Biography
Martin (Hebrew name: מָרְדֳּכַי, Mordechai) Buber was born in Vienna to an Orthodox Jewish family. His grandfather, Solomon Buber, in whose house in Lemberg (now Lviv, Ukraine) Buber spent much of his childhood, was a renowned scholar of Midrash and Rabbinic Literature. At home Buber spoke Yiddish and German. In 1892 Buber returned to his father's house in Lemberg, today's Lviv, Ukraine.
A personal religious crisis led him to break with Jewish religious customs: he started reading Immanuel Kant, Søren Kierkegaard, and Friedrich Nietzsche. The latter two, in particular, inspired him to pursue studies in philosophy. In 1896, Buber went to study in Vienna (philosophy, art history, German studies, philology).
In 1898, he joined the Zionist movement, participating in congresses and organizational work. In 1899 while studying in Zürich, Buber met his future wife, Paula Winkler, a non-Jewish Zionist writer from Munich who later converted to Judaism.
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