He was a Hungarian Jew from a wealthy German-speaking family. After taking a law degree in 1884, he became a writer in German of plays and fiction. As Paris correspondent for the Neue Freie Presse during 1891-95, Herzl covered the Dreyfus Affair, in which blatant Anti-Semitism marred French justice. He was shocked by the virulent Anti-Semitism and became convinced that Jewish assimilation was impossible. He expressed his views in The Jewish State (1896), in which he advocated the creation of a Jewish nation-state in Palestine. Despite the opposition of the chief rabbis of the West, Herzl organized the first World Zionist Congress at Basel, Switzerland, in August 1897. The 204 delegates calling for "a publicly recognized home for the Jewish people in Palestine." Herzl worked until his death