Jewish Books & Jewish collections: Treasures of the University Library Frankfurt

This outstanding collection owes its existence to the philanthropists of Frankfurt, who by the mid-nineteenth century began to donate their private book collections to the Stadtbibliothek or contributed to fundraising efforts to acquire Jewish collections. At the same time, the Stadtbibliothek saw significant expansions developing a portfolio as a research library. In 1898, Aron Freimann came to Frankfurt and played a key role in developing the collection, both through his outstanding reputation as a scholar and the leading bibliographer of his generation as well as through his ability to raise funds and gain support with the Jewish community and the city of Frankfurt.

The collections that became the foundation of the Stadtbibliothek's Hebraica & Judaica division formerly belonged to scholars and rabbis, collectors and philanthropists, among them Isaak Marcus Jost  (1793–1860), Aaron Moses Fuld (1790–1847), Nehemias Brüll (1843–1891), Abraham Berliner (1833–1915), Charles Hallgarten (1838–1908), Baron Carl Wilhelm von Rothschild (1828–1901) and his wife Mathilda von Rothschild (1832–1924), Abraham Merzbacher (1818–1885), and Freimanns father in law, Markus Horovitz (1844–1910). 

1933 led to the forced dismissal of Freimann as a civil servant by a city government that was headed by staunch national socialists. Freimann stayed in Frankfurt until 1939, eventually fleeing to New York, where he died in 1948. The following years, the interest in the collection remained high. Plans to sell at least part of the collection did not materialize. The library of the notorious 'Institut zur Erforschung der Judenfrage' was established in Frankfurt in part due to the holdings of the Stadtbibliothek which were well known through Freimann's catalog. During the bombardment of Frankfurt am Main in 1943–44, three-quarters of the Hebraica holdings were lost when the library burned down with altogether 300,000 books. 

Regardless, large parts of the collections survived Nazi Germany, the destruction of the war and the post-war turmoil. The collection was now part of the newly established Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Frankfurt which, based on its significant Judaica holdings, served as the leading reference library for Jewish Studies (since 1949) and Israel Studies (since 1964)  in Post-War Germany.  

Since the late 1990s, Rachel Heuberger, head of the Hebraica & Judaica division at Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek between 1991 and 2019, led the efforts to digitize Jewish Cultural Heritage and helped to establish one of the largest digital Judaica collections, drawing on the historical collections of the University Library Frankfurt. Projects like the digitization of the Yiddish prints collection, Compact Memory and the virtual Freimann collection, which is based in Freimann's catalog, eased the access to key sources of Jewish history and culture. They also raised the visibility of the collection and changed its character. Activities around the Hebraica & Judaica collection are still defined by the task to collect and curate printed texts, but data curation and subsequent services for digital Jewish Studies have become a key focus, most significantly within the context of the Specialized Information Service for Jewish Studies (FID), which is dedicated to support the German research infrastructure in the field.