Martin Buber's Formative Years: From German Culture to Jewish Renewal, 1897-1909
192
Martin Buber's Formative Years: From German Culture to Jewish Renewal, 1897-1909
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Overview
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.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780817391805 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Alabama Press |
| Publication date: | 12/12/2017 |
| Series: | Judaic Studies Series |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 192 |
| File size: | 897 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
A TIME OF CRISIS
Contemporary Cultural Concerns, 1897–1901
Turn-of-the-century Vienna was unique in every respect. Politically, it was the center of the multiethnic Austro-Hungarian monarchy; culturally, it was at once fiercely Austrian nationalistic and proudly European, influencing the entire German-speaking domain.
The period known as Viennese Modernity lasted from about 1890 to 1911. A host of culture critics such as Karl Kraus (1874–1936), Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), Max Burckhard (1854–1912), Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906), Peter Altenberg (1859–1919), Hermann Bahr (1863–1934), Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874–1929), and Arthur Schnitzler (1862–1931) wanted to bring about change for the sake of progress. According to sociologist Max Burckhard, the word modern was given currency by Hermann Bahr and came to signify progress. The four Viennese poets Bahr, Altenberg, von Hofmannsthal, and Schnitzler belonged to an elite literary group, Jung Wien (Young Vienna) and considered themselves the conscience of contemporary Vienna. This "circle of young poets, focused around Arthur Schnitzler and Hermann Bahr ... the most distinguished of them being Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Stefan Zweig" (1881–1942) and met at the Cafe Griensteidl. They had been raised in a society that thought it natural "to center its life upon the theater, which formed the standards of speech, dress and mores; ... and in a city in which the standards of journalism were exceptionally high." These artists were interested in contemporary issues such as dilettantism, decadence, narcissism, neuroticism, alienation, fragmentation, and resignation, as well as the consequences of imitation. Such key words of the period identified what Bahr called a "romanticism of the nerves." The language reflected the "sickness" of the culture, and the literature disseminated the message of the fin de siècle. There was a concerted effort to bring about a renaissance of earlier periods such as romanticism or neoclassicism, which were perceived to have been more authentic. But instead of a re-creation, contemporary thinkers achieved only an imitation of the ideal. The enfeebling mood of "imitation" that had pervaded nineteenth-century Europe, and which Karl Immermann (1796–1840), Nietzsche, and others called the period of the Epigonen (imitators), carried over into the twentieth century. The Young Vienna literary circle under the leadership of Hermann Bahr endeavored to turn the trend around.
When Martin Buber came to Vienna in 1897, he already held an appreciation for the great critical minds of the late nineteenth century, especially Friedrich Nietzsche, whose Zarathustra served as a hero model for him. Nietzsche's assertion that God is dead had opened the door to a complete transvaluation of values. No longer was a Divinely based morality the only possible foundation for life. In The Birth of Tragedy (1872) Nietzsche claimed that aesthetics could serve as a better foundation for modern life than morality. Therefore, Buber found a ready-made context for his intellectual and cultural curiosity as well as for his energies in the lively exchange of contemporary cultural criticism that occurred in the coffee houses as well as the literary journals of the period. During his first year in the city, Wittgenstein's Vienna became Buber's Vienna as well, for, as he himself told us, he did succumb to the power of the Burgtheater.
Buber nevertheless saw the problem of the individual in a society in crisis sharply and clearly. This is apparent from his critical 1897 essay "On Viennese Literature" about the four Young Vienna writers Hermann Bahr, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Peter Altenberg, and Arthur Schnitzler. In this article, written in Polish, for a Polish journal, Buber attempted to come to grips with the nature of the crisis of personality that he perceived.
Buber's analysis of the worldview of these four poets illuminated his perception of the contemporary cultural situation in Vienna. Buber was most fascinated by Hermann Bahr, who was the decisive figure of this period, the founder and leader of the Young Vienna literary circle. Although Bahr took exception to the pessimism of such contemporaries as Ernst Mach (1838–1916), who maintained that "the self cannot be saved," Bahr's stand lacked fortitude. Buber criticized Bahr as a butterfly, who "has taken to heart all the trends of our time" and indiscriminately flitted from one topic to another. This dynamic way of remaining forever on the move provided a vitality that made Bahr "the apostle of a slogan yet unborn." This lack of depth was significant to Buber, however, who declared that Bahr "puts on a new I every day, like a new tie" and that "his individuality is really an utter lack of individuality."
