56 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
- Buber’s private epistolary debate with the Dutch poet Frederik van Eeden yielded two
published pieces: “Bewegung: Aus einem Brief an einen Holländer” (in January–February 1915)
and “Richtung soll kommen!” which was published in Masken, the journal of a Düsseldorf the-
ater company, of which Landauer nearly assumed the editorship in 1918 before the November
Revolution erupted. - “No government is fighting for the freedom of peoples; that is not in the nature of
states. ... German militarism differs from Russian or French militarism only in being better
organized.” Buber to Frederik van Eeden, October 16, 1914, LMB 162. - Scholem to Buber, June 25, 1916, LMB 193.
- Schwarzschild, who denies that Buber deviated from his pro-war line until the war
was over, ignores a new, politically radical tone; for example, in Buber’s solicitations for his
planned “book of essays directed against the threatening intrusion of the European malady
(mercantilism, imperialism, etc.—in a word, covetousness) into an incipient Jewish Palestine”;
Buber to Ernst Eliyahu Rappeport, January 28, 1918, LMB 227. Beyond that, there is the fact that
Landauer once again agreed to appear in Der Jude, as early as March 1917, and was communi-
cating with Buber about this as early as August 1916; LMB 199–201; FMD 101. Benjamin never
wrote for Der Jude but did write for Buber’s next journal, the interdenominational Die Kreatur.
Magnes forgave Buber to the extent that he made great efforts to hire him at the Hebrew Uni-
versit y. - Landauer to Buber, May 12, 1916, LMB 188–192.
- FMD 101, 173n98.
- How contorted these statements are has been noted by Steven Schwarzschild, “Buber
and his Biographer,” Judaism 34.3 (Fall 1985): 439. - MBEY 192–193.
- MBEY 178. Schwarzschild uses this fact to support his claim that Buber never changed
his mind on the war, but this seems strange; why wouldn’t Buber then have set the cutoff
at 1918? Add the fact that Buber’s volte-face occurred before the notorious Judenzählung of
October 1916, an official army census that aimed to determine how many Jews served at the
front. The Judenzählung disillusioned many Jews who had thought of using their service as a
way to bond more closely with Germany. Buber only commented dryly: “We are used to being
counted.” Der Jude 1.8 (November 1916): 564. - FMD 172n82, 172n84.
- Arthur Cohen, introduction to The Jew: Essays from Buber’s Journal Der Jude, 1916–1928
ed. Arthur Cohen and trans. Joachim Neugroschel (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press,
19 8 0), 7. - Buber did not include the letter of May 12, 1916, in which Landauer accuses Buber of
making him feel “personally disavowed,” in his edition of Landauer’s correspondence. He also
asked Hans Kohn to soften the section on the war period in his authorized biography of Buber
in 1929 and omit the controversies with Landauer and van Eeden; FMD 102. - The debate was conducted in four articles: Cohen, “Zionismus und Religion: Ein Wort
an meine Kommilitonen jüdischen Glaubens,” K.-C. Blätter 11 (May–June, 1916): 643–646; Bu-
ber, “Begriffe und Wirklichkeit: Brief an Herrn Geh. Regierungsrat Prof. Dr. Hermann Co-
hen,” Der Jude 1.5 (July 1916): 281ff.; Cohen, “Antwort auf das Offene Schreiben des Herrn Dr.
Martin Buber,” K.-C. Blätter 12 (July–August, 1916): 683–88; Buber, “Zion, der Staat und die
Menschheit: Bemerkungen zu Hermann Cohens Antwort,” Der Jude 1.7 (October 1916): 425ff. - The debate is currently available in English only in excerpts: Buber and Cohen, “A De-
bate on Zionism and Messianism (Summer 1916),” in The Jew in the Modern World: A Docu-
mentary History, 3rd ed., ed. Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz (New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2011), 651–655; Cohen, “A Reply to Dr. Martin Buber’s Open Letter to Hermann