100th birthday of Martin Buber - Germany / Federal Republic of Germany 1978 - 50 Pfennig

Born on February 8, 1878 in Vienna, Martin Buber spent his childhood in the house of his grandfather Salomon Buber, the well-known researcher of rabbinic literature, in Lviv, Galicia, which at that time belonged to Austria-Hungary. Here the young Buber received the first impressions of Hasidism, the pietistic Jewish popular movement that arose in Eastern Europe in the eighteenth century, especially in Galicia and Podolia. This encounter influenced Buber's thoughts and teachings, and in his books on Hasidism-from the "Tales of Rabbi Nachman" (1906) to the "Hasidim Tales" (1949)-Buber succeeded in making this subject close to the Western reader bring. Buber studied philosophy and art history in Vienna, Leipzig, Zurich and Berlin. He received his doctorate in 1904 in Vienna. Already during his studies, Martin Buber joined the Zionist movement founded by Theodor Herzl. He represented in her, almost always in opposition to official political Zionism, the path of spiritual renewal of Judaism and understanding with the Arabs. Buber's philosophy is based on the concept of encounter - the encounter of man with the environment. His main philosophical work "Me and You" (1923) led him from the mystical union with God of his early work "Daniel" (1913) to the living dialogue between man and man, between man and God. In 1923 Buber received a teaching assignment for Jewish religion and ethics at the University of Frankfurt am Main and in 1930 was appointed professor of comparative philosophy of religion there self-appointed. In 1925 Buber, together with Franz Rosenzweig, began a new translation of the Hebrew Bible, the "Schrift," into German. After Rosenzweig's death in 1929, Buber continued the work alone and finished it in 1961 in Jerusalem. From 1933 until his move to Palestine in the spring of 1938, Buber headed the "Center for Jewish Adult Education" within the framework of the "Reich Representation of the Jews in Germany." In 1935, Buber was appointed Professor of Social Philosophy by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, but was unable to take up his post until 1938, when he moved to Palestine. In addition to his scientific work Buber strove for the always sought after understanding with the Arab population of the country and founded in 1942, together with like-minded friends, the "Ichud" (unification), who then aimed for a bi-national Jewish-Arab state for Palestine. The years of World War II, during which Buber was almost completely cut off from the outside world, were for him "a time of undreamt-of concentration" and "a surprising productivity"; they were "the real epoch of the work" in his life. In the years after the Second World War Buber undertook numerous lecture tours in European countries, starting from 1952 also to America. He received many prizes and honors: Israel's Israel State Prize, Honorary Doctor of the Hebrew University, Honorary Citizenship of Jerusalem; Abroad: the Hanseatic Goethe Prize of the City of Hamburg, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in Frankfurt am Main, the Austrian State Prize, the Honorary Doctor of Philosophy of the University of Heidelberg, the Erasmus Prize in Amsterdam and others. Martin Buber was the first president of the Israeli Academy of Sciences (1961). Martin Buber is today considered one of the spiritual leaders of his time. He died at the age of 87, on June 13, 1965, in Jerusalem. (Text: The Jewish National & University Library, Jerusalem)