Over the last few years, a lot has been written and researched about Jella Lepman’s life and work. Authors have mostly focused on the time after World War II, when Jella Lepman returned to Germany from exile, established the International Youth Library, and founded the International Board on Books für Young People (IBBY). She herself may have contributed most to this focus on the post-war period with her autobiographical book „A Bridge of Children’s Books“, in which she remains silent about her life before 1945. However, in order to open up new perspectives on Jella Lepman’s life and work, it is also necessary to examine the earlier phases of her life, which appear to be largely blind spots: Jella Lepman’s journalistic and political work in the Weimar Republic and her life in exile in London. An historical contextualization of her humanistic convictions and her middle-class Jewish background has also yet to be undertaken. This broader perspective forms the basis of the following articles, as briefly explained in this introduction. In doing so, Jella Lepman’s achievements in the post-war period will also be viewed in a new biographical and historical light.