The present study explores concepts of 'nation' and 'nationalism' in early German Zionism before the First World War. Doing so, it focuses on a series of crucial issues and keynote debates in the contemporary Zionist press, particularly in the prominent Zionist newspaper Jüdische Rundschau. The introduction adapts current theories of Zionism, nationalism and postcolonial studies so as to provide a methodological framework of analysis for Diaspora Zionism. It argues that German Zionism is best understood in line with Homi K. Bhabha’s notion of hybridity as it was characterized by a close affinity to various forms of German nationalism, while, at the same time, by its own distinctive – albeit contradictory or counternarrative – transformations of these adapted ideas.