Collector

Throughout his life, Schocken was captivated by works of literary and artistic genius. This passion, combined with an extraordinary eye for quality and a knack for getting the best deal, turned Schocken into one of the world’s premier private book collectors. Few collectors could match the scope of his interests, ranging from works of Jewish piety and ancient prayers to world literature to the philosophical texts of Friedrich Nietzsche and the political archives of socialist newspapers. Thus Schocken built one of the world’s biggest collections of Judaica and Hebrew books.

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Throughout his life, Schocken amassed a collection of 60,000 manuscripts and rare editions. He owned the world’s largest collection of Jewish incunabula – early books printed in the 15th century just after Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press. In addition, he collected numerous handwritten, thousand year old works by poets like Ibn Gabirol and Yehuda Halevy, as well as rare Bibles, Jewish prayer books, Passover Haggadahs and the famed Nuremberg Machzor. He also owned hundreds of original manuscripts of the most important German authors, like Heine and Goethe, and a 46-page handwritten treatise by Albert Einstein, describing his general theory of relativity.

Schocken’s passion for artistic expression was not confined to books. His art collection included works by Van Gogh, Monet, Chagall, Renoir, Pissarro, Munch, Toulouse-Lautrec, as well as ancient artwork from China, the Middle East, and South America. He also amassed a large collection of etchings by important German artists like Max Liebremann, Oskar Kokoschka, George Grosz, and Otto Dix, who were banned and prosecuted by the Nazi regime.

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In 1935, Schocken managed to spirit all his art and book collections out of Germany, and had them shipped to his newly built home and library in Jerusalem. A contemporary news story described it as “… much more than just another private collection. It is a kaleidoscope of the spiritual contributions of Judaism in the past and in the present, as well as a display of the choicest articles from almost every nation in the world.”