International Conference (Van Leer Institute, Jerusalem, Israel)
June 2-4, 2026
The intellectual legacies of Johann Gottfried Herder, Friedrich Hölderlin, and Martin Heidegger stand in intriguing relation with each other: Hölderlin was deeply influenced by Herder, but Heidegger, who regarded Hölderlin as ‘the poet of the Germans’, was critical of Herder’s approach to language and the poetic spirit of a nation. One issue appears to especially divide Herder’s vision of cultural nationalism from Hölderlin and Heidegger’s, namely, their respective appraisals of the Hebraic and the Hellenic. For Herder, “the spirit of Hebrew poetry” served as an exemplary model of a people dwelling with their Volkgeist, whereas Hölderlin, despite Herder’s influence on him, turned to a Hellenic model in his pursuit of German national poetic spirit. Heidegger followed Hölderlin in this Hellenic direction, even as his thought exhibits an “unthought debt” to the Hebraic traditions he excludes.
Herder’s seminal work, On the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry (1782–1783), redefined the study of biblical literature by approaching Hebrew poetry as a living expression of a people’s natural, national, prophetic spirit. His emphasis on cultural particularity and linguistic vitality, especially in Ideas for Another Philosophy of History, inspired the Wissenschaft des Judentums, the German fountain head of Jewish Studies, which provided a framework for Jewish scholars to reclaim their heritage as a dynamic cultural force. Herder’s ideas also inspired Cultural Zionism, influencing thinkers like Ahad Ha’am, who sought to revive Jewish national identity through cultural and spiritual renewal rather than political sovereignty. For some of his most prominent German Jewish followers, such as Gershom Scholem, Yitzhak Gerhard Liebes, and Matin Buber, Hölderlin’s poetic nationalism was an inspired model of the kind of cultural Zionism they were creating.
This conference seeks to examine how these three immensely influential figures in the German literary nationalist movement positioned their project in relation to Hellenic and Hebraic models of cultural renewal, national identity, and philosophical inquiry.
Participants are invited to address the relation between at least two of the five Hs in the conference title—Herder, Hölderlin, Heidegger, Hebraism, Hellenism. Presented together, the colloquium seeks to sound out the resonances and divergences between the respective visions of a people’s cultural renewal in their own homeland.
The conference invites papers that address the following questions, among others:
What do the interconnections between Herder, Hölderlin, and Heidegger suggest about the broader dialogue between German and Hebraic traditions in the modern era?
How did Herder’s understanding of the ancient culture of the Hebrews, which he distinguished from that of contemporary Jews, influence the movements of Wissenschaft des Judentums and Cultural Zionism?
How did Hölderlin’s Greco-German synthesis reflect or diverge from Herder’s approach to “the spirit of Hebrew poetry”? Does Herder’s “literary Hebraism” shape Hölderlin’s Hellenism and the enthusiastic reception of “the poet of Germans” by cultural Zionists like Scholem, Liebes, Buber, and others?
How is Heidegger’s “unthought debt” to the Hebraic positioned in relation, on the one hand, to Hölderlin’s Hellenism and, on the other hand, to Herder’s “German literary Hebraism”?