falls in love with Littwak's little son Fritz, so that at the end of the day he decides to stay in Palestine after the child's illness. On the deathbed of Littwak's mother, who was unable to cure the health effects of her previous poverty despite the healing climate, Friedrich and Littwak's sister Mirjam, a teacher whom he had saved from starvation in Vienna as an infant, also meet, and David becomes Assembly of delegates of the “New Society” elected its president in absentia on the proposal of the two candidates without his knowledge.
The "New Society"
A large part of the novel is the description of the infrastructure and form of society. In Herzl's novel, the “New Society for the Colonization of Palestine” regulates immigration, monitors the economy and takes on all urban planning and infrastructure tasks, including schooling, internal security and health care. However, it is not a state, but a large corporation organized as a cooperative that has signed a settlement agreement with the Ottoman Empire and has nothing to do with the state other than paying an annual tax. Herzl chose this form after the reservations of the Ottoman rule and the Arab population against a Jewish state in Palestine had recently been made clear to him during on-site visits.
economy
The economic concept is fundamentally based on private property and market economy, but is predominantly shaped by large companies, mostly large cooperatives. However, the land is the sole property of the "New Society" and can only be leased by the owners for fifty years at a time (analogous to the Jubilee year of Old Testament Israel) in order to prevent land speculation, large land ownership and permanent impoverishment.
In terms of settlement, Roman Herzl's concept from the “Jewish state” follows: First of all, needy unskilled workers migrate, who, under the guidance of engineers, reclaim the land and create a basic infrastructure. Herzl relies on eucalyptus trees for the drainage of swamp areas. As the first branch of trade, branches of department store groups emerge, which can initially sell basic items and slow-moving goods here on a large scale. As a result, the "inefficient" retail trade, according to Herzl, cannot arise. Little by little, members of the next higher social class follow suit.
Most commercial enterprises are organized as cooperatives. The relevant newspapers and “telephone newspapers” (a forerunner of the radio, see Theatrophon ) are owned by their subscribers, to whom the profit is paid annually. Herzl assumes that this will promote serious reporting. In addition, there are also privately owned newspapers which, however, are committed to the special political interests of their owners.
Herzl mentions wine and citrus fruits as agricultural products. Tourism also plays a major role. Herzl represents the country of the future as a popular holiday, health resort and wintering location for the upper class of Central Europe with appropriate facilities (health resorts, noble hotels).
Infrastructure
The country is opened up by electrified railroad lines and paved roads and is connected to neighboring countries. The larger cities are supplied with a "suspension railway" . Herzl is even planning empty conduits under the streets so that new supply lines can be laid with little effort in line with technical progress.
Overhead lines supply the localities with electricity, which is mostly obtained from hydropower, including from the Dead Sea Canal , which uses the gradient from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea and operates huge turbines. The water level in the Dead Sea does not rise because all the water in the Jordan is used for irrigation.
Herzl does not develop any technical utopias: all the technical achievements that Herzl describes in the novel correspond to the state of the art from 1902 and were in use or in development at various locations.
society
The "New Society" that Herzl describes in the novel is a European society, it does not exclude non-Jews, but sees itself as cosmopolitan. A wealthy Turk named Reschid Bey is also a member of this society and Littwak's best friend and neighbor. Immigration is open to everyone, regardless of their origin, race or religion. In fact, at this point in time the population consists almost exclusively of Jews. In the novel, the Arab population of Palestine liked to use trade relations and the modern infrastructure from the start and thus benefited equally from colonization. She is also free to join the Society.
Herzl focuses on health and education in the description. This is how he imagines spa facilities and extensive parks. Health care is a priority of the “New Society” and education from elementary school to university graduation is free, but different for boys and girls. In the novel, Herzl also introduces a reformed penal system that visitors do not recognize as a prison, but rather mistake it for one of the many industrial colonies. Here, prisoners are used to rehabilitate physically strenuous but humane work.
