Dr. Ilona Steimann

• Doctoral dissertation: 

Ilona Steimann, Habent sua fata libelli: Hebrew Books from the Collection of Hartmann Schedel (doctoral thesis, The Hebrew University, 2015), accessible online via academia.edu: https://www.academia.edu/29360768/_HABENT_SUA_FATA_LIBELLI_HEBREW_BOOKS_FROM_THE_COLLECTION_OF_HARTMANN_SCHEDEL

• Books:

Ilona Steimann, Jewish Book – Christian Book: Hebrew Manuscripts in Transition between Jews and Christians in the Context of German Humanism (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020).

• Edited books:

Premodern Jewish Books, their Makers and Readers in an Era of Media Change, ed. by Katrin Kogman-Appel and Ilona Steimann (Turnhout: Brepols, 2024).

Selected Hebrew Manuscripts from the Bavarian State Library, ed. by Aliza Cohen-Mushlin, Yaffa Levy, Michal Sternthal, Ilona Steimann, Anna Nizza-Caplan and Estherlee Kanon-Ebner, Schriftenreihe der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek, 9 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2020). 

• Peer-reviewed journal articles: 

Ilona Steimann, ‘Multi-Handed Bible Manuscripts: Masoretic Workshops in Medieval Ashkenaz?’, Corpus Masoreticum Working Papers (forthcoming).

Ilona Steimann, ‘Books in a Medieval Household: Ashkenazi Book Collecting in Its Material Context’, Ars Judaica, 18/1 (2023), 91–109.

Ilona Steimann, ‘The Story of One Acquisition: Hebrew Manuscripts from Venetian Candia’, Mediterranean Historical Review, 38/1 (2023), 25–70.

Ilona Steimann, ‘Masoretic Manuscripts from France: The Jonah Pentateuch (BL, Add. MS 21160) Revisited’, Corpus Masoreticum Working Papers, 5 (2023), 1–35.

Ilona Steimann, ‘“Beautiful Books with Beautiful Covers”: The Bindings of Hebrew Manuscripts in Late Medieval Ashkenaz’, Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, 7/1 (2022), 76–103.

Ilona Steimann, ‘“Das es dasselb puch sey”: The Book as Protagonist in the Ceremony of the Jewry-Oath’, European Journal of Jewish Studies, 13 (2019), 77–102.

Ilona Steimann, ‘Jewish Scribes and Christian Patrons: The Hebraica Collection of Johann Jakob Fugger’, Renaissance Quarterly, 70/4 (2017), 1235–81.

Ilona Steimann, ‘Making Illuminated Haggadot in Venetian Candia’, Mediterranean Historical Review, 27/2 (2013), 161–73.

• Contributions to edited volumes:

Ilona Steimann, ‘Between Text and Image: Micrography, Its Critiques, and Actual Practices in Medieval Ashkenaz’, Book Ornament and Luxury Critique, ed. by David Ganz and Thomas Rainer (Zurich, forthcoming).

Ilona Steimann, ‘Micrography’, Handbook of Medieval Book Ornament, ed. by David Ganz, Thomas Rainer, Sabrina Schmid, Katharina Theil (Zurich, forthcoming).

Ilona Steimann, ‘A Forced Journey between Two Faiths: The Hebrew Manuscripts of the University of Vienna’, in Premodern Jewish Books, their Makers and Readers in an Era of Media Change, ed. by Katrin Kogman-Appel and Ilona Steimann, accepted for publication (Turnhout: Brepols, 2024), 369–92.

Jörg B. Quenzer, with Hanna Boeddeker, Janine Droese, Theresa Müller, Bruno Reudenbach, Ilona Steimann, ‘On the Concept of “Originators”’, Manuscript Cultures, 21 (2024), 3–10.

Ilona Steimann, ‘A Good Book is an Old Book? Hebrew Manuscripts and Prints in the 16th-Century Christian Book Collections’, in Between Manuscript and Print: Transitions, Simultaneities and the Question of Shifting Meanings, ed. by Sylvia Brockstieger and Paul Schweitzer-Martin (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2023), 89–109.

