The writer Jenny Aloni was born Jenny Rosenbaum on 7 September 1917 in Paderborn, where she began writing at a young age. Reflecting on her identity as a Jew, but also as a woman and as a writer in a contemporary context, determined Jenny Rosenbaum's literary career, which began in her youth. After experiencing anti-Semitism and marginalisation, she turned to Zionism as a teenager. As a 17-year-old, she left the Catholic "Oberlyzeum St. Michael" in the spring of 1935 to prepare for emigration in a Hachshara camp. At the end of November 1939, at the age of 22, she was able to leave Nazi Germany and emigrate to Palestine.

The new beginning in a foreign country was not easy. The experience of loss, loneliness and foreignness have a noticeable influence on her diary entries and her poems, which form the focus of her literary work at this time. However, as a Zionist, Jenny Rosenbaum came to Palestine with the firm intention of integrating and actively participating in the establishment of the Jewish state. At the same time, Jenny Rosenbaum was constantly worried about her relatives living in Germany, who were being persecuted by the Nazis. When Jenny Rosenbaum learnt of the death of her parents and sister after 1945, the worry was replaced by a heavy sense of guilt - the guilt of having survived. This confrontation continued to accompany her life and writing. Later stories such as "Kristall und Schäferhund", "Begegnung" and "Die braunen Pakete" deal with National Socialism and its after-effects.

Despite some initial feelings of alienation and the conflict-ridden present, Palestine, and from 1948 the young state of Israel, became her new home. She married Esra Aloni in 1948 and their daughter Ruth was born in 1950. Life in her new homeland became a central motif in her work. In the 1960s, Jenny Aloni's works such as the novel "Zypressen zerbrechen nicht" and the short story collection "Jenseits der Wüste" made her an important voice for Israel in Germany. Her native city of Paderborn honoured the 49-year-old writer with the Culture Prize in 1967.

After that, she was forgotten. When Prof. Dr Dr Friedrich Kienecker and Prof. Dr Hartmut Steinecke at Paderborn University began publishing her works in the 1980s, they helped the writer to regain literary recognition. As a result, Jenny Aloni, her work and the Editions-Werkstatt, the Jenny Aloni Archive founded at the university in 1992, became nationally recognised. Jenny Aloni was awarded two important honours in 1991: the "Annette-von-Droste-Hülshoff Prize" from the Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe and the "Droste Prize" for women writers from the town of Meersburg, which also refers to the writer Annette von Droste-Hülshoff. Two years later, on 30 September 1993, Jenny Aloni died in Ganei Yehuda at the age of 76.

To mark her 100th birthday, Prof Dr Hartmut Steinecke wrote a biography entitled "To experience what history is, you have to be Jewish". Jenny Aloni - eine deutsch-jüdische Schriftstellerin", which sensitively traces the life of the writer and explains her work. Paderborn University commemorated the life of the writer with an exhibitionentitled 'Jenny Aloni. Germany - Palestine - Israel'.

Aloni's works have largely been edited, as have her diaries and numerous letters, such as her correspondence with the writer Heinrich Böll. Further life documents as well as her manuscripts, manuscripts, notebooks and fragments of works have been handed down in her personal estate. Including the diaries and poetry journals, the personal estate comprises over a hundred biographical documents, over 650 letters, over 1,200 works and manuscripts as well as a small collection of almost 50 cataloguing units. The correspondence and documents relating to the editing work, the so-called Jenny Aloni Archive, can be described as an extended estate. The documents of the Jenny Aloni Archive include the written material resulting from the activities of the "Society for the Promotion of the Jenny Aloni Archive", which was founded in 1996. This material is made up of extensive correspondence, detailed documentation on the reception of Jenny Aloni's work and materials relating to events, and together with the personal papers, results in a total of over 1,600 cataloguing units. The photos, which were assigned to the analogue photo collection of the University Archive (9/900) and the slides in the slide collection (9/902), amount to around 300 images. These are family photos of Jenny Aloni as well as photos taken during the editing work and at events organised by the Jenny Aloni Archive and the Friends. The quality of the pictures varies greatly, and the state of preservation makes restoration necessary in some cases.

Following the transfer of the estate to the Paderborn University Archive, the personal estate and the materials of the editorial workshop, the Jenny Aloni Archive, were catalogued in the archive database. The detailed cataloguing of the database "Jüdische Schriftstellerinnen und Schriftsteller in Westfalen", which is no longer available online, was largely adopted.

From October 2015 to September 2016, literary scholar Dr Elias Flügge carried out the indexing in the University Archive database.