A Canon of Jewish Renaissance

Author Bernhard Jensen in Conversation with Publisher Thedel von Wallmoden (audio recording available, in German)

The Jewish Museum Berlin is the only institution in the world that owns all the Soncino Society’s publications. In 2016, the museum made the unique collection accessible via the library's online catalog.

In the first monograph, Bernhard Jensen provides an overview of all the Soncino Society’s publications, which he sees as voices of an era that at the same time meant the end of German Jewry.

recording available

Map with all buildings that belong to the Jewish Museum Berlin. The Old Building is marked in green

Where

Old Building, level 2, Great Hall
Lindenstraße 9–14, 10969 Berlin

Where, when, what?

The Soncino Society

Inspired by Zionism, the Jewish Renaissance developed into a Jewish cultural self-awareness beyond religion and assimilation at the end of the 19th century. The Soncino Society was founded in 1924 as an offshoot of this movement, absorbing the impulses of the German book art movement and transferring it to Jewish book culture. It addressed Orthodox, Liberal, and Zionist Jews and with 650 members soon became one of the largest bibliophilic associations in the Weimar Republic.

Up until its dissolution in 1937, it had published over a hundred publications from the Hebrew Bible to modern literature.

Soncino-Gesellschaft

Bernhard Jensen

Born in 1968, Bernhard Jensen was awarded a doctorate in philosophy in 2001 and has been working as a librarian at the Jewish Museum Berlin since 2004.

In cooperation with Wallstein Verlag