The au­thor Jenny Aloni (1917-1993)

Jenny Aloni née Rosenbaum was born on 7 September 1917 in Paderborn, where she lived until 1935. At the end of 1939 she emigrated to Palestine. She had already begun her writing career in Germany, but starting in 1956 she published numerous poems, novels and short narratives making up a total of nine volumes. Since the sixties she has been viewed as one of the most significant German-language Israeli authors of her generation. In 1967 Jenny Aloni received the Paderborn Culture Prize, in 1991 this was followed by the renowned Annette-von-Droste-Hülshoff prize (Great Westphalian Literature Prize) and the Meersburger International Annette-von-Droste-Hülshoff price for female authors. Jenny Aloni died on 30 September 1993 in Ganei Yehuda, Israel. 

Jenny Aloni’s connection to the university began when she started reading at Paderborn University in 1973, the university’s founding year. In 1987 literary scholars published a selection of her work in a university publication series, later publishing a ten-volume edition of her work between 1990 and 1997. The Jenny Aloni archive, founded in 1992 in support of these endeavours, was endowed with Jenny Aloni’s entire written estate as a gift from her surviving heirs and still houses these works today in the university archive.  Among the writings were her diaries spanning 1935-1993, which were published in 2006 and letters to the Nobel prize winner Heinrich Böll, published in 2013. The high literary significance of her work has been increasingly recognised both nationally and internationally since the nineties.

Jenny Aloni’s writing belongs to two cultures, both the German and the Israeli. Recurring themes in her work are that of “otherness” and convergence with the “other”. Using her new home as an example she explores the opportunities and problems encountered when people of different countries, cultures and religions live side by side. The home is a central metaphor in her work, starting with the family home destroyed in the Night of Broken Glass and in the war, and later her new home in a foreign land. A guest house where strangers become guests, colleagues, friends is a suitable spiritual home for literature such as that by Jenny Aloni.

The Jenny-Aloni-Haus located between the Fanny-Nathan and Warburger streets is a fitting addition to the ensemble of university locations that create a connection between regional and universal history taking Jewish history as an example. The Paderborner Fanny Nathan established a Jewish orphanage for the Prussian provinces of Westphalia and Rhineland, which later became one of the state’s most important social institutions. In 1942 it was a starting point for the deportation of Jews in Paderborn. (Jenny Aloni wrote a gripping short story about this entitled Zwei Inschriften (Two Inscriptions), see volume referenced below, pages 87-88.) The Jewish cemetery is also located at the end of Warburger Straße, within view of the guest house, just a short walk away. This road leads to Warburg, a small town from which a Jewish family took their name in the 17^th Century, and from which many famous scholars have since descended, including a Nobel prize winner in natural sciences and one of the founding fathers of cultural studies, Aby Warburg. 

This rich tapestry of history and tradition is thus the perfect backdrop to Paderborn University’s Jenny-Aloni-Haus. By naming the guest house in honour of Jenny Aloni, Paderborn University is continuing this tradition and honouring the spirit of Jenny Aloni’s work.