Hugo Bergmann

Bergman, 1939

Samuel (Schmuel) Hugo Bergman(n), or Samuel Bergman (Hebrew: שמואל הוגו ברגמן; born: December 25, 1883, Prague, died: June 18, 1975, Jerusalem) was a German and Israeli Jewish philosopher.

Biography

He emigrated to Palestine in 1920, and founded, together with Martin Buber, a movement promoting a "dual-national" area where Jews and Arabs could live under equal conditions.

He translated several of Rudolf Steiner's books about Threefold Social Order to Hebrew.

He became a Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and later on the dean of the university. His best friends from Prague to Israel were Franz Kafka, who was a schoolmate of his, the philosopher Felix Weltsch, who later also worked in the University Library of Jerusalem, and Max Brod, who was introduced by Bergman into Zionism as early as before 1910.

He wrote on the nature of quantum mechanics and causality where he interpreted spontanaeity in nature with the psychological idea that the closer we come to elements in nature or components in the individual, the less tenable is strict causal determinism and the more freedom we must grant to decisive personal elements.

"In corresponding areas of physics, the statistical law of averages takes on the same functions in determining temporal position and in prediction and reconstruction that the strict law of causality previously covered, but with the distinction that the individual case could be temporally located and predicted or reconstructed before, whereas now we deal only with the average." (1929)

Awards

• Bergmann was twice a recipient of the Israel Prize:

• in 1954, for the humanities; and
• in 1974 for his special contribution to society and the State of Israel.

• He was a recipient of the Yakir Yerushalayim (Worthy Citizen of Jerusalem) award in 1967, the year of the award's inauguration.

Writings

• Miriam Sambursky: Zionist und Philosoph. Das Habilitierungsproblem des jungen Hugo Bergmann. Bulletin des Leo Baeck Instituts 58
• Miriam Sambursky (Hrsg.): Schmuel Hugo Bergmann: Tagebücher und Briefe. Band 1: 1901-1948.
• Dietmar Wiechmann: Der Traum vom Frieden: das bi-nationale Konzept des Brith-Schalom zur Lösung des jüdisch-arabischen Konfliktes in der Zeit von 1925-1933, 1998, ISBN 3-87920-416-0

See also

• List of Israel Prize recipients
• List of German Jews
• List of Czech and Slovak Jews
• Bergmann

External links

• Jewish Virtual Library
• Department for Jewish Zionist Education
  • Template:He icon [1]
  • Template:De icon [2]
• Template:De icon judentum.at
• http://www.phil.muni.cz/fil/scf/bergmn.html (Czech)
• http://www.uncletaz.com/waage/waagenglish2.html