Despite the fact that Nordau was Jewish and a key figure in the Zionist movement ( Lombroso was also Jewish ), his theory of artistic degeneracy would be seized upon by German National Socialists during the Weimar Republic as a rallying point for their anti-Semitic and racist demand for Aryan purity in art.

Max Simon Nordau ( July 29, 1849 – January 23, 1923 ), born Simon Maximilian Südfeld in Pest, Hungary, was a Zionist leader, physician, author, and social critic.

Nordau was born Simon Maximilian, or Simcha Südfeld on 29 July 1849 in Budapest, then part of the Austrian Empire.

Nordau was central to the Zionist Congresses which played such a vital part in shaping what Zionism would become.

It was Nordau, convinced that Zionism had to at least appear democratic, despite the impossibility of representing all Jewish groups, who persuaded Herzl of the need for an assembly.

" There would be eleven such Congresses in all, the first, which Nordau organised, was in Basle, 29 – 31 August 1897.

Indeed the fact that Max Nordau, the trenchant essayist and journalist, was a Jew came as a revelation for many.

Nordau was also a staunch eugenicist.

One was the liberal or utilitarian school of Herzl and Nordau.

On May 13, 1946, the ship Max Nordau, carrying 1, 754 immigrants, was captured by the British destroyers HMS Jervis and HMS Chequers.

Nordau blamed modern social phenomena for creating pathological conditions under which unacceptable art was produced.

In Hungary, Hebrew-language authors included Solomon Lewison of Moor ( 1789 – 1822 ), author of " Melitzat Yeshurun "; Gabriel Südfeld, a poet who was the father of Max Nordau ; and the poet Simon Bacher.

Nordau also, at the 1898 Zionist Congress, coined the term " muscular Judaism " ( muskel-Judenthum ) as a descriptor of a Jewish culture and religion which directed its adherents to reach for certain moral and corporeal ideals which, through discipline, agility and strength, would result in a stronger, more physically assured Jew who would outshine the long-held stereotype of the weak, intellectually sustained Jew.

* January 23 – Max Nordau, Hungarian author, philosopher, and Zionist leader ( b. 1849 )

* July 29 – Max Nordau, Austrian author, philosopher, and Zionist leader ( d. 1923 )

The term Entartung ( or " degeneracy ") had gained currency in Germany by the late 19th century when the critic and author Max Nordau devised the theory presented in his 1892 book, Entartung.

Nordau drew upon the writings of the criminologist Cesare Lombroso, whose The Criminal Man, published in 1876, attempted to prove that there were " born criminals " whose atavistic personality traits could be detected by scientifically measuring abnormal physical characteristics.

Nordau developed from this premise a critique of modern art, explained as the work of those so corrupted and enfeebled by modern life that they have lost the self-control needed to produce coherent works.

Nordau went on to play a major role in the World Zionist Organisation ; indeed Nordau's relative fame certainly helped bring attention to the Zionist movement.

James mocks the author on the grounds that he exemplifies the then current school of medical materialism, stating that Nordau " has striven to impugn the value of works of genius in a wholesale way ( such works of contemporary art, namely, as he himself is unable to enjoy, and they are many ) by using medical arguments.

Nordau saw in Jewish Emancipation the result of ' a regular equation: Every man is born with certain rights ; the Jews are human beings, consequently the Jews are born to own the rights of man.

Nordau cited England as an exception to this continental anti-Semitism that proved the rule.

Herzl obviously took centre stage, making the first speech at the Congress ; Nordau followed him with an assessment of the Jewish condition in Europe.

Nordau used statistics to paint a portrait of the dire straits of Eastern Jewry and also expressed his belief in the destiny of Jewish people as a democratic nation state, free of what he saw as the constraints of Emancipation.

Whereas Herzl favoured the idea of an elite forming policy, Nordau insisted the Congress have a democratic nature of some sort, calling for votes on key topics.

As the 20th century progressed, Nordau seemed increasingly irrelevant as a cultural critic.