Ilona Steimann, ‘Jewish Exemplars and Hebraist Copies of Hebrew Manuscripts’, in Personal Manuscripts: Copying, Drafting, Taking Notes, ed. by Jürgen Paul and David Durand-Guedy (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2023), 477–507.

Steimann, Ilona, ‘Bindings’, Encyclopedia of Jewish Book Cultures, ed. by Emile Schrijver et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2023), accessible online: https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/browse/encyclopedia-of-jewish-book-cultures-online

Ilona Steimann, ‘Hebraism without Hebrew: Hartmann Schedel and the Conversion of his “Jewish” Books’, in Hebrew between Jews and Christians, ed. by Daniel Stein Kokin, Studia Judaica, 77 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022), 159–86.

Ilona Steimann, ‘“Anathema upon anyone who would destroy this codex”: Hebrew Fragments in Hebraist Hands’, in European Genizah: Newly Discovered Hebrew Binding Fragments in Context, V, ed. by Andreas Lehnardt, Studies in Jewish History and Culture, 63 (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 313–31.

Ilona Steimann, ‘Johann Jakob Fugger and His Collection of Hebrew Manuscripts’, in Selected Hebrew Manuscripts from the Bavarian State Library, ed. by Aliza Cohen-Mushlin and others, Schriftenreihe der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek, 9 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2020), XXIX–XLVII.

Ilona Steimann, ‘The Preservation of Hebrew Books by Christians in the Pre-Reformation German Milieu’, in Jewish Manuscript Cultures: New Perspectives, ed. by Irina Wandrey, Studies in Manuscript Cultures 13 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017), 203–26. 

Ilona Steimann, ‘Hebräischer Briefsteller’, in Gold und Bücher lieb ich sehr ... 480 Jahre Staats- und Stadtbibliothek Augsburg. Katalog zur Cimelien-Ausstellung vom 19. Oktober bis 15. Dezember 2017, ed. by Karl-Georg Pfändtner (Lucerne: Quaternio Verlag, 2017), 186–87.

Ilona Steimann and Michal Sternthal, ‘Elijah and David Nezer Zahav the Physician: Scribes and Illuminators in Apulia’, in Gli ebrei nel Salento. Secoli IX–XVI, ed. by Fabrizio Lelli (Galatina: Congedo, 2013), 273–84.

• Online Publication:

Ilona Steimann,‘One Manuscript and Three Persecutions: The Journey of the Vienna Hebrew Prophets and Hagiographa’, in Artefact of the Month, no. 8, CSMC, Hamburg, ed. by Wiebke Beyer, Karin Becker
https://www.csmc.uni-hamburg.de/publications/aom/008-en.html

• Reviews:

Ilona Steimann, ‘Review of Jüdisch-christliche Buchmalerei im Spätmittelalter: Aschkenasische Haggadah-Handschriften aus Süddeutschland und Norditalien by Franziska Amirov’, Renaissance Quarterly, 72/4 (2019), 1439–40.

Ilona Steimann, ‘Review of Skies of Parchment, Seas of Ink: Jewish Illuminated Manuscripts, edited by Marc Michael Epstein’, Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies Bulletin, 2 (2016), 92–94.

Presentations:

Jerusalem 2024: ‘Books Taken into Migration: French Masoretic Manuscripts in Piedmont’. International Conference: Considering Jewish Expulsions in the Middle Ages, in the framework of the project ‘Contending with Crises: The Jews of 14^th Century Europe’. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Frankfurt 2023: ‘The Making of the Abrezush Bible: Codicological and Palaeographical Observations’. The Twelfth EAJS Congress, Branching Out: Diversity of Jewish Studies. Goethe University Frankfurt a. M.

September 2022: ‘Between the Text and the Image: Micrography, Its Critique and Actual Practices in Medieval Ashkenaz’. International Conference: Book Ornament and Luxury Critique, in the framework of the project ‘Textures of Sacred Scripture’. University of Zurich.

