Zwischen Verehrung und Entzauberung: Hans Kohns, Robert Weltschs und Hugo Bergmanns Wahrnehmung Martin Bubers im Spiegel ihrer Korrespondenz

Based on the published and unpublished correspondence between three prominent members of the Zionist Prague Student Association Bar Kochba, Hugo Bergmann, Hans Kohn and Robert Weltsch, the article explores their complex and fluctuating relationship with Martin Buber between 1910 and 1965. Fascinated as they were by Buber’s three Speeches on Judaism before World War I, the three intellectuals embraced his vision of a humanistic version of Jewish nationalism and became leading interpreters of his religious-political views both in Germany and Palestine. However, as their letters reveal, the political developments of the 1920s up to the 1940s, and in particular the conflict with the Arab population in Palestine and the National Socialist persecution in Europe, led them to a growing sense of disenchantment with Buber and their own youthful cultural Zionist convictions, which prompted all three of them to make divergent biographical choices.