Although Buber recognized in Bahr several of the qualities he associated with the personality of an artist — dynamism, flexibility, the ability to point to topical themes — Bahr's individuality differed in quality from that Buber found in the individuals he chose as models — Cusa and Böhme, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and the romantics. Buber complained that Bahr "shows no development; all his 'mental states' ... are of equal value." The quest for self-knowledge was not an easy one, and modern individuals, who tended toward superficiality, required a proper guide for their pursuit of the quest for deeper knowledge. Consequently, although "the traits of contemporary intellectual life in Europe ... have found vivid and dazzling expression" in Bahr, Buber did not consider him and his approaches appropriate for the quest he himself was embarking on. Rather, attitudes such as the "absence of unity and harmony" and "impotence, sterility, lassitude, [and] a wide, but superficial curiosity," which were visible in Bahr, had contributed to the decadence that characterized the downward spiral of contemporary culture.
Bahr wrote that the decadent individual tried to discover the inner human being, as the romantics once did. But in contrast to the romantic, the decadent person did not wish to express the spirit or the feeling, but only his nerves. Thus decadence discovered new art forms unknown to earlier generations. The decadent individual also has a tendency toward artificiality, moving away from nature. Decadence further expresses its "feverish passion for the mystical" in allegories and obscure images. Decadent individuals abhor all that is usual, frequent, normal. They endeavor to find the strange exception.
In contrast to Bahr's expressed dilettantism, Hugo von Hofmannsthal was a nineteenth-century "Werther," a Goethean character who turned inward to the point of knowing no more about external life than that he was born in Vienna in 1874. Buber explained that through his poetry, von Hofmannsthal "wishes to examine and to explain the essence of life, of the life that he, shut up within himself, knows only through intuition." Buber implied that von Hofmannsthal could not write about life from experience because he did not have any. Again, von Hofmannsthal had the potential for personality, but because his outer and inner lives were completely separate, he "never struggles for his I." He made no attempt to live what his inner eye perceived; he was satisfied to write about it, leaving the realization to others.
For Buber, this was not what life was all about. Despite his friendship with von Hofmannsthal, he perceived a different priority than did the resident of this decadent age, the precocious child who matured early, whose "unmasculine lassitude" made no demands, and for whom it was sufficient that "his soul always remains unaltered, the delicate, weary soul of an aristocrat who has not [yet] tasted life, and who [also] no longer demands anything from it." The resigned individual of von Hofmannsthal's type was old before his time; he was stagnant, not dynamic, incapable of change and growth. It is the dilemma of the modern human being that he has no feeling, does not struggle, and makes no progress — he is satisfied merely with intellectualization of themes and with finished form. "Like Bahr, he [von Hofmannsthal] does not grope for words; each thought attires itself for him in full, noble words." If Buber objected to the fact that the philosopher used a system, he also objected to the fact that the poet forced his words into an existing perfect form. In Buber's mind, every individual ought to strive for his or her own form of expression, not merely follow the established conventional mode.
Peter Altenberg differed significantly from Bahr and von Hofmannsthal. He commented that individuality is a justification to be the first, the herald of some organic progress of human qualities with the possibility that it will become progress for humanity. "To be the first, that's what matters! For this person has a mission, he is a leader, he knows that all of humanity comes after him! God sent him ahead of time!" Such ideas were truly in the spirit of Buber. He admired that Altenberg, like Dante before him, "does know that Divine laugh, does know anger as destructive as a hurricane and passion that burns like a simoon." This was much in contrast to Bahr, whose superficiality deprived him of any depth, and to von Hofmannsthal, whose dream existence separated him from life and whose poetry did not result from a struggle. But, alas, Buber lamented, the Viennese Dante wanted to be like Bahr and von Hofmannsthal. "He sees something beautiful in their pallid life and imitates them."
To Buber's utmost despair, Altenberg pretended a lack of true emotion, even though he was capable of it. "He strives to conceal his love, he feigns lassitude, languor, decadence, he assumes a tone of salon irony, which smiles easily and indulgently, but does not know a full, divine laugh." Buber here described the modern, decadent individual, who was only a pale imitation of the true individual. In Buber's opinion, the authentic individual was epitomized in the earlier German romantics. Even Altenberg succumbed to the spirit of "our times, which makes men small and weak" and has "warped this beautiful soul and taken the halo of apostleship from its brow." In other words, all the apparent qualities of the decadent individual were only imitations of the real thing. Thus, though Altenberg was capable of being an authentic human being, he chose not to because it did not suit the trend of the time.
Although the times had imposed an enfeebling state of mind on Altenberg, Buber was not willing to let go of him. Altenberg was a man who had "embraced all of nature with his love." The two men shared the same Blakean approach, "to see a world in a grain of sand." Altenberg's emphasis was on the ordinary; he dealt with minute everyday life events — an approach Buber himself later employed when retelling the tales of the Hasidim. Underneath the unsuitable shell of fin-de-siècle Vienna shone the kernel Buber yearned for — "an individual ... one of those who are the leaven of humanity" — one of those, one might add, whom Martin Buber could envision as a component of the community he desired, if only Altenberg had the desire to be such an individual.
