Our Library
Books, Films, and More about Jewish Art, Culture, and History
Our library is a scholarly reference library holding about 70,000 items. Alongside primary sources and research literature on Jewish history, culture, art, religion, and philosophy, the library also includes historical magazines, current periodicals, and audiovisual media.
You can search our holdings online in our library catalog (OPAC) and view the items in the reading room. (More information and opening hours on our website.)
Where
W. M. Blumenthal Academy, Library
Fromet-und-Moses-Mendelssohn-Platz 1, 10969 Berlin
Postal address: Lindenstraße 9-14, 10969 Berlin
From the First Acquisitions to the Public Museum Library
The library's beginnings date back to 1975, when the Society for a Jewish Museum in Berlin was founded as a non-profit organization. The Society exhibited its First Acquisitions and Donations for the Future Jewish Museum in Berlin in 1978. These included first editions of the translation of the Psalms (1783) and of Morning Hours (1785) by Moses Mendelssohn.
One of the first major gifts to the Jewish section of the Berlin Museum came from John F. and Hertha Oppenheimer, who donated publications by the Central Association for German Citizens of Jewish Faith.
Workstations in the reading room of the archive and library; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Roman März
The books from the Berlin Museum's Jewish section were transferred to the Jewish Museum Berlin Library in 1999. When the permanent exhibition was opened in 2001, we were able to set up a reading room for visitors and publicize our holdings in an online catalog. Since the Library moved to the Academy building in July 2013, visitors have direct access to extensive public stacks.
Our library holdings are growing constantly. For example, within the framework of a grant from the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft), between December 2013 and February 2018, we were able to expand our collections related to Jewish art by 3,550 publications.
Since 2016, we have been continuously digitizing books from the library's thematic focus areas and making them available online.
Contact
Monika Sommerer
T +49 (0)30 259 93 564
m.sommerer@jmberlin.de
- Address
Jewish Museum Berlin
Lindenstraße 9–14
10969 Berlin
How can I conduct research using the museum’s archive, collections, and library?
Our Reading Room is open to the public. You can also research using our library’s holdings and some of our collection’s holdings online. To view additional holdings, please contact the responsible curators.
Can I borrow books from the library?
We do not lend books. Our holdings can only be viewed in the Reading Room.
I would like to depict or borrow an object from your collections. Who should I contact?
Your contacts for photo permissions are Valeska Wolfgram and Birgit Maurer-Porat (T +49 (0)30 259 93 433, email: fotodoku@jmberlin.de). Please consider that it may take between four to six weeks Please note that the processing time for requests can take between 4 and 6 weeks. We will be happy to provide you with further information on fees and reproduction conditions on request.
How can I donate objects, photographs, and documents to the museum?
Interested in Contributing to Our Collections?
Do you own materials related to Jewish culture and history in Germany that could be of interest to us? We would be delighted to hear from you!
The Library of the Jewish Museum Berlin
- Landing Page
- Current page: Our Library: Books, films, and more about Jewish art, culture, and history
- Library Catalog (OPAC)
- Our Collections: collection fields at a glance
- Information for Visitors
- Reading Room: Opening hours, catalogs, databases, requesting archive material
- Registration Form: Register to view rare holdings from our library and documents from our archive
- Terms of Use: Requirements for visitors to the archive and library of the Jewish Museum Berlin
- Our Library’s Classification Scheme: The focuses and thematic areas according to which our collection is organized and grouped
- List of Fees: Prices and rates for services at the reading room of our library and archive
- Collections and Projects
- Collections on Jewish Art and Culture: Volumes printed by the Soncino Society, the publications of the Centralverein, Hebrew Printing, and special collections on Jewish art and visual culture
- The Artur Brauner Collection: Twenty-one films by the successful film producer
- Digitizing Book Holdings: Publications of the Soncino Society of Friends of the Jewish Book, 2016
- Enlarging and Indexing Our Holdings in Jewish Art: DFG Project on visual and material culture of Judaism, 2013–2018
- Digital Content
- Highlights from the Library Collection: A medieval manuscript, a cookbook from 1900, an elaborate Hebrew children’s book and other treasures
- Digital Books: A complete list of our digitized books, in German
- Rare Digital Books: Curated selection of valuable digitized material from our holdings
- Story Time in Our Library: Why Noah Chose the Dove by Isaac Bashevis Singer, 2023
- “Hörmahl:” A Feast for the Ears: Podcast series about Rahel Varnhagen, Lina Morgenstern and other women writers, 2021–2022, in German
- See also
- Judaica Portal: Online database of Judaica holdings at various institutions, including our library’s holdings
- Periodicals in the ZDB: Research tool for magazines, newspapers, and databases in German and Austrian libraries
- Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (DDB): Our digitized publications accessible via the DDB
- AG Jüdische Sammlungen: Website of the Jewish Collections working group, in German
- Library Holdings: Search engine for our online collections, in German
- Literature
- Literature for Children and Young Adults
- Digital Archive of Jewish Authors in Berlin 1933–1945: cooperation (in German)
