Julius Bab Collection

The collection contains few personal, official or vital documents, but is exceptionally rich in correspondence, manuscripts, diaries, appointment books, and scrapbooks documenting Julius Bab's cultural work and endeavors. The bulk of the collection consists of the scrapbooks, which contain extensive clippings of articles by and about Bab. Of the other series, the correspondence is of particular note both for its extent and for the impressive array of original letters by notable cultural figures. There are the over 100 letters from the literary critic and martyred revolutionary Gustav Landauer, and nearly as many from the playwright Richard Dehmel; the files also contain a considerable amount of correspondence with Nobel Prize winning playwright Gerhart Hauptmann, with the philosopher Fritz Mauthner, and with the influential editor and writer Moritz Heimann. The correspondence files contain letters from over 90 additional cultural figures, chiefly writers and persons involved with the theater. Among the more prominent of these figures are Walther Rathenau, Thomas Mann, Richard Beer-Hoffmann, George Bernard Shaw, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Max Liebermann, and Stefan Zweig.

Approximately 80 original drafts and manuscripts of Bab's articles and writings, chiefly typewritten with corrections and marginalia, although some are handwritten, are also present. The majority of these writings are fewer than 10 pages long, with the exception of one longer draft entitled Leben und Tod des deutschen Judentums. Also filed in this series are a folder of notes and several poems.

Rounding out the collection are series containing diaries, theater and lecture programs, and clippings. The diaries series contains two diaries from before 1900, and thereafter several notebooks and appointment books which Bab used as calendars. Although these volumes are primarily functional, occasional longer entries or passages throughout the various volumes have a more diaristic character. The theater and lecture programs series contains programs, clippings, and promotional materials, such as handbills and small posters, for theatrical events and lectures that Bab participated in. A few items of the promotional materials are interesting examples of Jugenstil and Weimar era graphic design. The final small series of newspaper clippings of articles by and about Bab mirrors the overall structure and content of the Scrapbooks series, although it consists entirely of loose, rather than bound clippings.