Germany

The Elisabeth Lunau Collection documents Elisabeth Lunau’s personal life and her research on her father, Ludwig Marum, a Minister in the Weimer Republic and a prominent figure in the Socialist movement; the collection also documents Elisabeth Lunau’s research on her family’s genealogy. The collection consists of correspondence, vital-, immigration-, and financial documents, photographs, lists, genealogical tables, manuscripts, notes, and printed materials.

Eliyahu Guttmacher was a rabbi, Talmudic scholar, mystic, communal leader, and early Zionist. During his lifetime he was known as the Tsadik of Grätz and thousands of Jews flocked to him for blessings and advice. Guttmacher was also known for his support of Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer, an early Zionist, and for his extensive collection of funds for institutions in Palestine. The bulk of the collection consists of several thousand kvitlekh (written requests to a rabbi asking for a blessing or advice). The kvitlekh were received from Jews residing in Poland and other, mostly European, countries. They reflect the social history of European Jews in the mid-19th century and relate to financial, medical, and family problems. In addition, the collection contains the following: general correspondence, including inquiries relating to religious matters, family correspondence, legal documents such as court and government papers, bills, certifications by unidentified authors, discussions on Jewish law by unknown authors, amulets, business documents, and receipts for contributions to charitable institutions in Palestine.

This collection contains materials highlighting accomplished German-Jewish athletes and soldiers. The earliest material in the collection are programs regarding memorial services for Jewish soliders in the German army (1915-1916) and regarding the 54th Infantry Division in Russia (World War I period); followed by two editions of newspapers (one containing an article by Hermann Badt entitled Momentbilder von der Palästinafahrt des Graf Zeppelin from publication Aus alter und neuer Zeit - Illustrierte Zweiwochenschrift des Israelitischen Familienblattes (1929); and obituary of Jakob Wolff, Jewish pilot in the German air force in WW I, from publication Der Schild - Zeitschrift des Reichsbundes Jüdischer Frontsoldaten (1926)); a scrapbook with clippings circa 1924-1936 featuring various Jewish Olympic athletes; photocopies of two pages of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 1953, with articles about: July 20 plot to assassinate Hitler, the Jewish artist Otto Freundlich (who was prominently featured in the 1937 "degenerate art" exhibit), and a film entitled Der Nürnberger Prozeß.

The Eric Lind collection documents his involvement with numismatics and philately and his interests in the Holocaust and the fate of the Jews during World War II. Materials collected here cover topics such as Anti-Semitism, Holocaust, Nazis and Neo-Nazis, forgeries during WW II, stamps and currency, and the era of Kaiser Wilhelm II. The collection consists of printed materials, artifacts, paper money and coins, stamps, post cards, envelopes, correspondence, documents, and photographs.

Documents, correspondence, notebooks and manuscripts of Dr. Erich Adler and his wife Frieda née Feisenberger

This collection documents the life of the violinist Ernest Drucker, with a larger focus on his professional work in various orchestras and ensembles. The bulk of the collection consists of a large body of correspondence of friends and colleagues, most of them other musicians. Other papers in the collection include official documents, newspaper clippings of reviews and concert announcements, programs for performances, a few copies of photographs and some sketches.

This collection represents a lifetime of genealogical research by Ernst R. Stiefel about his family history. Files about individuals and families contain documents that are almost entirely photocopies from various German archives. Various family trees and photocopies of articles about Jews in Germany are also in this collection.

The life of Ernst Hamburger was extraordinarily rich and varied; regrettably, his literary estate does not completely document it. In his flight from Nazi Germany, Hamburger had to leave all his papers behind. With a few exceptions, the same was the case in 1940. It appears he made it a practice to periodically weed his papers. At his request, a friend went through his papers after his death and destroyed two cartons full of personal and confidential material. Consequently, the remaining matter is only a fragment of a much larger life’s work.

The Ernst Pincus Collection contains papers and correspondence of the lawyer Ernst Pincus and his wife Käte (née Zorek). The collection also includes some papers and correspondence of their parents, family members, and friends, along with family photographs and genealogical information.

This collection contains documents, diaries and personal correspondence of Ernst Scheuer and Rosi Moses Scheuer. They document their life in Paris and their imprisonment in French detention centers in 1939-40 and in Spanish prisons 1940-41. The documents illustrate the struggle for U.S. Visas and the subsequent emigration to the United States, as well as the efforts to establish themselves in New York. The collection also contains numerous manuscripts written by Ernst and Rosi Scheuer, a large number of them being autobiographical.