Nordau, in comparison, seemed very much a creature of the late 19th century.

Nordau died in Paris, France in 1923.

Thus, to cite but one example, the Pax Britannica of the nineteenth century, whether with the British navy ruling the seas or with the City of London ruling world finance, was strictly national in motivation, however much other nations ( e.g., the United States ) may have incidentally benefited.

The outstanding example was in Garibaldi And The Thousand, where he made use of unpublished papers of Lord John Russell and English consular materials to reveal the motives which led the British government to permit Garibaldi to cross the Straits of Messina.

Reviewing Davidson's The Testament Of An Empire Builder, for example, Thompson found that there was `` too much metrical dialectic ''.

For example, he captured some persons from York County, who with teams were taking to Philadelphia the furniture of a man who had just been released from prison through the efforts of his wife, and who apparently was helpless to prevent the theft of his household goods.

One example of this was his assertion that `` all servile revolts must be dealt with by physical force ''.

In Newark, for example, this gain was put at 26 per cent above the year-earlier level.

One effect of the spirited give-and-take of these discussions was to focus attention on practical applications and the necessity of being armed with the facts: knowledge of the destructive force of even the tiniest `` tactical '' atomic weapon would have a bearing on judgments as to the advisability of its use -- to defend Berlin, for example ; ;

For example, the importance of the Regulus 2, a very promising aerodynamic ship-to-surface missile designed to be launched by surfaced submarines, was greatly diminished by the successful acceleration of the much more advanced Polaris ballistic missile launched by submerged submarines.

Another example is the recent cancellation of the F-108, a long-range interceptor with a speed three times as great as the speed of sound, which was designed for use against manned bombers in the period of the mid-1960's.

For example, when the film is only four minutes old, Neitzbohr refers to a small, Victorian piano stool as `` Wilhelmina '', and we are thereupon subjected to a flashback that informs us that this very piano stool was once used by an epileptic governess whose name, of course, was Doris ( the English equivalent, when passed through middle-Gaelic derivations, of Wilhelmina ).

One growth center in a short bone -- distal phalanx of the second finger -- was chosen as an example for discussion here, primarily because epiphyseal-diaphyseal fusion, the maturity indicator for Completion in long and short bones, occurs in this center for girls near the menarche and for boys near their comparable pubescent stage.

For example, the steering committee might announce that the group felt a topic under study should not be dropped for an additional week as there was still too much of it untouched.

He was told he displayed, for example, a sense of superiority -- and he answered: `` Well, I am supposed to know all the answers, aren't I ''??

Recently, for example, a paranoid woman's large-scale philosophizing, in the session, about the intrusive curiosity which has become, in her opinion, a deplorable characteristic of mid-twentieth-century human culture, developed itself, before the end of the session, into a suspicion that I was surreptitiously peeking at her partially exposed breast, as indeed I was.

Hall, for example, was quite explicit on this point when he said states outside European civilization must formally enter into the circle of law-governed countries.

Fifty years ago the general raising of the school-leaving age to sixteen was an example of this movement.

Eric Hoffer, for example, once said that America was a paradise -- the only one in the history of the world -- for workingmen and small children.

The `` Poems of 1912 - 13 '' offer a good example of Hardy's style as it was manifested in the later productive decade.

Urethane foam, as only one example, was only introduced commercially in this country in 1955.

Just about the most enthralling real-life example of meeting cute is the Charles MacArthur-Helen Hayes saga: reputedly all he did was give her a handful of peanuts, but he said simultaneously, `` I wish they were emeralds ''.

When someone says, for example, `` They took x-rays to see that there was nothing wrong with me '', it pays to consider how this statement would normally be made.

For example, the BBB has reported it was receiving four times as many inquiries about quack devices and 10 times as many complaints compared with two years ago.

A further example of the incompatible difference in personalities was when two policemen held up a Torrio beer convoy on a West Side street and demanded $300 to let it through.