Frankfurt am Main Jewish Community Collection

This collection contains a wide range of materials, ranging from personal correspondence to programs and mass mailings, which for the most part have to do with various community institutions and membership organizations of the pre-war Frankfurt community.

The types of community institutions fall into three categories: educational, charitable, and religious/administrative. While most of the materials predate the second World War, there are a few items from the postwar community and some memorial materials.

Educational materials are located in folders three and five. The third folder houses mailings, programs, and pamphlets of the Samson-Raphael-Hirsch-Schule, the Philanthropin, the Realschule der Israelitischen Religionsgemeinschaft, and of the Freies Jüdisches Lehrhaus. In folder five are a record book, circular letters, and correspondence of members of the Sustentations-Verein, a charitable organization which supported teachers and clerks within the Jewish community. Other charitable organizations, like the Frankfurter Frauenverein (Women's League), also supported educational institutions, but other like the Chewra Kaddisha and the Brotverteilungsverein had broader missions. Papers and ephemera pertinent to these organizations are available in the second folder.

Other materials concern the religious and administrative institutions. For example, in folder six are programs from the Unterlindau synagogue, and some materials concerning the statutes and elections in the postwar community are present in folder nine. Among these latter materials is an election pamphlet for the Positiv-Jüdischer Block. Other postwar include some lectures and materials regarding memory-work initiatives and programming, as well as questionnaires circulated by the American Federation of Jews from Central Europe to gather information on community assets and property which had been seized by Nazi authorities.

Elsewhere there are materials which concern the community on a broader level, and a few items pertaining solely to individuals. The former category of materials are mostly housed in folder 1. Prominent among them is a violently anti-Jewish pamphlet dated 1614, likely related to the Fettmilch uprising. The first folder also contains a pamphlet relevant to early Reform Judaism in Frankfurt, as well as materials on the cemetery and lists of residents of the Judengasse. Oversized memorial scroll from the Frankfurt synagogue also fall into this category. The items pertinent to individuals include a reproduction of a passport permitting the bearer to leave the Judengasse (1790) and a letter to Willy Sundheimer regarding emigration.

The final folder contains a number of postcards and photographs depicting the Frankfurt synagogue and a number of other community instiutions, including schools. A subgroup of these cards includes reproductions of artworks by Jewish artists published by the Kulturbund deutscher Juden.