Buber, Martin 1878-1965
Austrian Jewish theologian, philosopher and novelist

Born in Vienna, he studied philosophy at Vienna, Berlin and Zurich, then became interested in Hasidism. He was founding editor of the monthly journal Der Jude (1916-24, 'The Jew'), Professor of Comparative Religion at Frankfurt (1923-33), then director of the Central Office for Jewish Adult Education until 1938 when he fled to Palestine to escape the Nazis and became Professor of the Sociology of Religion at Jerusalem. He published profusely on social and ethical problems, but is best-known for his religious philosophy expounded most famously in Ich und Du (1922, Eng trans I and Thou, 1958), contrasting personal relationships of mutuality and reciprocity with utilitarian or objective relationships. Both his philosophy and his reworkings of Hasidic tales, collected in English translation in The Legend of the Baal-Shem (1955), Tales of Rabbi Nachman (1956), and elsewhere, have had a subtle influence on European and US literature. His only novel is Gog and Magog (1943, Eng trans For the Sake of Heaven), about the Hasidic world in Napoleonic times.

Bibliography: R Horwitz, Buber's Way to 'I and Thou' (1978); M Seymour-Smith, Who's Who in Twentieth Century Literature (1976)