A Celebration of the Jewish Book

The Son­cino Society, which aimed to unite Jewish intellectual heri­tage with the modern art of books, quickly became one of the largest bibliophile asso­ciations of the Weimar Republic. It placed special emphasis on typo­graphy and wanted its publi­cations to serve as models for Jewish book pro­duction. Our library contains 80 titles, the full collection of its pub­lications, which was digitized in 2016.

To set the mood for the evening, the library will present various Son­cino publi­cations and archive materials, including the rarely shown 1933 edition of the Bible, in the reading room at 6 pm. To open the ceremony at 7 p.m., actor Gustav Peter Wöhler will read a story by S.J. Agnon. After an intro­duction by Bernhard Jensen on the moti­vation behind the society’s foun­dation, Julia Schneida­wind will place the Soncino Society in the context of Jewish collections and the modern art of books. This will be followed by a podium dis­cussion focused on the topi­cality of the biblio­phile impulse to find the right form for the content of a book.

Dr. Julia Schneida­wind is an assistant to the depart­ment chair of Jewish History and Culture at the Ludwig Maxi­milian University in Munich. Her research specialisms include the history of migration, material culture and prove­nance research. Her mono­graph Fate and its Books: German-Jewish Private Libraries between Jerusalem, Tunis and Los Angeles (Original title: Schicksale und ihre Bücher. Deutsch-jüdische Privat­bibliotheken zwischen Jeru­salem, Tunis und Los Angeles) was published in 2023 by Vanden­hoeck & Ruprecht.

Dr. Bern­hard Jensen is a librarian at the Jewish Museum Berlin. His monograph A canon of the Jewish Renaissance: Soncino Society of Friends of the Jewish Book (Original title: Ein Kanon der jüdischen Renaissance. Soncino-Gesell­schaft der Freunde des jüdischen Buches) was published in 2017 by Wall­stein publishing house.