Kafka and Buber. Testimony and Impossibility

Abstract

“I also talked to Buber yesterday; as a person he is lively and simple and remarkable, and seems to have nothing to do with the lukewarm things he has written” – wrote Franz Kafka to his fiancée Felice Bauer in the early 1913. What is the meaning of this harsh, yet respectful portraiture of Buber? Was it a casual ironic remark – or was it rather the way Kafka really thought of Martin Buber? And to what extent was Kafka important for Buber? How can we understand the collaboration between the writer and philosopher? Close reading, contextualization and Begegnungsereignis (encounter as fundamental event).