August 2022: ‘“One Should Always Write His Name in His Book”: The Material Context of Book Collecting among Medieval Ashkenazi Jews’. The Eighteenth World Congress for Jewish Studies. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

February 2022: ‘A Good Book is an Old Book? Hebrew Manuscripts and Prints in the 16th-Century Christian Book Collections’. International Conference: Between Manuscript and Print Transitions, Simultaneities and the Question of Shifting Meanings, Materiale Textkulturen, Sonderforschungsbereich 933, University of Heidelberg.

February 2020: ‘Christian Compilers of Hebrew Texts and Their Methods of Reference to Exemplar-Manuscripts’. International Workshop: By One’s Own Hand – for One’s Own Use. The Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’, the University of Hamburg.

June 2019: ‘Bindings, Fragments, and Provenance Research: Hebraica of the Viennese Collegium Ducale’. International Conference: The Jewish Book 1400–1600: From Production to Reception. The Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. 

July 2018: ‘Manipulated Identities: Christian Hebrew Script in German Hebraist Manuscripts’. 11th Congress of the European Association for Jewish Studies:Searching for the Roots of Jewish Traditions. Cracow. 

May 2017: ‘Forming a Hebraist ‘Canon’ of Jewish Literature: German Hebraica Collections around 1500’. International Conference of the European Association for Jewish Studies: Jewish Books and their Christian Collectors in Europe, the New World and Czarist Russia. Christ Church, Oxford. 

September 2016: ‘Letters to the Rabbis: Jewish-Christian Scholarly Relations at the Turn of the Sixteenth Century’. International Conference: Interwoven Regional Worlds: Jews and Christians in Bavaria, Bohemia and Austria (1349–1648), organized by the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (Munich) and the Institute of History (Prague). Regensburg. 

December 2014: ‘“Das es dasselb puch sey”: Taking a Jewry-Oath in 15th-Century Nuremberg’. Lectures of the finalists competing for the Mandel Postdoctoral Fellowships, 2015–2018. Mandel Scholion: Interdisciplinary Research Center in the Humanities and Jewish Studies. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

October 2014: ‘Hebrew and Multilingualism in German Hebraist Manuscript-Compilations’. International Conference: Hebrew Manuscripts Study and its status quaestionis. Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures. Hamburg University.

July 2012: ‘From a Liturgical Object to a Polemical Instrument and beyond: Hebrew Manuscripts of Hartmann Schedel’. 33^rd Congress of the International Committee of the History of Art (CIHA): The Challenge of the Object. Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg. 

July 2012: ‘Hebraism without Hebrew: German Collections of Hebrew Manuscripts around 1500’. International Conference: Hebrew between Jews and Christians. University of Greifswald.

February 2012: ‘A Hebrew Manuscript as a Converted Object: the Case of Schedeliana’. Annual Workshop of Junior Scholars for German History and Culture in Israel, organized by the Israeli Forum for German History and Culture. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

April 2011: ‘Selling Hebrew Books and Teaching Hebrew Texts between Jews and Gentiles in the First Half of the Sixteenth Century’. Second Junior Scholars Workshop on Early Modern History. Ma'aleh ha-Hamisha.

March 2011: ‘The Story of One Acquisition: Ulrich Fugger and his Collection of Hebrew Candiote Manuscripts’. International Workshop: Minorities in Colonial Settings: the Jews in Venice’s Hellenic Territories (1400–1800). Tel Aviv University.

March 2010: ‘Jewish Scribal Workshop Initiated by a Christian Humanist: Johann Jakob Fugger and his Hebrew Manuscripts’. Eighth Annual Conference of Junior Scholars of the Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 

August 2009: ‘Hebrew Manuscripts from the Collection of Hartmann Schedel (1440–1514)’. The Fifteenth World Congress for Jewish Studies. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

March 2009: ‘Two Romaniote Haggadot Manuscripts from Venetian Candia’. First Junior Scholars International Conference on Jewish Art. Tel Aviv University.

Co-organization:

July 2021: International workshop: On Parchment, with Wooden Boards’: Hebrew and Non-Hebrew Terms Applied to Jewish Books in Historical Perspective. The Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’ and the Institute for Jewish Philosophy and Religion, the University of Hamburg.

June 2019: International Conference: The Jewish Book 1400–1600: From Production to Reception. The Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster.