The Sanctification of the Name

Born and educated in Prague as part of the city’s Germanized Jewish community, Samuel Hugo Bergmann played an important role in the small but influential “Prague circle” of young German Jewish intellectuals interested in Zionist and post-assimilatory visions of Jewish national revival. While attending university, he became active in the Bar Kochba Association and contributed articles to the Zionist press, and he came under the influence of Martin Buber’s spiritual Zionism and neo-Romantic religious philosophy. His close interlocutors in Prague included Max Brod, Hans Kohn, and Franz Kafka, who had been a schoolmate. 

After World War I, during which he served as an officer in the Austro-Hungarian army, Bergmann returned to his post as librarian at the Charles University Library in Prague. He moved to Jerusalem in 1920 and in 1925 became the first director of the Jewish National and University Library. He was also appointed professor of philosophy (1928–1955) and rector (1935–1938) at the Hebrew University. In 1925, he founded, together with Buber, Brit Shalom, a group that advocated the creation of a Jewish-Palestinian binational state in the land of Israel. Bergmann was also active in Ha-Po‘el ha-Tsa‘ir in Palestine; he helped establish the Histadrut and served on its executive council.