Max Simon Nordau

Max Simon Nordau (born Simon Maximilian Südfeld; 29 July 1849 – 23 January 1923) was a Jewish 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. In his younger years, he was known as a social critic, writing The Conventional Lies of Our Civilisation (1883), Degeneration (1892), and Paradoxes (1896). By 1913, Nordau was established as the earliest major critic of modernism. Although not his most popular or successful work while alive, Degeneration is the book most often remembered and cited today.