Martin Buber, Alfred Döblin, and Albert Ehrenstein on Modernity and Taoism

• In Event: Self & Other: Thought, Theology, Art

Abstract

At the beginning of the 20th century, Chinese texts gained enormous popularity in German culture. Translations of Chinese classics, anthologies, poetry collections, and philosophical treatises garnered much attention that widely heralded them as the dawn of a new intellectual era. Many imagined these Chinese texts to have the potential to mend modern society and its ailments; they did not appeal only to aesthetic pleasures but also to a dire need for societal and cultural rejuvenation.
German Jews played a crucial role in the dissemination and popularization of Chinese literature and thought in German culture which often became embroiled with Orientalist and Exoticist imagery.
In my talk I focus on three thinkers/writers, Martin Buber, Alfred Döblin, and Albert Ehrenstein, and discuss (1) how they envisioned China, (2) how China served as a contra point in their critique of modernized German culture and society, and (3) how they interpreted the Taoist doctrine of Wu-Wei as a remedy for a society ailing from modernity.
At this time already widely considered one of the most formidable Jewish thinkers, Martin Buber conquered German households with his CHINESE GHOST AND LOVE STORIES (CHINESISCHE GEISTER- UND LIEBESGESCHICHTEN) and his anthology of texts from the ZHUANGZI (REDEN UND GLEICHNISSE DES TSCHUANG-TSE.) Albert Ehrenstein dedicated decades to rewriting and recomposing Chinese poems. Alfred Döblin wrote what he called a “Chinese novel,” DIE DREI SPRÜNGE DES WANG-LUN, presenting a contrast between a romanticized vision of China and Western modernity.

Author

• Sebastian Musch, Osnabrueck University