Max Simon Nordau (born Simon Maximilian Südfeld; 29 July 1849 – 23 January 1923) was a Zionist leader, physician, author, and social critic.
He was a co-founder of the Zionist Organization together with Theodor Herzl, and president or vice-president of several Zionist congresses.
As a social critic, he wrote The Conventional Lies of Our Civilisation (1883), Degeneration (1892), and Paradoxes (1896). Although not his most popular or successful work whilst alive, Degeneration is the book most often remembered and cited today.
Biography
Simon (Simcha) Maximilian Südfeld (later Max Nordau) was born in Pest, Kingdom of Hungary, then part of the Austrian Empire. His father, Gabriel Südfeld, was a rabbi, but earned his livelihood as a Hebrew tutor. As an Orthodox Jew, Nordau attended a Jewish elementary school and earned a medical degree from the University of Pest in 1872. He then traveled for six years, visiting the principal countries of Europe. He changed his name before going to Berlin in 1873. In 1878 he began the practice of medicine in Budapest. In 1880 he went to Paris. He worked in Paris as a correspondent for Die Neue Freie Presse, and it was in Paris that he spent most of his life.
Before entering the university, he had begun his literary career in Budapest as contributor and dramatic critic for Der Zwischenact. Subsequently, he was an editorial writer and correspondent for several other newspapers. His newspaper writings were collected and furnished the material for his earlier books. He was a disciple of Cesare Lombroso.
Nordau was an example of a fully assimilated and acculturated European Jew. Despite being raised religious, Nordau was an agnostic. He married a Christian woman of Danish origin. Despite his Hungarian background, he felt affiliated to German culture, writing in an autobiographical sketch "When I reached the age of fifteen, I left the Jewish way of life and the study of the Torah ... Judaism remained a mere memory and since then I have always felt as a German and as a German only." Max Nordau was the father of the painter Maxa Nordau (1897–1993).
Nordau's conversion to Zionism was eventually triggered by the Dreyfus affair. Many Jews, amongst them Theodor Herzl, saw in the Dreyfus affair evidence of the universality of antisemitism.
Nordau went on to play a major role in the World Zionist Organization; indeed Nordau's relative fame certainly helped bring attention to the Zionist movement. He can be credited with giving the organization a democratic character.
In December 1903 a 24-year-old Russian student attempted to assassinate Nordau at a Parisian Hannukah celebration. The attacker shouted "Death to the East African" as he fired his gun.
When World War I broke out, as a native of Hungary he was accused of German sympathies. He denied the charge and afterward went to reside in Madrid.
Zionism
Dreyfus affair
Nordau's conversion to Zionism is in many ways typical of the rise of Zionism amongst Western European Jewry. The Dreyfus affair was central to Theodor Herzl's conviction that Zionism was now necessary. Herzl's views were formed during his time in France where he recognized the universality of antisemitism; the Dreyfus Affair cemented his belief in the failure of assimilation. Nordau also witnessed the Paris mob outside the École Militaire crying "à morts les juifs!" ("death to the Jews!").
His role of friend and advisor to Herzl, who was working as the correspondent for the Viennese Neue Freie Presse, began here in Paris. This trial went beyond a miscarriage of justice and in Herzl's words "contained the wish of the overwhelming majority in France, to damn a Jew, and in this one Jew, all Jews". Whether or not the antisemitism manifested in France during the Dreyfus Affair was indicative of the majority of the French or simply a very vocal minority is open to debate. However, the very fact that such sentiment had manifested itself in France was particularly significant. This was the country often seen as the model of the modern enlightened age, that had given Europe the Great Revolution and beginnings of Jewish Emancipation.