Selma Stern

Selma Stern (b. July 24, 1890 in Kippenheim, Germany, d. August 17, 1981 in Basel) was a German historian.

Life

Selma Stern grew up in an upper middle-class family in Baden. She was the first girl to attend the Großherzogliche Badische Gymnasium) in Baden-Baden, from which she graduated in 1909. Stern studied history at the University of Heidelberg and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and she earned her doctorate from the latter in 1913. She was one of the first women to become a professional historian in Germany. 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 first research fellows. There, she began work on the first two volumes of her magnum opus Der preussische Staat und die Juden (The Prussian state and the Jews), a study of Jewry in eighteenth-century Prussia. In 1927, Stern married the director of the Akademie für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, historian Eugen Täubler. In 1941, Stern and her husband fled to the United States, first to New York, and later to Cincinnati. In 1960, she moved to Switzerland, where she lived until her death in Basel in 1981.

Works (Selected)

• Der Hofjude im Zeitalter des Absolutismus. Ein Beitrag zur europäischen Geschichte im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (The Court Jew, 1950). Mohr, Tübingen 2001, ISBN 3-16-147662-X (Schriftenreihe wissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen des Leo-Baeck-Instituts; Bd. 64).
• Der preußische Staat und die Juden. Mohr, Tübingen 1962 (7 Bände).
• Josel von Rosheim. Befehlshaber der Judenschaft im Heiligen Römischen Reich Deutscher Nation. DVA, Stuttgart 1959
• Anacharsis Cloots, der Redner des Menschengeschlechts. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Deutschen in der Französischen Revolution. Kraus Reprint, Vadut 1965 (EA Berlin 1914, zugl. Dissertation Universität München 1914).
• Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand. Herzog zu Braunschweig und Lüneburg. Lax, Hildesheim 1921.
• Jud Süß. Ein Beitrag zur deutschen und jüdischen Geschichte. Müller Verlag, München 1973 (unveränderte Neuausgabe, Berlin 1929).
• Ihr seid meine Zeugen. Ein Novellenkranz aus der Zeit des Schwarzen Todes 1348/19. Müller Verlag, München 1972.

External Links

• Selma Stern-Täubler Collection, AR 7160 Archival Collection at the Leo Baeck Institute, New York

• Laxton, Susan. "Selma Stern-Taeubler." Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. 20 March 2009. Jewish Women's Archive. (Viewed on May 4, 2014)