Selma Stern-Täubler was one of the first women to become a professional historian in Germany, and the author of a seven-volume work The Prussian State and the Jews, her opus magnum.
Life
Selma Stern grew up in an upper-middle-class Jewish family; her father was a physician. In 1901 the family moved to Baden-Baden. In 1904 she was the first girl to attend the Großherzogliches Badisches Gymnasium, a boys highschool, from which she graduated in 1908. She studied history, philosophy and philology at the University of Heidelberg, but left after three semesters and graduated at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in 1913 on Anacharsis Cloots. In 1914 she moved to Frankfurt to live with her mother and sister and started a career in German-Jewish history on a freelance basis. Shortly after the founding of the Akademie für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin in 1919, Stern accepted an invitation to become one of its research fellows in 1920. There, she began work on the first two volumes of Der preussische Staat und die Juden, a study of Jewry under Frederick William I of Prussia, published in 1925. In 1927, Stern received her doctorate and married the director and founder of the academy, the historian Eugen Täubler. In 1936 the Täublers moved to England in an attempt to move the academy, but returned to Germany a year later. In 1938 one of the volumes was ready to be published by the Schocken Verlag, but due to Nazi policy all the stock, including her manuscript and many documents were burned during Kristallnacht. Stern was not allowed to visit any public libraries or archives, but got help from several scholars to finish her work. In the introduction of Der preussische Staat und die Juden Stern mentions that one copy, dealing with the Jews under Frederick the Great, was saved by an anonymous female employee of Schocken publishing company, who came to their apartment in Charlottenburg at the end of November, 1938. In 1941, Stern and Täubler fled to the United States, crossing the Atlantic on the last boat before the USA entered the Second World War. First they lived in New York; from 1947-1955, she was in charge of Jewish-American Archives at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, where she worked as an archivist. Stern became a widow in 1953 without having children. In 1955 she retired and was involved in founding the Leo Baeck Institute. In 1960 Stern moved to Basel, where her sister lived. Between 1961 and 1972 she published Der preußische Staat und die Juden, carefully referenced. Topics covered include quotas of Jews or Jewish families, bank ownership, the minting activities by the court JewsVeitel Heine Ephraim and Daniel Itzig and their trade in silver and debased coins during and after the Seven Years' War, interest, taxes and fees. In 1974 a complete index was published with the help of three co-workers. Stern obviously like the quoting "What man understands he is able to withstand", which she used more than once in the introduction of her books.
Works (selected)
Anacharsis Cloots, der Redner des Menschengeschlechts. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Deutschen in der Französischen Revolution. Kraus Reprint, Vadut 1965.
Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand. Herzog zu Braunschweig und Lüneburg. Lax, Hildesheim 1921.
Jud Süß. Ein Beitrag zur deutschen und jüdischen Geschichte. Müller Verlag, München 1973.
Der preußische Staat und die Juden. Mohr, Tübingen 1962 1. Teil: Die Zeit des Großen Kurfürsten und Friedrichs I. 2 Abteilungen: Darstellung/Akten. 2. Teil: Die Zeit Friedrich Wilhelms I. 2 Abteil. 3. Teil. Die Zeit Friedrichs des Großen. 2 Abt.: Darstellung/Akten in 2 Halbbänden. 4. Teil. Gesamtregister.
