New Library Acquisitions

sandgruber_prettykitty — They were style icons of the 1920s and 1930s, among the most elegant figures in Viennese society and international celebrities. Their husbands and lovers bore the magic name Rothschild and stood for incredible wealth. They were beautiful, exciting, desirable and exorbitantly expensive, at the same time vulnerable and sometimes hurtful. Artistic and sophisticated, fashion-conscious and extravagant, they were remarkably assertive and often pushed their husbands into the shadows. In five brilliant individual portraits, Rothschild expert Roman Sandgruber rescues these strong, emancipated women from oblivion and shows what it meant to be a woman a century ago.
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nitsche_venus — Numerous pioneers of the swimwear industry came from Chemnitz and the surrounding area and achieved nationwide fame with their brands and advertising campaigns. Many of these companies belonged to Jewish families. Jürgen Nitsche traces their fashion, their companies and the bathing culture in Chemnitz and the region. The focus is on the Jewish entrepreneurial families Goeritz, Fischer and Franck, who conquered the world of swimwear in Germany and beyond with their trademark brands “Venus”, “Goldfisch” and “Juvena”. They were often ahead of their time by relying on modern advertising at an early stage. For example, the Goeritz brothers recruited well-known advertising artists, painters, writers and photographers to publicize their products nationwide. The Franck family relied on prize puzzles and used celebrities such as Leni Riefenstahl and famous models to promote their fashion.
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lampe_moritzbendit — Moritz Bendit, a Jewish merchant from Fürth, suffered from delusions and physical impairments after falling ill as a young man. In 1898, he was admitted to the Neufriedenheim sanatorium in Munich, where he was to spend almost 42 years. In September 1940, he fell victim to “euthanasia”. The internationally renowned Neufriedenheim sanatorium was primarily aimed at wealthy patients under the direction of Hofrat Dr. Ernst Rehm. However, less well-off artists such as the writer Marieluise Fleißer were also among the patients. She later turned her impressions of her stay in 1938 into a story in which she also addressed the situation of Jewish patients in the institution during the Nazi era.
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gelhard_gertrudbing — Gertrud Bing's dissertation, defended in 1921 with Ernst Cassirer and Robert Petsch, was not published due to inflation at the time. However, she went on to work at the Warburg Library, recommended by Cassirer, and her dissertation has remained unpublished. The recent publication of her dissertation fills a significant research gap as Bing played an important role in the Warburg-Cassirer circle. Her study demonstrates her philosophical proximity to Cassirer and thematic affinity with Warburg, making her career at the library a logical progression. Bing became a trusted assistant to Warburg and a member of the directorate. In 1933, she played a crucial role in saving the library and establishing it as an internationally oriented research institute. Bing continued to contribute to academia, promoting the research methods of the Warburg-Cassirer circle through numerous lectures both in Germany and abroad.
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feller_thejewishimperialimagination — Leo Baeck (1873–1956) was a rabbi, public intellectual, and the official leader of German Jewry during the Holocaust. The Jewish Imperial Imagination shows the myriad ways in which the German imperial enterprise left its imprint on his religious and political thought, and on modern Judaism more generally. This book is the first to explore Baeck's religious thought as political, and situate it within the imperial context of the period which is often ignored in discussions of modern Jewish thought. Baeck's work during the Holocaust is analysed in-depth, drawing on unpublished manuscripts written in Nazi Germany and in the Theresienstadt Ghetto. In the process Yaniv Feller raises new questions about the nature of Jewish missionizing and the German-Jewish imagination of the East as a space for colonisation. He thus develops the concept of the 'Jewish imperial imagination', moving beyond a simple dichotomy of ascribing to or resisting hegemonic narratives.
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landy_omaminas — Each slice is moist and fluffy and heavenly, both tasty and light on the palate, with a hint of lemon and vanilla. For more than a century, Mina Weil's cheesecake has been our family's favorite dessert, a pure expression of pleasure, comfort and tradition. Our great-grandmother's recipe, which she left behind on a faded index card, was her declaration of love to those born after her. If you enjoy her cake with all your senses, it will take you back to your old home.
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muller_josephwiener — Born in 1866 as the son of a doctor in East Prussia, Josef Wiener-Braunsberg was a master of humorous verse. Based in Berlin since 1900, he was able to realize his dream and make a living from writing in the 1920s. However, he only succeeded in doing so after a few balancing acts between the German Empire, the Weimar Republic and the sword of Damocles of National Socialism, which - in keeping with the spirit of the times - resulted in an expansion of his repertoire to include political-satirical and also dark texts. As editor of the magazine ULK, he wrote over 800 poems and also published several novels. The “Lord of Rhymes” died in 1928 and was posthumously vilified by the National Socialists. Today, the ULK texts and Berlin novels by this forgotten writer are a journey into the past that bring the Weimar period back to life: as a history book of a different kind.
