Collecting and the Social Life of Books in the Oppenheim Library

David Oppenheim (1664-1736) was among the most renowned Jews of Central and Eastern Europe in the century before Enlightenment and Emancipation. His celebrity derived from two sources: he was a scion of the wealthy and powerful families of Court Jews, and therefore an ambassador to Christian authorities of Jewish collective concerns, and he was a rabbi, intellectual, and patron of the press. He was both courtier and scholar, a dual identity that he forged into a persona of power. And he used his books to further his standing in both the world of politics and the world of learning. This paper explores the intersecting worlds of this influential man and his impact on his society through an investigation into his prized library of over 7,000 books and 1,000 manuscripts. It uses Oppenheim’s collection to chart the complex of social relations, dynamics, and hierarchies that shaped important currents within and beyond Jewish society in Central Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Taken together, the contents of his library do not simply provide an aggregate of individual items. Rather, the whole advances a map of elements of early modern life that often prove otherwise elusive: the workings of reputation, emotion, credit, and patronage in the political culture of early modern Europe.