The study “Sephardic Jews on the Lower Elbe” published by Franz Steiner Verlag in 1958 as volume 40 of their supplement to the academic journal Vierteljahresschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte (edited by Hermann Aubin) may be considered a central contribution to Hamburg’s Jewish history of the early postwar period. Its author, Hermann Kellenbenz, was one of the most influential German economic historians of his generation. In his 600-page book, he studied the economic significance of the Sephardic Jews who were expelled from Spain in the early 16th century and had been allowed to settle in Hamburg. However, the publication’s origins date back to the National Socialist period, when Kellenbenz had received a research assignment by the Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany  Reichsinstitut für Geschichte des neuen Deutschlands. This fact is omitted in the study’s preface – which is hardly surprising for this time period.