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Cover of Jos. Jacobsen and Erwin Jospe. Hawa Naschira! (Auf! Lasst uns Singen!). Leipzig-Hamburg: A.J. Benjamin, 1935. [Rosenberger 485-86]. |
The Ludwig Rosenberger Library of Judaica at the University of Chicago Library, formed by Chicago collector and businessman Ludwig Rosenberger (1904-1987), contains over 17,000 titles documenting the social and cultural history of the Jewish people. Rosenberger was born in Germany and lived in Palestine for four years before emigrating to Chicago, where he prospered in the wholesale business. As a collector, Rosenberger pursued books that reflected his lifelong interest in studying Jewish history, the "Jewish question," and Zionism. He did not collect religious literature, nor did he buy many books in languages he could not read.
The chronological scope of the Rosenberger collection ranges from incunabula, of which there are 26, to works published in the 1970s, when Rosenberger was still collecting. Among the early books are works by Christian Hebraists such as Johann Reuchlin and Johann Buxtorf; anti-Semitic works by Luther and Abraham a Santa Clara; a unique copy of Andreas Osiander's defense of Jews against accusations of ritual murder, published in 1540; rare tracts relating to the re-admission of the Jews to England and Jewish emancipation, including a copy of John Toland's Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews in Great Britain and Ireland (1714); and Lessing's plea for toleration in Nathan der Weise (1779). The particular strength of the collection is its focus on the history of Jews in modern Europe and European social movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially the historical relationship of Jews with modern socialism. Areas of depth include early editions of Josephus; Jewish emancipation; the works of Benedictus de Spinoza, Moses Mendelssohn, Herman Heine, Karl Marx, Ferdinand Lasalle, Emma Goldman, Rosa Luxemburg, and others; the Dreyfus Affair; and the history and literature of the Zionist movement.
Records of many of the titles in the Rosenberger collection are available online through the University of Chicago Library catalog. Works in the collection are arranged by topic in a printed catalog (1971) and expanded supplement (1979) prepared by Rosenberger, both of which are available online: Judaica; A Short-Title Catalogue of the Books, Pamphlets and Manuscripts Relating to the Political, Social and Cultural History of the Jews and to the Jewish Question in the Library of Ludwig Rosenberger, Chicago, Illinois (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1971) Judaica; A Short-Title Catalogue of the Books, Pamphlets and Manuscripts Relating to the Political, Social and Cultural History of the Jews and to the Jewish Question in the Library of Ludwig Rosenberger, Chicago, Illinois, Expanded Supplement (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1979)