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nemtsov_fromstpetersburg — The history of the so-called “New Jewish School" in music began in 1908 in St. Petersburg with the founding of the Society for Jewish Folk Music by students from the St. Petersburg Conservatory. The end of this movement came with the invasion of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938, and the dissolution of the Vienna Society for the Promotion of Jewish Music later that year. The fascinating and dramatic history of the New Jewish School is the subject of this monograph. While many other national schools of music were able to develop freely and establish themselves in a favorable cultural environment, the Jewish school was violently suppressed. The reconstruction of its historical development in Russia and, after 1917, increasingly in other Eastern and Central European countries was first presented in German in 2004 and has since served as the basis for rediscovery of the valuable, highly original repertoire of New Jewish School composers.
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orth_diefuldaer — The former Fulda rabbi's villa at Von-Schildeck-Straße 12 is one of the few historical buildings that have survived as stone evidence of Jewish life in Fulda. Built in the historicist style for the Fulda provincial rabbi Dr. Michael Cahn according to plans by architect Karl Wegener (1846-1914) in 1902/03, the house served as a home for Dr. Michael Cahn and his son Dr. Leo Cahn, who succeeded his father as provincial rabbi, and their family members. After the Reichspogromnacht in 1938, the family had to flee Germany and eventually reached Palestine via England. This volume deals with the rabbi's villa, the history of its construction, the work of the two provincial rabbis and the fate of the Cahn family. Last but not least, the documentary approach emphasizes the cultural and historical significance of the former rabbi's villa for the city of Fulda and the Jewish history of Eastern Hesse.
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specht_diefrauenderfamilie — In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the German-Jewish Feuchtwanger family made a spectacular rise from the Fürth provinces to the upper middle classes of the royal seat of Munich. A rise that would have been unthinkable without four generations of strong women who steered the family's fortunes through the historical turmoil, as tough businesswomen, as pioneers and, in times of persecution, as true heroines. Heike Specht tells the story of the Feuchtwangers from the female perspective and reports on extraordinary life plans from almost 200 years. Because behind great families there are often powerful women.
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buchstein_enduringenmity — To date, the relationship between Otto Kirchheimer and Carl Schmitt has invariably been described as friendly, despite their political differences. Kirchheimer has even been attributed the role of the godfather of today's left-Schmittianism. With reference to previously unknown archival materials, conversations with personal contacts, and through a new reading of the theoretical works of both authors, including an analysis of the Nazi vocabulary used by Schmitt, Hubertus Buchstein exposes this view as a politically motivated legend. Buchstein claims that the best way to characterize their relationship from their first meeting in Bonn in 1926 up until Kirchheimer's death in 1965 is as enduring enmity - in a political, a theoretical, and even a personal sense.
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zessin_alostworld — The lost world of East European Jews meets the lost world of life under the Soviet rule. From the Galician shtetl of Mos'ciska (Mostyska)--now in Ukraine near the Polish border--the memoir follows a Jewish family through two World Wars, deportation to a labour settlement under the Soviet regime, through Central Asia, the Middle East, to America. These are the lost worlds that the author vividly brings to life. Holding onto Jewish tradition, surviving mass human rights violations. The vast majority of Polish Jews, who survived the Second World War, did so as refugees and deportees in the Soviet Union. Meier Landau and his family escaped the Germans from Krakow, but were deported by the Soviets from Lviv, along with thousands of other Polish-Catholic and Jewish-families.
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The LBI Library collects publications related to the history and culture of German-speaking Jews as outlined in its Collection Development Policy. A rotating selection of recent highlights from among our new acquisitions are featured on this website, as well as a link to a comprehensive list of new acquisitions in our catalog.

Books from the LBI Library Collection can be used onsite in the Lillian Goldman Reading Room at the Center for Jewish History, currently by appointment. The reading room is open Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. Visits must be scheduled in advance through a research account and book requests need to be placed in advance . If you are not sure whether an on-site visit is necessary for your research interests or for visit updates, please reach out! The reading room librarians are available at inquiries@cjh.org.

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