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Aufbau

New York, NY, 1934–2004

Aufbau was a journal for German-speaking Jews around the globe. It was founded in 1934 by the German-Jewish Club which was later renamed the New World Club and published in New York until April 2004. Hannah Arendt, Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, and Stefan Zweig wrote for the publication. The original purpose of the journal was as a monthly newsletter for the club, which included information and helpful facts for Jewish refugees. From September 1, 1944 through September 27, 1946, Aufbau printed numerous lists of Jewish Holocaust survivors located in Europe, as well as a few lists of victims. Aufbau became one of the leading anti-Nazi publications of the German press in exile.

Digitization

Aufbau at the CJH Digital Lab
A volume of Aufbau being digitized at the Gruss Lipper Digital Laboratory at the Center for Jewish History

Aufbau, New York, 1934-2004, online (via Internet Archive): The Library of the Leo Baeck Institute New York digitized all issues of Aufbau published from the inception of the newspaper in 1934 through 2004 mainly via the microfilms at Internet Archives. A few issues were contributed by the New York Public Library as well as the Mikrofilmarchiv der Deutschsprachigen Presse in Dortmund. Partial funding was provided by the Metropolitan New York Library Council. It is possible to do full text searches within a volume.

Aufbau, New York, 1939-1945, online (via CJH, in color): LBI redigitized the volumes 1939-45 in color due to ongoing requests for high-quality scans for these years and available funding. The original volumes are especially brittle and cannot be handled frequently any longer. This access version includes links to the other digitized volumes at Internet Archives.

An online index to personal names that appeared in Aufbau between 1941 and 2003 is available from the Aufbau Indexing Project.

More on Aufbau

Aufbau shuttered its New York offices in August 2004, but the paper’s story did not end there. The Swiss company JM Jüdische Medien AG acquired the paper and re-launched it as a monthly magazine a year later. JM Jüdische Medien’s US Editor, Andreas Mink, reflects on the history of the paper and its journey back to Europe in a recent article in the LBI Newsletter.

Peter Schrag's new book The World of Aufbau was published in March 2019 by UWPress. Steve Lipman reflects in his book review in the New York Jewish Week entitled “The Aufbau Connection: an émigré newspaper bound together a family, and Hitler’s refugees” about his family and personal connection to Aufbau.

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