If Buber saw Altenberg as a prophet in disguise, Arthur Schnitzler embodied the prophet of doom who heralded the death of the human species. In a last effort at self-preservation, "each of our feelings, each urge, each passion is presented in a mild and subdued form so that we never lose the conviction that all of this fervor is nothing but a beautiful illusion." Buber lamented how far culture had declined to equate self-preservation with feebleness rather than with struggle. This way of viewing the world was an illusion, a way of creating seeming harmony where no harmony was possible. It was a way for the artist to invert inner and outer worlds, to turn things upside down. If humanity were not dying, these images would stir people into action. Instead, the muted quality of Schnitzler's art was thought to reflect the whimper of an age no longer capable of roaring like a lion.
Therefore, when Martin Buber lamented the crisis of humanity, he recognized that the outward manifestation of this crisis, namely isolation, had an inner cause, the human being's alienation from his self, his inability to know himself. The absence of Gemeinschaft which Buber perceived in his age was a direct result of human inability to come to grips with the individual self, to reflect and to grow, to develop a personality that could serve as a building block for community.
Schnitzler, von Hofmannsthal, Bahr, and Altenberg were in various degrees products of modern society, protesting meekly against the death of humanity. The older generation considered them to be revolutionaries because they offered criticism of contemporary culture, but Buber went one step further. Rather than agreeing with their perception of themselves as the conscience of fin-de-siècle Vienna, he turned their criticism of contemporary culture upon them, including them among the decadent dilettantes of modern Vienna. "In all of them is found that typically Viennese lack of the heroic, revolutionary element." Although he found their efforts commendable, the source of their labors did not generate a Nietzschean Dionysian dynamic that could turn humanity around. Thus, ultimately, Buber had to look somewhere other than contemporary Viennese litterateurs for suitable models for the new Jew and for the new human being.
The individualism of modernity was not based on the same concept as the self-realization Buber was looking for. In Buber's view, all people who adopted "the substitute religion" of individualism became weak and ineffective like the decadent Austrian poets he had described in his 1897 article. This individualistic ideology pervaded both the masses and the bourgeois middle class. Thus society now consisted of shallow and apathetic single individuals who, in Buber's view, hungered after material riches without concern for either spiritual well-being or the welfare of their fellow human beings. Franz Kafka expressed this view well when he wrote: "Human beings are connected among themselves through ropes, and it is a tragedy, when one's ropes loosen and a person falls lower than the others into empty space, and it is horrible when the ropes that tie a person to the others tear, and he falls. Therefore, a person must stay close to the others." But what if the ropes have torn for most human beings? Then clearly the net is no longer capable of catching those who fall because it has too many holes. And one by one, these individuals are lost.
The realization that the net of community had been irreparably damaged emerged among isolated thinkers in Europe at the turn of the century. Buber was one of these individuals who pleaded for personalities with an authentic vision who could help form the kind of community that would try to realize a common ideal. His sensitivity to the negative aspects of the modern individual had great significance for his future work in searching for a different and fresh path for contemporary German Jewry. This effort became his primary concern. Thus Buber at this time did not offer as sharp and detailed a critique of current society and civilization as did some of his contemporaries. He was also vague in offering an alternative, namely the community of the future as well as a new culture. As we will see from the following two sections of the chapter, he made it clear only that the new community would hail from a different source than the old and would inevitably emerge from the decadence of contemporary culture. For the German Jew, decadence was not yet a problem. Buber saw it as his task to keep German Jewry from such a direction and, as we shall see in Chapter 3, he took this self-imposed charge seriously.
On Old and New Community
Buber was a herald figure, ahead of his time. He was "an anticipator" (ein Ahnender), like Friedrich Nietzsche and Jakob Böhme, or, as he put it in another context, a John-the-Baptist figure, a forerunner. Already during his student days, he belonged to an organization called Die Neue Gemeinschaft (the New Community). This utopian/humanistic organization, heavily imbued with Goethean ideology, was cofounded and frequented by Buber's friend Gustav Landauer. Landauer, a philosopher, literary critic, and scholar, was also a passionate socialist. Eight years older than Buber, Landauer was already well established in his work and reputation when Buber met him. Landauer was highly political and at the same time thoroughly mystical. He hoped to create a socialism that would renew the human spirit, a vision Buber happily adopted and adapted to his own work in Zionism.
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