Inaugural lecture Dr. Inka Sauter: Grimm's dictionary people: Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Buber

The University of Kassel has appointed Dr. Inka Sauter as Franz Rosenzweig Visiting Professor for the year 2025. She is a research assistant at the Chair of Jewish Philosophy of Religion at Goethe University Frankfurt. Inka Sauter is currently working on her habilitation on the topic of "The Historical Semantics of the Buber-Rosenzweig Bible". Her public inaugural speech entitled "Grimm's dictionary people: Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Buber" will take place on May 14, 2025 at 6 p.m. c.t. in room 0019 (first floor), Kurt-Wolters-Str. 5.

The announcement of the inaugural lecture reads:

"Together with Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber began translating the Tanakh into German in the mid-1920s; they translated ten volumes in close exchange before Rosenzweig died in December 1929. Buber continued the work alone until his emigration in spring 1938. However, he only completed it at the beginning of the 1960s, after a long interruption and revision of the already published parts. With The Scriptures , Buber and Rosenzweig produced an epoch-making work; their aim was nothing less than to make the original biblical content audible again in and for their time. To this end, they drew on the canonical dictionaries of the German language - above all that of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. A previous fascination with dictionaries paved the way for translation and became a central component of their philosophical reflection on language. In this sense, Rosenzweig described himself as a "Grimm dictionary man" at the end of December 1925, shortly after the publication of the first volume of the Bible translation, and this description also applied to Buber - albeit in a different way to Rosenzweig. Each in their own way, they penetrated the historical depths of the German language. The lecture is dedicated to these "word traces" through which Buber and Rosenzweig sought to give new expression to German-Jewish affiliation."

Inka Sauter completed her doctorate in 2019 at the University of Leipzig in the Department of History on the topic "Offenbarungsphilosophie und Geschichte. On the Jewish crisis of historicism". During her doctoral studies, she conducted research at the Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture - Simon Dubnow in Leipzig. Inka Sauter gained international research experience as a postdoctoral fellow at the Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research focuses on the Jewish intellectual history and philosophy of modernity, German-Jewish history of the 19th and 20th centuries as well as historical semantics and the history of concepts.

"Franz Rosenzweig's work exerts an unbroken fascination"

"It is a special honor to be able to research and teach in the name of Franz Rosenzweig," explains Sauter. "His thought not only opens up new perspectives on Jewish intellectual history, but also provides important impulses for reflecting on questions of Jewish affiliation and philosophy as well as for overcoming social challenges."

As part of her visiting professorship, Inka Sauter will also offer two seminars entitled "Community Philosophy and Criticism in the 20th Century" and "Linguistic Images of German-Jewish Belonging" at the University of Kassel in the summer semester of 2025. These will deal with central aspects of Jewish intellectual history and philosophy. Both courses are open to students of all disciplines.

Background

The Franz Rosenzweig Visiting Professorship was founded at the University of Kassel in 1987 and is named after the Jewish philosopher of religion Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929). With his main work "The Star of Redemption" and his collaboration with Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig made decisive contributions to the philosophy of dialog and to Jewish intellectual history. The aim of the professorship is to honor the work and legacy of the Kassel-born philosopher and to promote academic and cultural engagement with Jewish culture and philosophy. Since its foundation, the professorship has been awarded annually in the summer semester and contributes to preserving the culture of European Jewry, which was largely destroyed by National Socialism, and to intensifying the debate on the Jewish present.