Martin Buber (1878-1965)
7 autograph letters signed (‘Martin Buber’ and ‘Buber’) to [Hermann] Stehr, Hermsdorf, Florence, Hall in Tirol, Berlin and Heppenheim, 20 May 1905 – [c.1930]
In German, 12 pages, various sizes (228 x 180mm to 289 x 224mm). Provenance: J.A. Stargardt, 8-9 April 1987, lot 313.

Letters charting Buber’s relationship with the author and poet Hermann Stehr. In the first three letters, 1905-1906, Buber solicits Stehr's collaboration on his Die Gesellschaft ('Society'), a collection of essays on sociology and psychology. ‘So far I have succeeded in bringing in Werner Sombart, Georg Simmel, Eduard Bernstein and Franz Oppenheimer. Of these, I would like foremost to turn to you …’ (20 May 1905). In the letter of 4 January 1915, he describes how he perceives the present day: ‘The times shake, judder and shift, but they also bring together: the right-minded with the right-minded, the like with the like, but also the genuine and the existing. And from such a society what the German people need most will gradually emerge: a valid intellectual authority.’ By the letter of 3 May 1919, Buber addresses his correspondent as ‘Lieber Freund Stehr’ rather than the formal ‘Sehr verehrter Herr Stehr’ of the earlier letters. In the final, undated letter (c.1930), Buber writes after hearing a reading of Stehr’s short story Die Großmutter (The Grandmother): ‘How wonderful it is! … In it, the magic of humanity is like nothing in any other short story of our time … It seems to me that after the events through which we are currently living, proper, well intentioned togetherness will be needed more than ever.’

Hermann Stehr (1864-1940) was the author of sixteen novels, novellas, plays and poetry collections. He was nominated four times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, in the years 1933-1936. The essay which he planned to contributed to Die Gesellschaft, 'Das Dorf', was never realised.