Léon Lipschutz collection of Dreyfusiana and French Judaica

Collection — other: 4 man boxes, 2 clamshell boxes, 1 os folder

Identifier: 11-MWalB02125

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

The bulk of the items in this collection relate to the Dreyfus Affair in France during the 1890s and early 1900s. These materials include newspaper clippings, cartoons, books, and studio photographs of many of the key players in the Affair. Particularly well represented are anti-Semitic newspaper clippings and caricatures, which characterize the anti-Dreyfus movement. The collection also contains some correspondence between the major figures involved in the Affair, notably Georges Clemenceau and Émile Zola.

In addition to the Dreyfus materials, the collection contains a number of documents related to the Jewish community in France between the French Revolution and World War II. These items include essays on particular French Jewish communities, correspondence dealing with Biblical translation, and Hebrew-French coin collecting.

Léon Lipschutz, who compiled this collection and donated it to Brandeis in 1970, wrote an annotated finding aid that describes each piece in varying degrees of detail. This document provides the researcher with historical commentary and analysis on both the Dreyfus Affair and the French Jewish community. The collection includes the Lipschutz finding aid in the original French and a translation into English completed in March 2009.

The majority of the correspondence in this collection has been transcribed in French and translated into English. Researchers may compare original documents to their corresponding transcriptions and translations to assess accuracy of interpretation and discernment of difficult-to-read handwriting. Please contact the Department for access to these materials.

The digitization of this collection was made possible through the generosity of Betty J. Gluck and in honor of Abraham Bleich.

Dates

Creation: 1796-1934

Creator

Lipschutz, Léon (Person)

Conditions Governing Access

Access to the collection is in accordance with the policies of the Robert D. Farber University Archives & Special Collections Department, Brandeis University. Please contact the department for more information.

Conditions Governing Use

Requests to reproduce or publish material from the collection should be directed to the Robert D. Farber University Archives & Special Collections Department, Brandeis University.

Extent

2.00 Linear Feet

4 manuscript boxes, 2 clamshell boxes, 1 oversize folder other_unmapped

2.00 Linear Feet

Language of Materials

French

Additional Description

Arrangement

This collection is arranged in five series; within each series, the items are ordered as they originally arrived at Brandeis, matching the ordering found within Mr. Lipschutz's guide. The five series are as folows: 1. Lipschutz guide to the collection, undated 2. Correspondence, essays, and manuscripts, 1796-1948 3. Newspaper clippings and ephemera, 1894-1948 4. Photographs, [1894-1906, est.] 5. Anatole France's draft manuscript L'anneau d'amethyste, [1897-1899, est.] For more information about each series, please consult the series descriptions in the box and folder listing.

Source of Acquisition

Donated by Léon Lipschutz.

Related Materials

Dreyfus material at Brandeis includes roughly 150 books about the Dreyfus Affair, ranging from 1847-1996 (most of which were published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) donated as part of this and other collections, which have been integrated into the Brandeis library collection. Many of these books have been outlined briefly in the Lipschutz guide; these and more on the subject can be found by searching the Library's online catalog under the subject heading Dreyfus, Alfred, 1859-1935. Brandeis has scanned many of these books and uploaded them to the Internet Archive, where they can be read online and downloaded.

Special collections also holds two rare publications related to the Dreyfus Affair collection: “Histoire d'un innocent,” [call number Rare + DC 354.9.H84] a Dreyfusard telling of the Dreyfus Affair and "Le Peril juif,"[call number Rare ++ DC354.9 .P7] an anti-jewish propaganda work by Édouard Drumont, leader of the antisemitic movement in France and publisher of a daily antisemitic newspaper called La Libre Parole. Both of these publications were donated to Brandeis in 2018 by David Godine in honor of Ron Liebowitz.