ABSTRACT
In 1998 the 50th anniversary of the state of Israel was celebrated. A year earlier, in 1997, was the 100th anniversary of the First Zionist Congress. The state of Israel itself was founded about 51 years after Theodor Herzl wrote in his diary, at the time of that historical Congress on 3 September 1897 the dramatic sentence, which, in retrospect was seen as a prophecy, and which was read at that time either as joke or an over-optimistic vision: ‘If I summarize the Basel Congress in one phrase-which, to be cautious I would not venture to say in public-it would be this: In Basel I have founded the Jewish State.’2
