However, the miniscule size of ‘facts’ did not neces-sarily reflect Deutsch’s adherence to any theory of information. Instead, it indicated hispersonal interest in distinctions of the smallest scale, vocalized by his motto ‘de minimiscurat historicus’, that history’s minutiae matter.

Just as with hisinterleaved volumes of Graetz’s Geschichte der Juden,

He tried to show that this‘favorite topic’ of his, ‘insistence on exactness in chronological dates’, amounted tomore than a trifling (Deutsch, 1915, 1905a). Deutsch compared such historical accuracyto that of a bookkeeper who might recall his ledger by memory. ‘People would look uponsuch an achievement’, he reflected, ‘as a freak, harmless, but of no particular value, infact rather a waste of mental energy’ (Deutsch, 1916). However, he sought to show thatthese details mattered, no different from how ‘a difference in a ledger of one centremains just as grievous as if it were a matter of $100,000’ (Deutsch, 1904a: 3).

Anecdotes’, he concluded, ‘havetheir historic value, if properly tested’ – reflecting both his interest in details and also theneed to ascertain whether they were true (Deutsch, 1905b).

Deutsch (Gotthard) Papers. 1859-1922 (bulk 1900-1920). [MS-123]

He sometimes pasted newsprint cuttings to present a statistical chart or inserted

Deutsch himself pointed to criticswho called him a ‘chiffonier’ or historical rag-picker, though he defended his ‘incon-venient though undeniable facts’ (Deutsch, 1916). A number of contemporaries recog-nized the limits of his interest in individual facts. ‘I get the impression’, one figure put it,‘that the charm of the facts of history, was so great for Deutsch, he lost himself socompletely . . . in the study of them, that he was never altogether able to say he is throughwith studying them and that he is ready for writing’ (Schulman, 1922). One review ofDeutsch’s Scrolls (1917), which collected some of his scattered articles, reflected thatthe articles lacked organization. ‘In order to obtain value,’ the reviewer insisted, ‘factsmust be organized . . . Isolate a fact as one isolates a germ in the laboratory, such a factbecomes worthless for historical purposes’ (Leiber, 1917).

his oft-stated motto ‘de minimis curat historicus’.

If in 1908 itcontained 10,000 cards, by 1917 it had ballooned in size to 50,000 items, reaching60,000 in 1919 and nearly 70,000 at the time of Deutsch’s death in 1921 (Deutsch,1908b, 1917b; Brown, 1919: 69). It seems that Deutsch consistently produced 5,000cards per year (about 20 per workday) for the final 13 years of his life.

e called on his fellow rabbis to submitnotecards with details from their readings. He proposed that a central office gathermaterial into a ‘system’ of information about Jewish history, and he suggested theypublish the notes in the CCAR’s Yearbook.

Lamenting that ‘I have only two eyes, and, unfortunately cannot use themso as to read two books at the same time’,

Deutsch was not especially innovative. When he wrote that ‘first we must know, andafterward we may reason’, he channeled Johann Gustav Droysen’s distinction betweenKritik (source criticism) and Darstellung (historical narration) (Droysen, 1858).

Deutsch wrote often of history’s ‘scientific’ nature and inductive approach, leading toan almost positivistic method. ‘From individual facts’, he wrote, ‘one ascends to prin-ciples’, continuing: ‘Facts have to be arranged in a systematic manner . . . First we mustknow, and afterward we may reason’. This ‘systematic’ arrangement, he believed, sepa-rated the historian from the mere annalist or chronicler (Deutsch, 1900b: 166).

Deutsch created his index in the context of a range of encyclopedic activities. In 1897,the Central Conference of American Rabbis asked Deutsch to create a two-volume ency-clopedia, and he soon joined a similar effort by Funk and Wagnalls under the direction ofIsidore Singer. As the main editor for historical topics, Deutsch helped publish 12 volumesof the Jewish Encyclopedia from 1901 to 1906. In these same years, Deutsch produced acalendar of Jewish anniversaries in the monthly Die Deborah (1901), reprinted in 1904 inthe Hebrew Union College Annual (as the ‘Encyclopedic Department’) and as a standalonevolume (Deutsch, 1904a, 1904b).

Colleagues made a similarmove by calling Deutsch a ‘bor sud she-’eino me-’abed t.ippah’, a ‘cistern that neverloses a drop’. This oft-repeated designation simultaneously linked him to the

And the boys at the college [sic] call him Dr. Dates’.

Max Raisin (1881–1957),reflected that lessons often devolved into ‘reading several events with dates out of alittle notebook’ (Raisin, 1952: 147; Hertzman, 1985: 83-8).

‘He knows everything that’s happened fromB’reshis [Genesis] to today’, it went, ‘and it really isn’t work to him – it’s merely play’,a sentiment later expressed when one colleague wrote of Deutsch’s ‘game of cards’(Margolis, 1921).3

The index frames a figure who may at first glanceseem a curious or even comedic caricature of a certain positivist historical tradition, butone who also imparted to his students a sense of the magnitude of Jewish history, andwho straddled a mechanical pursuit of individual ‘facts’ with a certain attention to novelmethods and visions of comprehensively encyclopedic information.

In one instance, Deutsch bound interleaving pages in HeinrichGraetz’s Geschichte der Juden – the masterful eleven-volume work published from1854 to 1876 by Deutsch’s onetime teacher at Breslau’s Ju ̈disch-Theologisches Seminar– so he could fill it with errata and supplementary notes.

It may seem a curious relic of positivistic history, but closer examination allows us to interrogate the materiality of scholarly labor.

Indeed, Deutsch’s index is massive but middling, especially when placed alongside those of Niklas Luhmann, Paul Otlet, or Gershom Scholem.

Does Deutsch’s index constitute a great unwritten work of history, as some have claimed, or are the cards ultimately useless ‘chips from his workshop’?

Gotthard Deutsch (1859–1921) taught at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati from 1891 until his death, where he produced a card index of 70,000 ‘facts’ of Jewish history.