The publicist, literary scholar and founder of the "Literaturhandlung" in Munich, Rachel Salamander, has dedicated her life’s work to bringing Jewish culture, particularly post-1945 literature, into the present. She emphasises how crucial it was for the second generation of Jews after the Shoah to fill the void, collect Jewish knowledge and in doing so enable a revival of Jewish culture in Germany.
Over the course of four decades, Salamander has built a unique archive. It includes key documents on the intellectual history of Jewish literature, culture and scholarship as well as the reality of Jewish life in post-war Germany. Among the items are original documents and audio recordings by Hannah Arendt, Saul Friedländer, David Grossman, Hans Jonas, Imre Kertész, Amos Oz, Marcel Reich-Ranicki and Grete Weil. The collection also impressively illustrates the debates that accompanied literature on Judaism and how internationally connected it was. Moreover, it contains valuable materials for both international Holocaust research and biographical studies.
Restoring forgotten Jewish experiences to the shared historical narrative
In 2022, Rachel Salamander donated her unique archive to the City of Munich. It has found a new home in the city’s literary archive Monacensia at Hildebrandhaus. With the transfer of the Salamander Archives to the Monacensia, forgotten and erased Jewish experiences are being restored to the collective memory. This presupposes that the international scientific community will draw on the collection as a rich resource to generate new insights for the wider public.
Last but not least, the Archives represents a key collection that can help unlock and decode many of the collections at the Monacensia and other archives. Previously invisible traces and networks of Jewish life, activity and writing can thus be made visible and locatable again.
The Alfred Landecker Foundation is funding the cataloguing, academic processing, conservation and digitisation of the Salamander Archives. Munich's First Mayor Dieter Reiter is taking on the patronage of the Salamander Archives.
The Salamander Archives and the Hildebrandhaus
The Monacensia is the literary memory of the City of Munich. It brings together the city’s literary archive, the Monacensia library and a museum and event space under one roof. Since 1973, it has been housed in the Hildebrandhaus, the former villa of sculptor Adolf von Hildebrand. The Jewish history of the house is still only partially known so far — the Salamander Archives provide important information for its further exploration. In addition to the history of the artists’ villa, the Archives also offer insights into the lives and networks of its residents right up to the present day.