Preserving the Historical Jewish Press
The Jewish press, which emerged in the seventeenth century, has been an essential part of Jewish history and Jewish print culture since the early modern era. Like the printing press and print media in general, it became a key instrument to new patterns of communication and created a new space of social interaction, distribution of information and discussion of new ideas. From the eighteenth century onward, the Jewish press played a key role in transforming Jewish reading cultures and complemented other forms of public interaction, such as socializing in clubs and societies or attending public events including synagogue services. The historical Jewish press contributed greatly to the constitution of Jewish public spheres through providing information, but more importantly by providing a forum to discuss and negotiate what constituted modern Judaism, frequently used by the various intellectual, social and political movements. This included maskilic journals, reform and orthodox publications as well the Zionist press. The historical Jewish press also includes journals devoted to Jewish scholarship, education and cultural affairs, bulletins and newsletters of Jewish institutions, associations and—equally importantly—Jewish communities. Thus, the Jewish press became a crucial instrument for defining the boundaries of such groups, shedding light on the dynamic processes of diversification, fragmentation, and spatialization that shaped modern Jewish history. As such the Jewish press, defined as all forms of periodical literature by and for Jews, which often but not necessarily dealt with Jewish affairs, presents itself as a key source of historical research.
The University Library Frankfurt holds more than 4,500 journals and newspapers related to Jewish Studies published since the last third of the seventeenth century to this day. The historical collection served as the basis to establish Compact Memory more than twenty years ago, a digital collection of the Jewish press with a focus on German-Jewish periodicals. A collaborative project from its beginning, it incorporated material from other collections as well, such as the Germania Judaica in Cologne and the Leo Baeck Institutes in New York and Jerusalem. Before digitization became an option, access to historical Jewish press had been challenging. As newspapers and journals in general, they were considered as less valuable and rarely collected systematically. Until the 1930s the Jewish press was often only preserved in Jewish collections, in libraries of communities, schools, seminaries or in private collections. In Europe, the majority of these collections were destroyed during the Holocaust, with holdings lost or dispersed. The collections that survived are tasked to preserve their holdings, in the original print and microfilms or microfiches, which has played a key role in preserving the printing press as well as in the digital form. The University of Frankfurt's Library continues to collect the Jewish press and academic journals in the field of Jewish studies funded by the German Research Foundation as part of its Jewish Studies service.
The following selection of objects sheds light on the Hebraica & Judaica collection of the University Library Frankfurt and the history of Jewish press.
Kerstin von der Krone is the Curator of the Hebraica & Judaica Collection at the University Library Frankfurt am Main and head of the FID Jewish Studies. Marie-Luise Schmidt is staff member for the FID Jewish Studies at the University Library Frankfurt am Main.