The collection contains play manuscripts, programs, playbills, posters, photographs, correspondence, agreements, scrapbooks, clippings, printed ephemera, and memorabilia relating to Yiddish theater primarily in the early twentieth century, especially the interwar period. Also included are items of printed ephemera related to Yiddish film, Hebrew theater, and a broad range of Jewish performers, including cantors, singers and dancers. Geographically, the materials originate predominantly in Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe, including parts of the Russian Empire and, later, the Soviet Union; and, to a lesser extent, the United States, especially New York City. Also included are materials from Western Europe, Palestine (Eretz Israel), South America, and other regions around the world. Among the theater personalities represented in the collection with significant amounts of material are Herz Grossbard, David Herman, Joseph Winogradoff, Rudolf Zaslavsky, Zygmunt Turkow, Jonas Turkow, Moyshe Lipman, Ida Kaminska, and Esther Rachel Kaminska. The theater groups best represented include the Varshever Yidisher Kunst-Teater (VYKT; Warsaw Yiddish Art Theater), founded by Zygmunt Turkow and Ida Kaminska; the Vilna Troupe; Yung Teater / Nay Teater (Warsaw; Vilna), under the direction of Michael Weichert; the Moscow State Yiddish Theater (known by its Russian acronym "GOSET"); Maurice Schwartz's Yiddish Art Theatre, of New York; and the Hebrew theater "Habimah." A wide variety of other professional as well as amateur theater groups are represented with smaller amounts of material.

This collection contains materials pertaining to anniversaries of the Falk family.

Letters to Felix Hollaender regarding his manuscripts from Berliner Tageblatt and Ullstein & Co. Letter to Ms. Meyer from Erich Reiss Verlag.

This collection of mainly anti-Semitic material was compiled by a Jewish librarian of German descent who infiltrated the pro-Nazi community developing in New York City in the years leading up to World War II. The bulk of the collection consists of publications and printed matter, with the notable exception of narrative reports that describe first-hand experiences and observations of Nazi-affiliated events. Document types include advertisements, event announcements, books, clippings, correspondence, magazines and newspapers, travel guides, political memorabilia, and other print ephemera.

Bulletins of an informal family association for former Jewish residents of Nuremberg and Fürth, along with information on reunions and meetings of this association.

Correspondence of Franz Blei with the Georg Mueller Verlag in Munich, 1909-1915. The correspondence is grouped by years: 1909: 15 items, 1910: 123 items, 1911: 24 items, 1912: 77 items, 1913: 34 items, 1915: 23 items; there are 172 handwritten letters, 76 typed letters, 21 cards, 7 contracts, 20 short essays.

The Frederick Lachmann collection includes fragmentary materials that allow us all but a glance into the life and professional activities of Frederick Lachmann and members of his family. The core of the collection consists of printed copies of articles that Frederick Lachmann wrote for Aufbau. Also included in the collection are correspondence, photographs, and writings.

This collection is comprised of papers belonging to the German architect Fritz Nathan, who emigrated to the United States via Holland in 1940. Nathan designed synagogues, department stores, and houses, among other types of buildings. The collection consists mainly of blueprints and architectural plans, but also includes documents, photographs, negatives, sketches, and drawings. The documents are primarily correspondence, and focus on Fritz Nathan's work, but also contain a large amount of information on restitution for the Nathan family. In addition, the collection contains some papers on Fritz Nathan's family members: Lucie, Otto, and Doris Nathan.

This collection consists of a "Lenel family archive" created by Fritz Victor Lenel. In addition to materials common in genealogical collections, such as genealogical tables and photocopies of archival documents, this collection includes original material relating to Lenel's ancestors, many of whom were prominent members of the Mannheim Jewish community, and very thorough research notes and correspondence with distant relatives.

The collection consists of family papers pertaining to a number of Jewish families from the Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, Germany, and France. Included here are vital documents, personal, professional and financial correspondence, family trees, and financial documents

Correspondence and other documents pertaining to Gerald Friedman and the Friedman family.

