Compact Memory

The portal Compact Memory comprises 500 Jewish newspapers and journals of the German speaking area of the years 1768–1938 and beyond. These periodicals represent the complete religious, political, social, literary and academic spectrum of the Jewish community and the "Science of Judaism", thus constituting a major source for the research on Judaism in the Modern Age.

Due to the condition of many historical journals, as well as wartime losses, the originals of these journals are rare to be found in any library in this completeness. The journals – and fragments of journals – have been digitized and assembled from different library collections, and are now almost completely available electronically for the first time. They can be printed or saved; almost all titles have been edited with OCR and are full text searchable. Almost 80.000 single articles of more than 10.000 authors are registered bibliographically. Currently the amount of digitized pages counts more than 1.050.000. Missing volumes are continuously complemented in cooperation with other libraries, and the collection will be enriched with further relevant journals.

At the outset, the digitization was financially supported by the German Research Foundation and carried out in cooperation with Prof. Dr. Hans Otto Horch, professor emeritus of European Jewish History of Literature and Culture at the RWTH Aachen and Dr. Annette Haller, head of the Germania Judaica library in Cologne. Within the scope of the project Judaica Europeana, the titles were also integrated into the Europeana, the European Digital Library.

In 2017 the project continues in cooperation with the Leo Baeck Institute in New York / Center for Jewish History.

Compact Memory has been listed in the UNESCO Archival Portal since 2004.

All Titles | Contact | Judaica