Library of the Israelitische Cultusgemeinde Zurich

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Library of the Israelitische Cultusgemeinde Zurich
Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Zürich 2011-08-08 15-31-22.JPG
The library is housed in the parish hall of the Israelite Cultus Community in Zurich.

founding 1939
Duration almost 60,000 units (2017)
Library type Scientific library , community library
place Zurich coordinates: 47 ° 21 '47 "  N , 8 ° 31' 57"  E ; CH1903:  six hundred and eighty-two thousand six hundred and thirty-one  /  246377World icon
ISIL CH-000667-X
operator Israelitische cultusgemeinde Zurich
Website icz.org/institutionen/bibliothek

The library of the Israelitische Cultusgemeinde Zürich is a library for Judaica and Hebraica in the district Enge in Zurich , which is operated by the Israelitische Cultusgemeinde Zürich .

With almost 60,000 works in German , Yiddish , Hebrew and English , it is considered the most important Judaica library in the German-speaking area. It was declared a Swiss national cultural asset in 2009 .

history

In 1902 a Jewish reading room with a library opened in Zurich . As a result, the library kept changing its location. In 1923 responsibility was transferred to the Zurich Jewish Library Association . Numerous valuable books were saved from the National Socialists through purchases in the 1930s . The sales sometimes enabled the owners to finance their escape from Germany .

In December 1939, the Israelitische Cultusgemeinde Zurich received the holdings of the Zurich Jewish Library in order to use them to found its own library in the newly built parish hall. The newly founded library of the ICZ had around 2500 books at that time. The library, unlike most other Jewish libraries in Europe, continued to operate throughout the Second World War . The reading room served as a meeting place for many Jewish refugees. In 1940 the creation of a central catalog of all Judaica and Hebraica in Switzerland began.

Through the mediation of the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction Inc. and its managing director Hannah Arendt , parts of the library of the Breslau Rabbinical Seminary , which was dissolved in 1938, came to Switzerland. In the 1950s the ICZ received part of this collection, the others went to the Swiss Association of Israelites in Basel and to the Bibliothèque "Gérard Nordmann" of the Communauté Israélite de Genève in Geneva .

In 2006 or, according to another source, in 2011, the Basel section of the Wroclaw library came to Zurich. Later the books from Geneva also came to Zurich.

Around 2012, discussions were held about giving the scientifically significant part of the collection to the Zurich Central Library in order to save costs. Funding was secured with the Association for Jewish Culture and Science , founded in 2013 under the leadership of Charles Lewinsky .

Stocks

The collection includes 27 works from the 16th century, 106 from the 17th century and 691 from the 18th century (as of 2011).

"On the shelves in Zurich Enge there are books that are nowhere else in the world: They survived the Second World War."

- Martina Läubli : Neue Zürcher Zeitung

The Wroclaw Seminar Library

The most important part of the inventory are the books from the Jewish Theological Seminary in Wroclaw , which came to the library in the 1950s. The library of the seminar was based on the collection of the Trieste bibliophile Leon Vita Saraval (1771-1851). It was acquired when the seminary was founded in 1854. By the turn of the century, the inventory is said to have comprised 22,332 books. In November 1938 the seminary and large parts of the library were destroyed. The Nazis brought some of the books to the Institute for Research on the Jewish Question in Frankfurt am Main . Around 11,000 books from the library, a little over a third of the collection, have been preserved. Around 6000 works were brought to Switzerland by Hannah Arendt at the request of Swiss Jews, the rest to the USA and Israel . Contrary to the requirements that the books are kept in a single place, they were distributed to three libraries, as no one could agree on a location. In Zurich 2398 works were counted. It was only around 50 years later that all the plants were reunited in Zurich. The oldest date from the 16th century.

Further stocks

As a science and community library, both academic works on Judaism and fiction are collected that have a Jewish reference in terms of content or through the author. There are also children's books, new media and around 500 Jewish magazines and newspapers in the inventory.

The holdings also include a special Yiddish collection, the library of the Swiss Association for Jewish Genealogy and the estate of the composer Max Ettinger (1874–1951). The “ Florence Guggenheim Archive on the History, Language and Folklore of the Jews in Switzerland” was transferred to the Aargau State Archives in 2013 .

use

For 2012, the number of visitors averaged 80 to 100 people per week. The library in the ICZ parish hall at Lavaterstrasse 33 is open to the public. However, every visitor has to identify himself and is subjected to an oral security check.

