Library
Opening Hours
Mo – Thu 10.00 – 17.00
Tel.: (030)314-23908
Contact
Dr. Marion Neiss
Information and History
The library is open to all users interested in scholarship. Its founding collection
consisted of 3,500 volumes of both antisemitic writings from the 17th to the 20th
century and classical studies of antisemitism research. The collection reflects the
spectrum of political, religious, cultural and racist antisemitism, primarily in
Germany, Austria and France.
A second collection of ca. 750 volumes originated from "Kaiser Wilhelm Institut
für Anthropologie, menschliche Erblehre und Eugenik," (Kaiser Wilhelm Institute
for anthropology, human genetics and eugenics) in Berlin-Dahlem, which closed in
1947. This collection, which includes works from the field of genetics, anthropology,
ethnology and ethnogeny, medicine, and in particular, hereditary pathology, family
and social eugenics, has considerably broadened the libraries holdings on the subject of racism.
The library currently presides over approx. 40,000 volumes, but also possesses
numerous other media such as posters, pamphlets, and illustrated broad-sheets.
About 180 journals are also kept regularly up to date.
Thematic Focus:
1.
Sources and accounts on the conditions for the emergence of antisemitism, the
Intellectual foundation and historical manifestations of antisemitism (with
emphasis on the modern period beginning in 1879). The available sources
document in particular the development of hostility to Jews in Europe in the
19th and 20th centuries. This covers the beginning of the antisemitic movement
up to the National Socialist persecution of the Jews and the Holocaust and
extends to the most recent forms of hostility against Jews (for example
Holocaust denial and anti-Zionism).
2.
Sources and accounts on the history of relations between Jews and non-Jews
in different countries (worldwide, with a special focus on Europe) since the
end of the 18th century. German-speaking Jewry is particularly well represented
through an abundant collection of daily publications from the emancipation
to the present. The library contains a series of Jewish daily newspapers,
community newsletters, and scholarly and cultural-political journals and it
systematically collects new publications on regional and local history and on
personal recollections of Jewish persecution in the 20th century (emigration,
Holocaust, displaced persons). Also available are accounts on the impact of
the Shoah (psychological after-effects on the victims, attempts to process the
catastrophe in culture).
3.
Scholarly literature from various disciplines on the analysis of the social and
social-individual psychological background of antisemitism and the closely
connected historical phenomena that often accompany it (xenophobia, minority
conflicts). Standard works on the following related research areas are also
available: prejudice, aggression, authoritarianism, fascism, nationalism, racism,
migration, minorities, imperialism and genocide.
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