The True Front | 57Cohen,” in Reason and Hope: Selections from the Jewish Writings of Hermann Cohen, ed. and
trans. Eva Jospe (Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College Press, 1993), 164–170; Buber, “Zion,
the State, and Humanity: Remarks on Hermann Cohen’s Answer,” in The Jew, 85–96.
- Daniel Weiss and Paul Nahme have both made this point to me in conversations about
their work on Cohen. - Buber, “A Debate on Zionism and Messianism,” 654. Landauer sent Buber an approving
letter after reading “Zion, the State, and Humanity,” and another when Buber collected his
articles on Cohen and Zionism together in 1917 and published them as Völker, Staaten, und
Zion. Landauer to Buber, October 12, 1916, LMB 199; FMD 110, 177n187. An October 17, 1916,
follow-up on the matter of the last Cohen piece is the first letter postdating May 1916 from Lan-
dauer to himself included in Buber’s edition of Landauer’s correspondence; Sein Lebensgang in
Briefen II, 163. - Buber eventually expressed his fear that this idea might “lure us into the glittering no-
tion that God is an idea which can become reality only through man, and, furthermore, in-
duces the hopelessly wrong conception that God is not, but that He becomes—either within
man, or within mankind.” “Preface to the 1923 Edition,” On Judaism, 8. - Buber, “A Debate on Zionism and Messianism,” 654.
- Written before Landauer’s death but published after it, the text carries the dedication:
“Dem Freunde Gustav Landauer aufs Grab.” - Buber, “The Holy Way,” in On Judaism, 108.
- FMD 175n159.
- Sein Lebensgang in Briefen II, 296.
- Landauer to Buber, November 15, 1918, Sein Lebensgang in Briefen II, 298. I have com-
bined translations from LMB 232 and from Gabriel Kuhn, ed. and trans., All Power to the
Councils! A Documentary History of the German Revolution, 1918–1919 (Oakland, CA: PM
Press, 2012), 172. The comments that Buber makes throughout Sein Lebensgang in Briefen are
rarely treated as independent “works” of Buber’s, but they provide insights into Buber’s view of
Landauer’s life. - Landauer to Buber, November 22, 1918, Sein Lebensgang in Briefen II, 299. Buber anno-
tates this comment to provide evidence for Landauer’s claim by directing the reader to certain
of Eisner’s speeches. Translation from All Power to the Councils, 172–173. - Landauer soon wrote Buber another letter commenting on Buber’s idea to write an
article on the revolution for Der Jude. Landauer praised its “very fine theme, the revolution
and the Jews,” and exhorted Buber to expand on “the leading part the Jews have played in
the upheaval,” referring to the work of Eisner, Mühsam, and Ernst Toller; Landauer to Buber,
December 2, 1918, LMB 234. However, the eventual article, “Die Revolution und Wir,” took a
different tack. - Landauer, Revolution, 158–159.
- Buber, The Holy Way, 146–147.
- Landauer, Revolution, 175.
- Buber, The Holy Way, 147–148.
- Between the volte-face of 1916 and The Holy Way in 1918 came the British conquest of
Palestine and the Balfour Declaration, which promised a “Jewish national home” in Palestine.
The appearance of the term “imperialism” in Buber’s vocabulary and his condemnation of
realpolitik in Zionism must be understood against this background. - FMD 107–109. I thank Michael Morgan for emphasizing this point.
- Buber, The Holy Way, 108–109. Here Jospe’s translation may be misleading: she ren-
ders “europäischen Dualismus” as “Occidental dualism,” exaggerating the continuity with the
fourth Speech on Judaism, “The Spirit of the Orient and Judaism.”