The idea was conceived by prominent Zionist Max Bodenheimer, in the context of World War I and longstanding German Mitteleuropa ambitions, utilizing the concept of national personal autonomy or national curiae, which would allow Jewish representation in the government alongside other groups despite their Pale of Settlement dispersion.[1][2][3] Bodenheimer was a founder of the German Committee for Freeing of Russian Jews.[4] The Committee drew up a plan to establish a buffer state between Germany and Russia, created from territory to be taken from Imperial Russia.[5] The biography by his daughter describes a divide and rule strategy to the benefit of Germany: "In this Federation Ukrainians, White Russians, Lithuanians, Esthonians and Latvians would together serve as a counterbalance to the Poles, and the Germans, and Jews would hold the balance of power between the two groupings."[1]