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Bright space, the interior dominated by pointed geometric shapes in the style of the Libeskind museum building with bookshelves and information counter

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.)

Map with all buildings that belong to the Jewish Museum Berlin. The W. M. Blumenthal Academy is marked in green

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.

Berlin Museum

This cultural-historical museum about the city existed from 1962 to 1995 and was housed in the Kollegienhaus at Lindenstraße 14, which today belongs to the Jewish Museum Berlin.
More on Wikipedia (in German)

A row of desks, some equipped with desktops, stand in a room flanked by bookshelves. A passageway opens to the library area.

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.

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Can I borrow books from the library?

We do not lend books. Our holdings can only be viewed in the Reading Room.

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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). Loan requests must be made at least six months in advance. For questions regarding administrative processes, please contact Katrin Strube (T +49 (0)30 259 93 417, email: k.strube@jmberlin.de).

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How can I donate objects, photographs, and documents to the museum?

If you would like to support the Jewish Museum Berlin and believe you possess materials that may be of interest to us, contact us!

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Blick in den Gang zwischen zwei Buchregalreihen in einer Bibliothek

The Library of the Jewish Museum Berlin

Current page: Our Library: Books, films, and more about Jewish art, culture, and history
Library Catalog (OPAC)
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

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