Texts as objects in various forms have always been central to Jewish life. The Text cluster focuses on the material life of texts in Jewish European cultures of the 19th and 20th centuries. It also examines the diverse reflections on materiality in Jewish literary and philosophical texts of this period. Another research focus is the exploration of connections between the material dimension, the word and the idea. In this way, the Text cluster opens up possibilities for testing new theoretical and methodological approaches to literary, intellectual and social history, cultural studies and philosophy.

The Text cluster is particularly concerned with the practices of producing, collecting and translating Jewish texts. Key areas of research include studies of Jewish script culture, the culture of Jewish publishing, and the dissemination of Jewish books in 19th and 20th-century Europe. Research explores the various ways in which the material nature of texts influences their content. Investigations cover aspects of typography, the intermedial relationship between text and image, the changing forms and materials of the written pages and their illustrations in different Jewish contexts.

Studies in the theories and practices of the Jewish collecting culture examine how collections influence the horizons of meaning in written texts through contextualization, hierarchy and organization. Research projects in this area focus on processes of canonization, the organization and reorganization of knowledge within Jewish institutions, as well as the problematic trajectories of collections during and after the Holocaust and the resulting possibilities of remembrance and forgetting.

Finally, the cluster Text explores the role of translation in the migration and circulation of Jewish texts across cultural and political boundaries. This includes phenomena of multilingualism (e.g. between Hebrew, Yiddish and other European languages), the exchange of texts through translation among Jewish and non-Jewish language cultures, and the related changes in usage through de- and recontextualization.