The Monatsschrift

The Wissenschaft des Judentums produced more than 30 scholarly periodicals using a wide range of forms and formats, from yearbooks, to quarterly or monthly journals, and scholarly supplements to the Jewish weekly press. The most important and most influential Jewish scholarly journal before the Second World War was the Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums, founded in 1851 by Zacharias Frankel (1801-1875), the first director of the Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau. Over its entire run of more than eighty volumes the Monatsschrift remained closely linked to the Breslau Seminar. All its editors besides Frankel included Heinrich Graetz (1817-1891), David Kaufmann (1852-1899), Markus Brann (1849-1920), Isaak Heinemann (1876-1957), Leo Baeck (1873-1856),  were either teachers or students at the seminar. 

While in its early years, the Monatsschrift would comment on contemporary developments within the Jewish community, mostly in the form of Zacharias Frankel's editorials, it became  a classic academic journal with a focus on philological, philosophical and historical research. The second series of the Monatsschrift, established by Kaufmann and Brann in 1891 would broaden the scope of content even further and opened the journal for a wider range of authors by reaching out towards both liberal and orthodox leaning scholars. In 1903 the newly established Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaft des Judentums incorporated the Monatsschrift in its publication program, securing the necessary financial resources while the editorial responsibility remained in Breslau.