“Moses Pipenbrink’s Adventures” is one of the first novels with Zionist tendencies written for Jewish children in the German-speaking world. Published ten years before Erich Kästner’s Emil und die Detektive [Emil and the Detectives] (Berlin, 1929), it is also an early example of modern German children’s literature set in an urban environment. In his debut, author Cheskel Zwi Klötzel (born Hans Klötzel) mainly addresses boys aged between seven and twelve. The book runs to 78 pages and is illustrated with eight pen drawings by the author.

Beginning in July 1919, Cheskel Zwi Klötzel published the novel in serialized form in the Zionist children’s magazine Bar Kochba Blätter für die heranwachsende jüdische Jugend [Bar Kochba Paper for the Jewish Youth] (Berlin: Welt-Verlag, 1/1919-2/1920/21), which was also published by him. In 1920 it was also published in book form by the same publishing house. In 1957 the Central Welfare Office of the Jews in Germany’s youth department Jugendreferat der Zentralwohlfahrtsstelle der Juden in Deutschland in Frankfurt am Main initiated a new edition; another edition was published in 2001 by the Heidsiek publishing house in Cuxhaven, this one a reprint of the 1920 edition with a foreword by Cary Kloetzel, the author’s daughter, and an epilogue by Hans-Jürgen Kahle.