Salman Schocken

In 1931, Salman Schocken founded the Schocken Verlag in Berlin. He emigrated to Palestine in late 1933, where he bought the Ha’aretz daily newspaper and founded another publishing house in Tel Aviv. The Schocken Verlag in Berlin was closed down in 1938, but Salman Schocken was able to save a large portion of the book inventories by transporting them to Palestine. Schocken moved to the United States in 1940, where he then founded Schocken Books Ltd. in 1945. While on a trip to Europe, Salman Schocken died on 6 August 1959, in Pontresina, Switzerland.

Throughout his life, Salman Schocken promoted a return to the cultural Jewish legacy. Very early on he organized the publication of a series of booklets in the Committee for Jewish Cultural Work of the Zionist Federation of Germany (ZVfD). His publishing houses in Berlin, Tel Aviv, and New York produced Jewish texts – fiction, poetry, and historical and religious works. In addition to texts by prominent Jewish authors like S.Y. Agnon, Martin Buber, Franz Kafka, Franz Rosen­zweig and Gershom Scholem this also included anthologies, literary guides, and significant series for a wide audience – between 1933 and 1939 in particular the Schocken library (Bücherei) in Berlin. As regards its breadth, the selection of its topics, and the quality of the book design, it represents an impressive act of resistance and Jewish self-assertion.