ROSENTHAL, LESER

ROSENTHAL, LESER (Eliezer; 1794–1868), bibliophile and bibliographer. Rosenthal, born in Nasnelsk, Plock, Russia, served as teacher at Paderborn (Germany) and later as Klausrabbiner at Hanover. He began collecting Hebraica and Judaica by spending his entire dowry on books. At his death, Rosenthal's library contained 32 manuscripts and 6,000 printed volumes, including incunabula and rare books. He himself compiled a catalog of his collection titled Yode'a Sefer (Heb. and Ger.), which was edited by M. Roest and published in 1875 (repr. 1966). Rosenthal's son, BARON GEORG ROSENTHAL, a banker, offered the collection to Bismarck for the Kaiserliche und Koenigliche Bibliothek (Preussische Staatsbibliothek) in Berlin, but the offer was refused. In 1880 descendants living in Holland presented the collection to the city of Amsterdam and it was incorporated in the university library there under the name of Bibliotheka Rosenthaliana (see libraries ). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Zunz, Gesch, 244; Steinschneider, in: HB, 15 (1875), 32; AZDJ, 32 (1868), no. 37; J. Berg, in: Systematische Catalogus van de Judaica der Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana, 1 (1936). (Jacob H. Copenhagen)