By and large the Gerard Field Family Collection consists of materials pertaining to Anne Prower, neé Hanau with materials dealing with other family members constituting just a fraction of the collection. Included in the collection are clippings, correspondence, manuscripts, documents, photographs, slides, printed materials and 8 mm films. The larger segment of the collection consists of media materials, such as photographs, slides, and 8 mm films.

The Gerda Dittmann Collection includes personal and business materials pertaining to the Dittmann and Ottensooser families and consists of correspondence, personal, business, and legal documents, clippings, poetry, and notebooks.

Reports, publications and clippings pertaining to the establishment and activities of Germania Judaica at Koelner Bibliothek.

This resource is a list of all of the landsmanshaftn for which there are records at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. The list is organized by ancestral town (that is, the town from which the founders of the organizations originally immigrated from).
YIVO has the records of over 1,500 individual landsmanshaftn. Some landsmanshaftn records comprise stand-alone collections with their own Record Group numbers. Some records are in a folder that is included in a larger collection.

Once you have identified organizations you’re interested in, check the “Physical Location” note for information on which YIVO Record Group contains the material. You can then use the ArchivesSpace toolbar to search for that record group and get more information about the contents of the collection.

The Germany (Vilna Archives) collection contains materials of diverse provenances pertaining to Jewish life in Germany and, to a much lesser extent, other German-speaking areas of central Europe (Austria, Bohemia, Moravia), from the 16th century until the beginning of the Second World War. It includes correspondence, financial records, official documents, business records, writings, minutes, reports, book catalogs, printed ephemera, occasional clippings, and a handful of photographs. A little more than 60% of the collection comprises personal and family papers, or individual items of correspondence (approximately 140 different name headings); and a little over 20%, portions of the records of the Jewish communities of Darmstadt, Frankfurt am Main, Filehne (Wieleń), Raschkow (Raszków), and Rybnik. The remainder of the collection consists of various printed ephemera and scattered records related to Jewish communities, organizations, or firms, including publishers and booksellers. Also included are some 15 individual older items dating from the mid 16th to the early decades of the 19th century, including Schutzbriefe (residence permits), petitions, and attestations, as well as a mohel book (registry of circumcisions). Especially noteworthy among the personal papers are those of art dealer Josef Sandel, comparative law scholar Ernst Rabel, the Henschel brothers (artists), writer and social activist Lina Morgenstern, engineer Erich Kempinski, and writer and editor Julius Rodenberg. The several rabbis represented include Josef Jona Horovitz, of Hunsdorf (Huncovce) and Frankfurt am Main; Salomon Breuer and Isidor Friedmann, both of Frankfurt am Main; and Wolf Landau, of Dresden.

The Gertrud Mainzer Family Collection documents the personal and professional life of Holocaust survivor, attorney, and New York Family Court judge Gertrud Mainzer. It also includes materials about her family and her ancestors, including her husband, attorney Richard Mainzer, and her father, noted legal scholar Hugo Sinzheimer.

This collection contains materials, primarily correspondence and by laws, relating to chapters of the Jewish fraternal benevolent society B’nai B’rith that were founded in German-speaking central Europe beginning in the late 19th and early 20th century.

The papers consist of correspondence and reports of Cecelia Razovsky (married name: Davidson), noted social worker specializing in immigration and resettlement of refugees. The collection includes information about her work with the National Council of Jewish Women in the 1920s, and with the National Refugee Service (and predecessor organizations) in the 1930s. Information is included about her work as a Resettlement Supervisor in the post-World War II Displaced Persons camps in Europe, and as a field worker in the southwestern U.S. for the United Service for New Americans in 1950. The collection contains reports and correspondence from her trips to South America, primarily Brazil, to explore possibilities of refugee settlement in 1937 and 1946; as a representative for United HIAS Service to aid in settling Egyptian and Hungarian refugees in 1957-1958; and as a pleasure trip and evaluation of the changes in the Jewish community of the country in 1963. Also included in the collection are many of Razovsky's articles, plays, and pamphlets.

The Guido Kisch Collection documents the life and professional activities of Guido Kisch, teacher, researcher, and scholar in the field of Legal History. It also documents personal and to a lesser degree professional lives of some of the other members of the Kisch family, most notably his brother, Bruno Kisch, a cardiologist, and their father, Alex Kisch, who was a rabbi and a writer. The collection includes brochures, booklets, clippings, correspondence, financial documents, minutes, notes, off prints, photographs, printed materials, and writings.