Herzl's idea that high positions in the “New Society” are not elected to people who apply for the office, but only the most suitable according to their performance and personality, seems quite utopian. Anyone campaigning or actively applying will disqualify themselves. At the end of the novel, David Littwak is proposed and elected as president of the society by the two candidates in absentia and without his knowledge at the delegates' meeting of the "New Society" because one feels too old to serve a 7 year term and the other thinks they are more useful in their current position.
In "Altneuland" Herzl did not assume that the Jews would only speak Hebrew here , but described a multilingual society with the main languages German, Hebrew and Yiddish , which adheres to the European customs of the bourgeoisie, including visits to the opera and the theater. The members of the tour company that went through the novel still have to buy white gloves to visit the opera.
Religion does not play a special role in old new land . Although Herzl has the Jerusalem temple rebuilt and his protagonists also take part in a service there, nothing is said about the course of the service. Besides the temple there are synagogues, churches and mosques and in the port cities there are also Buddhist and Hindu temples. At the Seder in Littwaks house non-Jewish clergy and his Turkish friend Reschid participate, and in the novel play both a Zionist and a "New Society" belong Direction Rabbi a small role.
people
The figure of the architect “Steineck”, who heads urban development in “Old New Land”, is modeled on one of Herzl's friends from Vienna, the architect Oskar Marmorek . His brother, the doctor Alexander , also found “Professor Dr. Steineck “entry into the novel.
Some members of the Jewish so-called “better society” of Vienna, who smile at or even despise Zionism and social reforms, Herzl has erected an unflattering memorial in Old New Land .
effect
In the year of publication, Old New Land was translated into Hebrew by Nachum Sokolow and was given the poetic title Tel Aviv , with "Tel" (ancient settlement hill) standing for "old" and "Aviv" (spring) for "new". The translator knew the name from the biblical book Ezekiel , where it refers to a place in Babylonia to which the Jewish people had been resettled ( Ezek 3:15 EU ). The city of Tel Aviv , founded in 1909, was named after the translated book title .
expenditure
- If you want, it's not a fairy tale. Old New Land / The Jewish State , ed. by Julius H. Schoeps . Athenaeum, Bodenheim 1985, ISBN 3-7610-0384-6 .
- AltNeuLand. A utopian novel , ed. by David Gall. haGalil. Books on Demand, Norderstedt, 2004, ISBN 3-8334-1320-4 .
- Altnayland. Novel . Translated into Yiddish by Baal-Makhshoves . 1905 (title transliterated from Yiddish)
literature
- Steven Beller: Old new territory. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 1: A-Cl. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2011, ISBN 978-3-476-02501-2 , pp. 61-67.
- Sascha Feuchert : Timetable to Palestine. "Altneuland" by Theodor Herzl (1902). In: Dirk van Laak (ed.): Literature that wrote history. Göttingen 2011. ISBN 978-3525300152 .
- Clemens Peck: In the laboratory of utopia. Theodor Herzl and the "Old New Land" project . Jewish publishing house in Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2012.
- Aḥad Haʿam , Harry Torczyner: Old New Land (written 1902) . In: Am Scheidewege , Volume 2. Jüdischer Verlag, Berlin 1916, pp. 56–70 (accessed on May 20, 2016).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Aḥad Haʿam , Harry Torczyner: Old New Land (written in 1902) . In: Am Scheidewege , Volume 2. Jüdischer Verlag, Berlin 1916, pp. 56–70 (accessed on May 20, 2016).
- ^ Shlomo Avineri, Zionism According to Theodor Herzl , in Haaretz (December 20, 2002). Quote: "Altneuland" is [...] a utopian novel written by [...] Theodor Herzl, in 1902; [...] The year it was published, the novel was translated into Hebrew by Nahum Sokolow, who gave it the poetic name "Tel Aviv" (which combines the archaeological term "tel" and the word for the season of spring). In German: "Altneuland" is [...] a utopian novel, written by Theodor Herzl [...] in 1902; [...] In the same year the novel was translated into Hebrew by Nachum Sokolow , giving it the poetic title "Tel Aviv", in which the archaeological term "Tel (l)" and the word for the spring season were combined. [1]
Web links
- Old new land: full text at haGalil
- Old new territory: Scan near Gallica (Fraktur)