Herzl’s Literary Archives to Go to Palestine

The literary archives, manuscripts, etc. left by Dr. Theodore Herzl, which have been housed here for years in the home of his oldest friend, Engineer Johann Kremenetzki, are shortly to be transferred to Palestine, the J.T.A. representative here learns from Herr Kremenetzki, who recently returned from a visit to Palestine, where he went into the question of the transfer.

The collection includes a diary belonging to Dr. Herzl’s pre-Zionist days, with regard to which there is an action pending between the Zionist Organisation and the Vilna Yiddish Scientific Institute, which is now in possession of the volume. The late Dr. Leo Kellner, who was one of the trustees of the archives, handed the diary to Dr. Herzl’s son, Hans Herzl, it is understood, that he should see from it that his father had in his youth experienced similar periods of depression to his own, but had conquered them, in the hope that Hans would learn from that to conquer his own moods of depression. When Professor Kellner died, the diary remained in the possession of Hans, and when Hans died, it was sold, according to the instructions in his will, in ignorance of the circumstances under which it had come into his possession. The trustees of Dr. Herzh’s literary bequest, Herr Kremenetzki and Director Reichenfeld, and the Zionist Organisation claim that the volume must go back to the Herzl archives, and they have started an action in order to recover it from the Vilna Yiddish Institute.