Ex Libris and Exchange: Immigrant Interventions in the German‐Jewish Renaissance

In this article I argue that behind the central image of the Ostjude in the Weimar German‐Jewish renaissance were twenty years of collaboration and cultural exchange between German Jews and resident Eastern European Jews. I claim that a transnational examination of German‐Jewish visual culture reveals the way in which Eastern European Jews helped to fashion their own image in German society. I investigate the bookplate, or ex libris, as a cultural product in the fin‐de‐siècle , when Jewish iconography rose in popularity. Immigrant Eastern European Jews living in Germany produced and circulated the positive image of the bearded Jew with yarmulke, providing broader German‐Jewish society a visual vocabulary for conveying their own idealized selves.