I'd say the French (Dreyfus Affair) had more to do with his Zionism. Before that he was decidedly anti-Zionist.
True that.
Would you be surprised to hear that I had never even heard about Zionism in school? 
All I know about it I learned from various books in college, over time on the net and of course from TV.
Considering the amount of "DON'T TELL THE CHILDREN IT MIGHT SCARE THEM OR TURN THEM TO PSYCHO" that Germany has in its school system (or overall stuff, seeing as games get censured there), specially when it comes to all the things related to that, I'd say it does not impresses me at all.
Although I'm finishing my antepenultimate year of school and the only thing we heard about zionism was a small footnote about it having an effect to demoralize the german populace. Probably will be more talked about when we reach WW2 proper. I learned about it on the glorious internet. Besides, every man should have a beard akin to Theodor Herz. I know it's Herzl but Herz sounds nicer.