58 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
- Ibid., 111. The English translation omits two epigraphs from Isaiah to Der Heilige Weg,
both of which speak of a way (German Weg, Hebrew derekh): Isaiah 62:10 and 35:8. The latter,
the source for “der heilige Weg” (Heb. derekh ha-kodesh), prophesies the safe return of the
exiles. - Ibid., 112. I have altered the translation to reflect Buber’s use of Individuen and Konfes-
sion. - This constant theme is summarized in the fifth speech, “Jewish Religiosity,” in Buber,
On Judaism, 83. - An extreme portrayal of the Second Commonwealth as a creative era is found in the
fourth speech, where Buber writes of the “fateful disaster” of “the downfall of their state” as an
event that “split Judaism’s history in two.” Buber, “The Spirit of the Orient and Judaism,” in On
Judaism, 71–73. - Buber, The Holy Way, 117; “Dieser Augenblick ist die eigentliche Wende der jüdischen
Geschichte.” Buber, Der Heilige Weg: Ein Wort an die Juden und an die Völker (Frankfurt: Rut-
ten & Loening, 1919), 30. - Buber, The Holy Way, 116.
- Ibid., 118–119.
- Ibid., 116–117.
- Buber to Ludwig Strauss, February 22, 1919, in Briefwechsel II, 29, in Letters of Martin
Buber, 242. - MBEY 247.
- Landauer, Revolution, 174.
- Landauer to Margarete Susman, November 14, 1918, in All Power to the Councils, 171.
- Landauer to Fritz Mauthner, April 7, 1919, in Revolution and Other Writings, 323.
- Martin Buber, “Die Revolution und Wir,” Der Jude 3, nos. 8–9 (November–December
1918): 345–347. Translations from this text are my own. - Ibid.
- Donald L. Niewyk, “The German Jews in Revolution and Revolt, 1918–19,” in Studies in
Contemporary Jewry, Vol. IV: The Jews and the European Crisis, 1914–1921, ed. Jonathan Frankel
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 41–66. The perception that Jews were the driving
force of the tumult was common to left and right, Jews and non-Jews, although statistically it
has been shown to be incorrect—a bias resulting from the greater tendency to notice promi-
nent Jews. - Christophe Chalamet, “Karl Barth and the Weimar Republic,” in The Weimar Mo-
ment, 245. - Landauer had an ambivalent attitude towards the Spartakusbund:
A difficult case are the Bolsheviks (Spartacus). They are pure centralists like Robespierre
and his men. Their aspiration has no content, it only knows power. They advocate a military
regime that would be uglier than anything the world has seen. Dictatorship of the armed
proletariat? I’d rather have Napoleon! Unfortunately, the best of the country have ended up
in their ranks.
Landauer to Margarete Susman, December 13, 1918, in All Power to the Councils, 182. Landauer
nonetheless advised Eisner to “win back the Spartacists.” Landauer to Eisner, January 10, 1919,
in All Power to the Councils, 183. He also eulogized Luxemburg and Liebknecht in Munich on
February 6, 1919, in the wake of their assassinations; MBEY 248. - Hans Mommsen, The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy, trans. Elborg Forster and
Larry Eugene Jones (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 47.