Breuer, Isaac, 1883-1946

Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929), philosopher and theologian, belonged to the important personalities of the German Jewish intellectual life after the First World War. Franz Rosenzweig started the Freie Juedische Lehrhaus, where he tried to teach Jewish tradition and culture as part of real life experience and in this way bring it closer to assimilated German Jewry. He wrote several philosophical works and translated the Hebrew Bible with Martin Buber. The Franz Rosenzweig collection contains manuscripts of many of Franz Rosenzweig’s smaller works, some of his personal items, and correspondence with his parents and with more than fifty of his friends and colleagues. The collection contains other correspondence, and a great number of newspaper clippings, photographs, and some objects.

The collection contains the correspondence between Jakob Katz and his fiancée Gerti Birnbaum, and comprises 195 letters in seven folders. Katz's letters were written in Frankfurt, in Magyargencs (Hungary), and in London; Birnbaum's' letters were written in Kissingen, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Kreuznach, Berlin, Jerusalem, London, Frankfurt, and Tel Aviv. The earliest letter is dated July 1, 1933, and the last was written on February 18, 1936. Some letters are undated or appear to have been written by a third person.