Leon (Judah Leib) Pinsker's famous work Autoemancipation, Mahnruf an seine Stammesgenossen von einem russischen Juden (1882), in which he analyzed the psychological and social roots of anti-Semitism and called for the establishment of a Jewish national center. The book was intended to serve as a warning to his fellow Jews (Stammesgenossen) and was published anonymously, the author defining himself as "a Russian Jew." The book was written in a passionate style which forcefully expressed the author's deep anxiety for the fate of his people.

Pinsker first states that the reason for the old-new Jewish problem is the existence of the Jews as a separate ethnic entity among the nations, an entity which cannot be assimilated. The radical solution is the acquisition of a Jewish homeland, a country where they can live and which will be theirs, just like other nations. At best, Jews reach technical equality, but this legal change of status is not a real, social, emancipation. There are also economic reasons for anti-Semitism, because in competition, preference is given to one's own ethnic group and the foreigner is discriminated against. There is a saturation point to the number of Jews in each country, and when they exceed this point, persecution begins.

Pinsker directs his attacks against Western Jewry, the "diploma chasers" who view the dispersion of Jews throughout the world as a "mission." Moreover, the religious approach that the exile must be suffered in silence until the coming of the Messiah also weakened the desire for a Jewish homeland. He indicates that national consciousness has awakened in Russian and Rumanian Jewry, in the form of a movement to settle in Erez Israel. Pinsker did not wish to decide whether Erez Israel or a territory in America should be chosen as a Jewish homeland, since he felt that a national Jewish congress should decide the matter. He hoped that the worldwide process of national awakening would be of benefit to the Jewish people and that other nations would help them achieve national independence. He called on Western Jewry and on its "existing alliances" (meaning the Alliance Israelite Universelle, the Anglo-Jewish Association, etc.) to lighten the suffering of their brethren by founding a homeland and advocated the convocation of a National Jewish Congress to organize the new exodus. In order to settle destitute emigrants, a national fund should also be established.

The book had strong repercussions, both in Russia and abroad. The Hovevei Zion received it enthusiastically, though it had many opponents. Lilienblum attempted to convince Pinsker not to wait for a decision by Western Jewry, but to work immediately toward the realization of the plan in Erez Israel. Pinsker, however, refused to make a decision as to the location of the homeland. Nevertheless, Hermann Schapira, who accompanied Lilienblum, managed to win him over in the summer of 1883. Discussions, also attended by Max Mandelstamm from Kiev and several others, led to the decision to work for the establishment of a center for Jewish settlement, in Erez Israel if possible, and to convene a congress, with the participation of the Hibbat Zion movement, to choose a central executive committee. Afterward Pinsker held a meeting of community leaders at his house, and they chose a committee to organize the movement; he was elected chairman, with Lilienblum as secretary. The committee made contact with existing groups of the Hibbat Zion movement, and encouraged the establishment of new groups. The Warsaw branch of the movement was also active in organizing a convention, which met at Kattowitz on Nov. 6, 1884, and was attended by members of the Hibbat Zion from Russia and abroad. Pinsker was chosen chairman of the convention, and in his opening speech he indicated the need for Jews to return to working the land. He did not mention national revival or independence, since this new movement wished to attract Western Jews. At his suggestion, the convention decided to found the Montefiore Association for the dissemination of the idea of agriculture among Jews and to engage their support for Jewish settlers in Erez Israel. Pinsker was elected chairman of the temporary executive committee, whose seat was in Odessa.

Jüdischer Verlag, the first Jewish-Zionist publishing house in Western Europe. It was established in 1902 by M. Buber; B. Feiwel, E. M. Lilien, L. Motzkin, A. Nossig, Ch. Weizmann, and others, who constituted the core of the Democratic Fraction. In line with the aims of the Fraction, the publishing house was to serve as an expression of the Jewish renaissance by publishing the spiritual, cultural, literary, and artistic treasures of the Jewish people over the ages as a basis for the spiritual-cultural rebirth of the Jewish people. The idea had received Herzl's warm support at the Fifth Zionist Congress (1901). The aim of the plan was to supplement the political activities of the Zionist Organization and to serve as a bridge between Western and Eastern Jews. The first book, Juedischer Almanach (1902) edited by Feiwel and Lilien, included authors from both East and West and presented all types of literary works, some of them translated from Hebrew and Yiddish. The second book, Eine juedische Hochschule (1902), written by Buber, Feiwel, and Weizmann (translated into Hebrew in 1968 by S. Esh with a preface by S. H. Bergman), voiced for the first time the idea of establishing a Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 1907, when the publishing house was transferred to the Zionist Organization, it was removed to Cologne; it returned to Berlin in 1911. Until 1920 it was directed by A. Eliasberg, and from 1920 on by S. Kaznelson. The firm passed through periods of prosperity and times of crisis. It flourished especially under the direction of Kaznelson, when it became one of the greatest Jewish publishing firms in the world, maintained without external support. Among the hundreds of books published by it were the works of Ahad Ha-Am, Herzl, Nordau, A. D. Gordon, Agnon (in Hebrew and in German), Bialik, J. L. Peretz, Mendele Mokher Seforim, and Bergelson, Dubnow's Weltgeschichte des Juedischen Volkes, the five volume Juedisches Lexikon, L. Goldschmidt's German translation of the Talmud in twelve volumes, Adolf Boehm's Die Zionistische Bewegung, Tur-Sinai's German translation of the Bible, the book "Yizkor" (dedicated to Ha-Shomer in Erez Israel), Trumpeldor's diaries, Jabotinsky's book on the Jewish Legion, the monthly Der Jude, edited by Buber, etc. The distribution of some books was extraordinarily large (Dubnow's works on Jewish history and history of Hasidism, 100,000 copies; the Juedisches Lexikon, 50,000 copies; the translation of the Talmud, 100,000 copies; Herzl's works and diaries, 30,000 copies). In 1938 the firm was closed by the Gestapo and its warehouse confiscated.