Raphael Straus Collection

Raphael Straus was born in 1887 in Karlsruhe. Straus studied history in Freiburg, Berlin and Heidelberg and gained his doctorate in 1910 with a thesis entitled Die Juden im Königreich Sizilien unter Normannen und Staufern [The Jews in the Kingdom of Sicily Under the Normans and Staufers]. In 1913 Straus took over the Holbein publishing house, which he resold in the late 1920s. As a research associate of the Bayrischer Landesverband der israelitischen Kultusgemeinden [Bavarian Regional Association of Jewish Communities], Straus received the opportunity to again devote himself to research after 1927. In 1932 his book Die Judengemeinde Regensburg im ausgehenden Mittelalter [The Jewish Community of Regensburg at the Conclusion of the Middle Ages] was published, which became one of the most important works of Straus. From 1929 to 1932 he edited the periodical Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland [Magazine for the History of the Jews in Germany].

Raphael Straus left Germany in 1933 to live in Palestine. With the aid of several scholarships Straus continued his research in Jerusalem, although the struggle for support, scholarships and publication drained a lot of his energy. The manuscripts Urkunden und Aktenstücke zur Geschichte der Juden in Regensburg, 1453-1738 [Documents and Records on the History of the Jews in Regenburg, 1453-1738] and Die Juden in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft [The Jews in Economy and Society] were not published in Germany until the 1960s.

His correspondence reveals his wish to move to the United Stated which he could not fulfill until 1945. Raphael Straus died in New York in 1947.