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This series is divided into three sections: documents pertaining directly to Paul Leser, documents pertaining to other family members, and newspaper clippings primarily about Paul Leser. Included in this series are materials pertaining to the Leser family residence, located in the Plittersdorf section of Bonn, Germany, and include documentation of the estate, details of the original land purchase, wartime confiscation by the Nazis, later restitution claims, and final sale of the property in 1972.

This series contains a number of Leser's early diaries (1914-1922) as well as a number from the last decade of his life (1973-1982). Calendars and appointment books date from 1923-1983. This series also contains a card address file, as well as personal address/telephone books.

This series contains Paul Leser's correspondence with family members and legal counsel. Much of the post-war correspondence deals with issues surrounding the family property and residence in Bonn (Plittersdorf), Germany. This includes a lengthy correspondence between Paul Leser and the other heirs to the Leser family properties, including brother Albert Lestoque, niece Bettina Coon and nephew Walter Lestoque, as well as with family lawyers Wolf Wassermeyer, Günter Kofferath, Agnes Küsel-Meise.

This is the largest series in the collection and contains Leser's correspondence with other anthropologists and colleagues, life-long friends, as well as some students. (The bulk of the student correspondence is filed with the student records, Series 16).

This series contains Leser's institutional and organizational correspondence and documents his involvement with associations in the United States and worldwide, such as the African Studies Association, the American Anthropological Association, the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Völkerkunde, The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Also included in this series is correspondence concerning travel arrangements and conferences, with publishers, churches and missionary groups, book dealers and museums, and correspondence with colleges and universities, including those where Leser taught: Black Mountain College, Olivet College, The New School for Social Research and the University of Hartford.

This series contains the majority of Paul Leser's essayistic publications, in manuscript or typescript, as well as in published form. Also represented in this series are samples of early poetry and prose attempts by Leser from his teen years, copies of his dissertation, and proof copies and reviews of his seminal work, Entstehung und Verbreitung des Pfluges (1931). Also present in this series are multiple copies of a Paul Leser Bibliography, published on the occasion of his 80th birthday.

The Graebner series is of interest to researchers in the history of anthropology and ethnology, and specifically those concerned with the cultural-historical approach to ethnology which Graebner spearheaded. Graebner was Leser's mentor and perhaps the greatest influence on his academic career and scholarly interests; Leser remained loyal to Graebner's anthropological methodology even after it had fallen out of favor in academic circles.

The Jugendbewegung Collection is divided into three sections. The first section contains photocopies of the handwritten account by Wolfgang Kaiser of the activities of the Nerother Bund youth group from October 1928 through the year 1931. The second section contains clippings, materials and some correspondence pertaining to different aspects of the youth movement. The final section contains examples of Jugendbewegung periodicals, primarily from the 1920s and 1930s, but also contains examples of youth-oriented periodicals dating into the 1980s.

The first series contains courses taught primarily between the years 1926-1957 and is arranged according to the college where Leser taught, beginning with the Technische Hochschule in Darmstadt, and continuing with courses taught at the New School for Social Research, Olivet College and Black Mountain College. The second series, arranged alphabetically, contains materials primarily from courses taught at the Hartford Seminary Foundation and later at the University of Hartford.

This series contains primarily notebooks and some loose notes. The first section is arranged alphabetically by topic, whereas the second section contains notes and notebooks on a variety of topics, arranged chronologically.