An Undergraduate Happens on Solomon Dubno’s Impressive Book Collection

By Natalija Gligorevic

This is the second of two blog posts from Natalija Gligorevic who worked with Footprints in spring 2025 as part of the First Experiences in Research program for first-year undergraduate students in the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh. 

As a part of my undergraduate research with Footprints, I analyzed an auction catalog (Judaica Books, Manuscripts, Works of Art and Pictures) from Christie’s Auction House in Amsterdam. The auction took place on December 19, 1990, and I noted the auctioned books that were published prior to 1800. While reading through the catalog, I noticed repeated inscriptions of a man named Solomon Dubno, four in total: three of them belonged to books by Naftali Herz Wessely and one by Nathan Hanover. The three Wessely books noted in the catalog that Dubno owned were Mikhtav sheni, Mikhtav shelishi, and Mikhtav revii, all bound together and published in Berlin in 1782 (no. 438 in catalog). The Hanover book that Dubno owned was Sefer yeven metsulah (no. 407 in catalog), published in 1727 in Brzeg Dolny, Poland.  

Zuzanna Krezmien’s 2019 dissertation, Shaping the Jewish Enlightenment: Solomon Dubno (1738-1813), an Eastern European Maskil helped me fill in the gaps of who Solomon Dubno was and the extent of his massive library. Originally born in Dubno, Poland, he relocated to Amsterdam and then to Berlin. During these relocations, his collection would grow as well as his influence on the Hasklalah (Jewish Enlightenment thought that spread through Europe) and on his fellow maskilim. Coming from a low-income background, it is assumed that Dubno either sold books or lent/rented out most of his books to support himself (Krzemien 64). Based on a booklist published by Dubno in 1771 and an auction catalogue that was published the year after his death, 1814, it is estimated that Dubno’s collection ranged around 2076 books and 106 manuscripts (Krzemien 63-64). 

The collection was overall very diverse, as it “encompasses disciplines such as liturgy (hagadot, maḥzorim, seliḥot, sidurim, teḥinot etc.), the Bible and its commentaries, halakhah (Talmud tractates with commentaries, novellae, responsa and collectanea), midrashic compilations, ethics, poetry, Kabbalah, grammar, philosophy, as well as belles-lettres, mathematics, astronomy, medicine and geography” (Krzemien 71). With a well-versed disciplinary range, along with his travels across Europe, Dubno became an influential figure. His mark can be seen across diverse works of Judaica, which explains the reappearance of his signatures on the books in the Christie’s Auction catalog. 

Although Dubno’s booklist unfortunately does not give indication of specific dates in which he received many of his books, it is assumed that many were given as gifts (Krzemien 87). Dubno’s copy of the 1727 edition of Nathan Hannover’s 17th-century chronicle of the Khmelnytsky massacres may have been a gift but Dubno may also have bought it at a Frankfurt book fair. According to Krzemien, book fairs were an incredibly popular way to circulate Judaica in the 18th century, particularly in Frankfurt where a large book convention was held twice a year (Krzemien 81). On the other hand, Naftali Hertz Wessely and Dubno moved in the same circles of the Berlin Haskalah centered around Moses Mendelssohn and it seems likely that these were gifts from the author to his colleague. 

I am inviting others to take on Dubno’s originally published book list and posthumous auction catalogue as a future Footprints project–combining this historical evidence with information about extant books with his signature. 

Source:

Krzemień, Zuzanna. “Shaping the Jewish Enlightenment: Solomon Dubno (1738–1813), an Eastern European Maskil.” PhD Thesis, University College London, 2019.  (later published by Academic Studies Press, 2023).