sentences:  Herzl had earlier confessed to his friend Max Bodenheimer that he "wrote what I had to say without knowing my predecessors, and it can be assumed that I would not have written it ["Der Judenstaat"] had I been familiar with the literature".In Istanbul, Ottoman Empire, 15 June 1896, Herzl saw an opportunity.With the assistance of Count Philip Michael von Nevlinski, a Polish émigré with political contacts in the Ottoman Court, Herzl attempted to meet Sultan Abdulhamid II in order to present his solution of a Jewish State to the Sultan directly.