Literature Shop Berlin

In 1982, the young literary scholar Rachel Salamander founded the Jewish literature shop in Munich's Maxvorstadt.  "Almost fifty years after the de-Jewification of the German book trade," recalled Dr. Salamander in her acceptance speech for the Cultural Honorary Award of the City of Munich in 1999, "I wanted to help reconstruct at least the intellectual Jewish world by establishing a specialized bookstore for literature on Judaism, to gather together everything that had been preserved by word and writing, and to re-naturalize all those who had been expelled and burned." 

The concept of the literature shop proved to be extremely successful. Salamander opened its branch on Joachimsthalerstraße in Berlin in 1992; others followed in Dachau, Augsburg, Fürth, Dorsten and Würzburg. 

The literature store's self-description says: "Over forty subject areas - from Jewish history and tradition, contemporary history and biographies, fiction, children's and young people's books, to CDs and DVDs - show the entire spectrum of Judaism. A very carefully selected assortment of jewelry and all the ritual items common to Jewish life, completes the literature store's offerings."