Focusing on a pivotal yet often overlooked phase of Buber's early career, this book delves into his formative ideas and influences. It highlights the development of his philosophical thought and the impact of his experiences during this time. By examining lesser-known works and contexts, the author sheds light on Buber's contributions to existentialism and dialogue philosophy, offering a fresh perspective on his legacy and the significance of this period in shaping his later writings.
Two Jewish families, the Langs and the Ottenheimers, settled in the two separate parts of Suessen, District Goeppingen, in 1902. The Langs established a cattle business in Gross-Suessen, the Ottenheimers established a branch of their weaving business, headquartered in Goeppingen, in Klein-Suessen. Based primarily on archival sources, the study gives an insight into everyday rural Jewish life, persecution and deportation during the Holocaust, an American soldier's World War II experience, experiences of liberation from concentration camps, the reparations process and life after 1945.
An illuminating look at an understudied, but critical, period in Buber’s early career. Martin Buber (1878–1965) has had a tremendous impact on the development of Jewish thought as a highly influential figure in 20th-century philosophy and theology. However, most of his key publications appeared during the last forty years of his life and little is known of the formative period in which he was searching for, and finding, the answers to crucial dilemmas affecting Jews and Germans alike. Now available in paperback, Martin Buber’s Formative Years illuminates this critical period in which the seeds were planted for all of his subsequent work. During the period from 1897 to 1909, Buber's keen sense of the crisis of humanity, his intimate knowledge of German culture and Jewish sources, and his fearlessness in the face of possible ridicule challenged him to behave in a manner so outrageous and so contrary to German-Jewish tradition that he actually achieved a transformation of himself and those close to him. Calling on spiritual giants of great historical periods in German, Christian, and Jewish history—such as Nicolas of Cusa, Jakob Boehme, Israel Baal Shem Tov, Rabbi Nachman of Brazlav, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Friedrich Nietzsche—Buber proceeded to subvert the existing order by turning his upside-down world of slave morality right side up once more. By examining the multitude of disparate sources that Buber turned to for inspiration, Gilya Gerda Schmidt elucidates Buber's creative genius and his contribution to turn-of-the-century Jewish renewal. This comprehensive study concludes that Buber was successful in creating the German-Jewish symbiosis that emancipation was to have created for the two peoples but that this synthesis was tragic because it came too late for practical application by Jews in Germany.
