Juedischer Verlag

JUEDISCHER VERLAG, the first Jewish-Zionist publishing house in Western Europe. It was established in 1902 by M. *Buber; B. *Feiwel, E.M. *Lilien, L. *Motzkin, A. *Nossig, Ch. *Weizmann, and others, who constituted the core of the *Democratic Fraction. In line with the aims of the Fraction, the publishing house was to serve as an expression of the Jewish renaissance by publishing the spiritual, cultural, literary, and artistic treasures of the Jewish people over the ages as a basis for the spiritual-cultural rebirth of the Jewish people. The idea had received *Herzl's warm support at the Fifth Zionist Congress (1901). The aim of the plan was to supplement the political activities of the Zionist Organization and to serve as a bridge between Western and Eastern Jews. The first book, Juedischer Almanach (1902) edited by Feiwel and Lilien, included authors from both East and West and presented all types of literary works, some of them translated from Hebrew and Yiddish. The second book, Eine juedische Hochschule (1902), written by Buber, Feiwel, and Weizmann (translated into Hebrew in 1968 by S. Esh with a preface by S.H. Bergman), voiced for the first time the idea of establishing a Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 1907, when the publishing house was transferred to the Zionist Organization, it was removed to Cologne; it returned to Berlin in 1911. Until 1920 it was directed by A. Eliasberg, and from 1920 on by S. *Kaznelson. The firm passed through periods of prosperity and times of crisis. It flourished especially under the direction of Kaznelson, when it became one of the greatest Jewish publishing firms in the world, maintained without external support. Among the hundreds of books published by it were the works of *Aḥad Ha-Am, Herzl, *Nordau, A.D. *Gordon, *Agnon (in Hebrew and in German), *Bialik, J.L. *Peretz, *Abramovitsh (Mendele Mokher Seforim), and *Bergelson, *Dubnow's Weltgeschichte des Juedischen Volkes, the five volume Juedisches Lexikon, L. *Goldschmidt's German translation of the Talmud in twelve volumes, Adolf *Boehm's Die Zionistische Bewegung, *Tur-Sinai's German translation of the Bible, the book "Yizkor" (dedicated to Ha-Shomer in Ereẓ Israel), *Trumpeldor's diaries, *Jabotinsky's book on the Jewish Legion, the monthly Der Jude, edited by Buber, etc. The distribution of some books was extraordinarily large (Dubnow's works on Jewish history and history of Ḥasidism, 100,000 copies; the Juedisches Lexikon, 50,000 copies; the translation of the Talmud, 100,000 copies; Herzl's works and diaries, 30,000 copies). In 1938 the firm was closed by the Gestapo and its warehouse confiscated. S Kaznelson, who had settled in Palestine, established in 1931 a daughter company, Hoẓa'ah Ivrit, in partial partnership with the Dvir Publishing Company, Ltd. After the liquidation of the Juedischer Verlag Hoẓa'ah Ivrit continued its work in Palestine. In 1958 the Juedischer Verlag was newly established in Berlin. From 1990 it was part of the German publishing house Surkamp in Frankfurt am Main.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Juedischer Verlag, Almanach 1902–1964 (1964). ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: S. Urban-Fahr, in: Buchhandlungsgeschichte, 1 (1994), 12–29; A. Schenker, Der Juedische Verlag 1902–1938, (2003) (see also bibliographies on pages 517–605).