Founded in the late 19th Century as a reaction to growing antisemitism, the Centralverein (CV) archive documents the prevalence of anti-Jewish actions throughout Germany, as well as the Jewish communities' responses to them.

In November 1938, the Gestapo confiscated the majority of the Centralverein's surviving files, mostly relating to the 1920s and 1930s, and for many years they were believed to have been lost.  However, in 1990, the Center for the Preservation of Historical Documentary Collections in Moscow revealed the existence of approximately 4,000 files from the Centralverein's chief office in Berlin.

In 1996 the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People began microfilming this important collection, and made it available to researchers.  In 2005, thanks to the generous assistance of Alfred Jacoby, The Wiener Library acquired a microfilm copy of the whole archive.

The CV archive is of particular interest to historians and at present is our most frequently accessed archival collection.

Full document description of the Centralverein Archive.