»A Company and an Idea«. Salman Schocken’s Universe in the Jerusalem Archive

This research project of the Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture – Simon Dubnow will investigate the Schocken Archive in Jerusalem, one of the most significant archival collections concerning Saxony’s Jewish history, as a transnational repository of knowledge. This research will open up new approaches to the activities of the businessman, publisher, and patron of the arts Salman Schocken (1877–1959). The results will be presented to the public in the form of a publication and an exhibition in the »Tacheles«-themed year 2026.

Until 1938, the ads of the Schocken department stores were adorned with an »S«; from the late 1930s, a »ש« served as the publisher’s mark of the Schocken publishing house in Tel Aviv; and after 1945, the »S« once again became the emblem of Schocken Books in New York. As early as 1932, a journalist remarked that this »S« stood for »‘Schocken’ as a company and an idea,« thus pointing the way to the search for a guiding principle in Schocken’s manifold activities.

Beginning with a store in Zwickau, Salman Schocken developed one of the most modern department store chains in the Weimar Republic. He supported cultural institutions and authors, acquired books, artworks, and autographed works, helped fund the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and, in 1931/32, established the Schocken publishing house in Berlin, one of the most important Jewish publishing houses during the Nazi era. In 1938, his life in Germany was terminated with the forced sale of his company and the dissolution of the publishing house – but he continued his activities in Jerusalem and New York, henceforth under totally new conditions.

Schocken’s activities were characterized by a fusion of economics, social concerns, art, and literature. Tracing the history of the translocated archive and its ordering of knowledge, the DI will investigate these interconnections in collaboration with the Forschungsstelle Judentum at Leipzig University.