Jewish studies have changed significantly since Yitzhak (Fritz) Baer was able to confidently declare in his classic account of the Jews in medieval Spain, first published in 1945: “Jewish history, from its earliest beginnings to the present day, forms an organic unity. Each successive phase of its development reveals with increasing clarity the nature of that unique driving force that propels it forward.” In contrast, it has become common practice today to emphasize the richness of historical contexts as well as the diversity of Jewish cultures, as they developed in countless zones of contact between Jewish and non-Jewish civilizations. This, in turn, has led to an increasing fragmentation of Jewish studies, in which local or national perspectives on Jewish history and culture often dominate, while the transnational and transregional connections that continue to shape Jewish life to this day are neglected.

Research and teaching at the Martin Buber Institute therefore emphasize both the embeddedness of Jewish cultures in their various historical contexts and, at the same time, pursue comparative approaches that highlight the intersections and points of encounter among different Jewish cultures. The Institute also adopts a cross-epochal approach that connects different periods of Jewish history. While the classical approach to Jewish Studies has at times been criticized as depoliticized and antiquated, and while, on the other hand, a one-sided focus on the present in more recent Jewish Studies has been lamented, research and teaching at the Martin Buber Institute strive to bridge the various historical eras and different scholarly approaches in the study of Jewish cultures in order to do justice to the diversity of Jewish worlds.

The Martin Buber Institute for Jewish Studies, founded in 1966 by Prof. Dr. Johann Maier at the University of Cologne, is committed to the humanist tradition of its namesake.

Martin Buber (born 1878 in Vienna, died 1965 in Jerusalem) was an Austrian-Israeli philosopher of religion and humanist. Buber studied philosophy, economics, German language and literature, art history, and psychology in Vienna, Leipzig, and Zurich; In 1904, he earned his doctorate with his dissertation “On the History of the Problem of Individuation: Nicolaus of Cusa and Jakob Böhme.” After a prolific career as a writer, he began working with Franz Rosenzweig around 1925 on a translation of the Bible from Hebrew into German. Buber himself referred to this translation as a “Germanization,” since many neologisms were coined to do justice to the Hebrew expression.

In 1930, he became an honorary professor at the University of Frankfurt, but resigned in protest immediately after Hitler seized power. In 1937, he was appointed to the University of Jerusalem, where he taught anthropology and sociology.

Beginning in 1947, he undertook lecture tours through Europe and America with his wife, Paula Buber (née Winkler). In 1955, together with Hannah Arendt, Gershom Scholem, Ernst Simon, and Robert Welsch, he founded the Leo Baeck Institute in New York to preserve and research the history and culture of German-speaking Jewry. Buber died in Jerusalem in 1965.

The Martin Buber Institute for Jewish Studies not only bears Buber’s name but also serves as an important resource for research into his later literary work through its specialized library, which contains over 400 letters to his publisher Lambert Schneider, manuscripts, and other literary documents in original or photocopied form.