literature

  • Yvonne Domhardt, Kerstin A. Paul (Ed.): Source of living books. 75 years of library of the Israelitische Cultusgemeinde Zurich. Edition Clandestin, Biel 2014, ISBN 978-3-905297-58-4 .
  • Yvonne Domhardt, Zsolt Keller , Kerstin A. Paul: Library of the Israelitische Cultusgemeinde Zurich . In: Zentralbibliothek Zürich (Ed.): Handbook of the historical book collections of Switzerland . tape 3 . Olms, Zurich 2011, ISBN 978-3-487-14586-0 , p. 288–290 ( uzh.ch [PDF; accessed March 31, 2018]).
  • Yvonne Domhardt, Zsolt Keller, Guido Kleinberger, Michael Leipziger: The Breslau seminar library in the library of the Israelitische Cultusgemeinde Zurich . In: Zentralbibliothek Zürich (Ed.): Handbook of the historical book collections of Switzerland . tape 3 . Olms, Zurich 2011, ISBN 978-3-487-14586-0 , p. 267–269 ( uzh.ch [PDF; accessed March 31, 2018]).
  • The Library of the Israelitische Cultusgemeinde Zürich (ICZ) . In: Yvonne Domhardt (Ed.): European Judaism . tape 42/1 , 2009, p. 180-183 .
  • Jewish books and the Swiss Association of Israelites (1930–1950). Comments on a topic that has received little attention so far . In: Zsolt Keller (ed.): Bulletin of the Swiss Society for Judaic Research . 2005, p. 20-34 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Martina Läubli: Jewish book treasure . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . January 9, 2015 ( nzz.ch [accessed January 24, 2018]).
  2. A-Objects ZH 2018 . Swiss inventory of cultural assets of national importance. In: babs.admin.ch / kulturgueterschutz.ch. Federal Office for Civil Protection FOCP - Department of Cultural Property Protection, January 1, 2018, p. 457, accessed on January 24, 2018. (PDF; 163 kB, updated annually, no changes for 2018, link to PDF may have been updated automatically after the access date ).
  3. ^ A b c d Yvonne Domhardt, Zsolt Keller, Kerstin A. Paul: Library of the Israelitische Cultusgemeinde Zurich . In: Zentralbibliothek Zürich (Ed.): Handbook of the historical book collections of Switzerland . tape 3 . Olms, Zurich 2011, ISBN 978-3-487-14586-0 , p. 288–290 ( uzh.ch [PDF; accessed March 31, 2018]).
  4. a b c Yvonne Domhardt: "... at that time Israel was not just a people of books but of books" . A short history of the library of the Israelitische Cultusgemeinde Zurich for the 75th anniversary. In: Yvonne Domhardt, Kerstin A. Paul (ed.): Source of living books. 75 years of library of the Israelitische Cultusgemeinde Zurich. Edition Clandestin, Biel 2014, ISBN 978-3-905297-58-4 , pp. 12 f .
  5. a b Yves Kugelmann: To a certain extent irreplaceable . In: Tachles . July 21, 2017 ( icz.org [accessed January 24, 2018] interview with Yvonne Domhardt).
  6. a b c Dorothee Vögeli: Jewish book treasure dragged into the limelight . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . December 13, 2017, p. 19 ( nzz.ch [accessed March 30, 2018]).
  7. ^ Curdin Vincenz: Charles Lewinskys commitment to the library of the cultus community. Radio report by SRF 4. Swiss Radio and Television SRF, January 14, 2015, accessed on March 30, 2018 .
  8. ^ A b Yvonne Domhardt, Zsolt Keller, Guido Kleinberger, Michael Leipziger: The Breslau seminar library in the library of the Israelitische Cultusgemeinde Zurich . In: Zentralbibliothek Zürich (Ed.): Handbook of the historical book collections of Switzerland . tape 3 . Olms, Zurich 2011, ISBN 978-3-487-14586-0 , p. 267–269 ( uzh.ch [PDF; accessed March 31, 2018]).
  9. Martina Läubli: Jewish book treasure. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. January 9, 2015, accessed March 30, 2018 .
  10. Isidore Singer, Schulim Ochser: Saraval. (Copy) In: Jewish Encyclopedia . 1906, accessed March 30, 2018 .
  11. ^ Gotthard German: Jewish Theological Seminar (Fränckelscher Foundation). (Copy) In: Jewish Encyclopedia . 1906, accessed March 30, 2018 .
  12. Yvonne Domhardt: "... at that time Israel was not just a Vold of books but of books" . A short history of the library of the Israelitische Cultusgemeinde Zurich for the 75th anniversary. In: Yvonne Domhardt, Kerstin A. Paul (ed.): Source of living books. 75 years of library of the Israelitische Cultusgemeinde Zurich. Edition Clandestin, Biel 2014, ISBN 978-3-905297-58-4 , pp. 14 .