22 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
attracted to anarchism.^18 Buber demonstrates in Paths in Utopia that he knows
this literature well, often thanks to Landauer’s translations, but Buber schol-
ars have shown little interest in contextualizing their understanding of Buber
through independent exploration of anarchist thought. Consequently, the gen-
eral perception of his politics follows the nebulous lines that Friedman, following
Buber himself, laid down.
Landauer before Buber: Anarchist Activism, 1890–1899
When he met Buber, Landauer already had a long record of radical agitation be-
hind him. In fact, at that very moment he was embroiled in a highly politicized
libel case, which would result in a six-month prison sentence.^19 Moritz von Egidy,
a former lieutenant colonel who became a Christian anarchist and pacifist, had
asked Landauer’s help in securing a retrial for Albert Ziethen, a prisoner whom
von Egidy believed to have been railroaded. In February 1898, Landauer pub-
lished an article in his newspaper, Der Sozialist, accusing a Berlin police official
of manufacturing evidence in the case, and he repeated the charges in a letter to
members of the Reichstag and the state’s attorney’s office.^20 But von Egidy died
before the trial, and Landauer dedicated the entire January 1899 issue of Der So-
zialist to his memory.^21 In that issue Landauer quotes this passage by von Egidy,
which he could have easily written himself: “Unthinking men connect the idea
of ‘Anarchy’ with the idea of disorder; that, however, is contained neither in the
word nor in the strivings of those who call themselves anarchists. On the con-
trary: a more complete order, an order that rests upon self-discipline and self-
rule; an order without force.”^22 A month later, still in mourning for his friend,
Landauer attended the meeting of the Neue Gemeinschaft at which he met his
second wife, Hedwig Lachmann, and other future collaborators, possibly includ-
ing Buber.
Commenting on the early years of Buber and Landauer’s friendship, Mendes-
Flohr contends that “Buber’s earlier intellectual relationship with Landauer was
found[ed] on common aesthetic and metaphysical concerns; political and social
questions were almost entirely absent from their prewar relationship.”^23 I would
qualify this judgment in two ways: first, at the moment that Landauer and Buber
first met, the former was on the cusp of a withdrawal from his stormy public
political career, which would persist for the first eight years of their acquain-
tance. Second, I emphasize different elements of Buber’s 1904 essay on Landauer’s
thought. These steps will help us determine the extent to which Buber and Lan-
dauer agreed politically before the outbreak of the Great War, in order to contex-
tualize their subsequent relationship. However, we have to consider Landauer’s
life and career before his encounter with Buber, in order to avoid defining their
initial interest in each other according to their later accomplishments.