With her bookstore on Fürstenstraße in Munich, Rachel Salamander founded the first bookstore dedicated to literature on Judaism after 1945 in 1982. Decades after the destruction caused by National Socialism, she helped re-establish Jewish intellectual life as a visible part of public awareness.
Over more than four decades, her bookstore became a unique repository of Jewish life: correspondence with guests, original audio recordings of events, and numerous documents reflecting a cultural new beginning. With support from the Alfred Landecker Foundation, this archive has been catalogued, digitized, and prepared for the exhibition.
Lena Altman, Co-CEO of the Alfred Landecker Foundation, emphasizes:
“Rachel Salamanders archive, now accessible, makes Jewish thought, writing, and remembrance visible in all their diversity. It opens up a space in which the distinctiveness of Jewish experience — in literature, debate, and lived practice — can be reinterpreted in dialogue with the present and can also inspire the development of personal and societal attitudes. Through our support, we help make Jewish life tangible in its independence and plurality — not as a marginal story, but as a defining part of our cultural present.”
A New General Public for Jewish Literature
Rachel Salamander provided a platform for Jewish authors and intellectuals, creating new visibility and reaching new audiences. With more than 1,000 events curated by her in Germany and Austria, she made contemporary Jewish literature and debates accessible to a broad public and contributed to Jewish literary voices having a lasting impact on societal discourse.
The exhibition draws on the extensive archive that Rachel Salamander donated to the City of Munich in 2022. It documents both the history of her bookstore and a central chapter of German-Jewish postwar history.
The “Red Collection”
The centerpiece of the archive is the “Red Collection.” Over decades, Rachel Salamander documented the development of literature on Judaism as well as contemporary historical debates—in Germany as well as in Israel. These include, for example, questions of raison d’état, the examination of antisemitism in all its forms, cultural self-positioning, and intellectual debates. The collection comprises thematically organized newspaper clippings, correspondence, and documents filling hundreds of red file folders.
Previously Unpublished Original Recordings
Through films, photographs, and previously unpublished audio recordings, the exhibition shows how the bookstore became a space in which Jewish thinking, writing, and debate became visible. At the same time, the bookstore became a literary home for authors such as Zeruya Shalev, Maxim Biller, Ruth Klüger, and Amos Oz. In addition, the Monacensia offers a diverse accompanying program including guided tours, artist talks, staged readings, and author discussions.
About the Salamander Archive
The exhibition “Literature & Attitude. The Archive of Rachel Salamander” is part of the multi-year cataloguing and outreach project “Archiv Salamander” at the Monacensia im Hildebrandhaus, under the patronage of the Mayor of the City of Munich. The Alfred Landecker Foundation supports the cataloguing, academic research, conservation, and digitization of the Salamander Archive, as well as the exhibition.
Further information about the exhibition is available here.