Original Children’s Haggadah at Leo Baeck College Library
Friday, 20 March 2009
The beloved 'Children’s Haggadah' will be used again in tens of thousands of homes around the world this Pesach. Few know, however, that the first edition of this haggadah was published in German in 1933. A copy of this valuable rare first edition, 'Die Haggadah des Kindes', now resides in the special Hyams Children’s Literature Collection in the Leo Baeck College Library.
The original 'Children’s Haggadah', edited by AM Silbermann and Emil Bernhard Cohn, was promoted to engage children in the seder and used large print Hebrew and German fonts with line drawings and illustrations of the rituals by Erwin Singer and stories for the seder. It was publisheded in Berlin in 1933 and soon became famous, probably because it was made "mit beweglichen Bildern" (with movable pictures). The translation is in beautiful, simple German, so that even the child who had just started to learn to read could follow the big printed, short sentences.
The 'Haggadah des Kindes' is just one of many examples of a brilliantly rich culture of children's literature in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. The music on the last pages of the haggadah keeps the memory of lost German melodies.
Little has changed in it in over 76 years and the English translation is one of the most popular sold haggadot in the world. Renowned for its pull-out dioramas of the biblical story and its large print text for easy reading as well as its rhyming verse, it has kept many a child intrigued throughout the long seder. Despite hundreds of newer versions of haggadot for children, the definitive 'Children’s Haggadah' remains a firm favourite and even is used by adults who treasure its place at their seder.
Acquired recently from Germany and given to the College on long term loan, the Hyams Collection, named after its founders Barry Hyams and his wife Professor Dr Helge Hyams, has brought together a unique collection of 660 children’s books published from the 18-20th century in German, Yiddish and Hebrew and in the languages of countries to which German Jews immigrated (English and Spanish), as they translated their children's books into their new languages.
The Hyams collection is fully catalogued in the Leo Baeck College Library online catalogue and will be exhibited at the College later in the year.
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