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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.

Maria (Mira) Lingemann (b. January 20, 1894; d. May 23, 1964) was the older sister of Paul Leser. Her husband, Heinrich Lingemann (b. September 23, 1880; d. June 29, 1962), was a lawyer by profession until he was forced by the Nazis to retire in 1938. In the years immediately following the end of World War II, Lingemann was recalled to public service in Germany and served as Oberlandesgerichtspräsident of the province of Nordrhein, Germany, helping to reshape the judicial system of postwar Germany. The materials in this series have been divided into two sections, the first being the papers of Maria Lingemann. These consist of documents, some early writings, diaries and notebooks, and correspondence. The largest amount of correspondence is between Maria Lingemann and Paul Leser and dates from 1913 until her death in 1964. The Heinrich Lingemann materials consist of a small number of documents, typescripts, correspondence pertaining to Lingemann's activities in post-war Germany, and several case files, the most notable being that of Otto Bräutigam. In addition to Bräutigam, other notable correspondents represented in the Heinrich Lingemann papers include Konrad Adenauer, Heinrich Brüning and Emil Niethammer.

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 Lips series is of interest not only because of the plagiarism case itself, but also because of the way the case reflects the academic and political climate of Germany in the early 1930s. The case began in 1928, when Martin Block, Lips' assistant at the Raustenstrauch-Joest Museum, complained to Johannes Lehmann, director of the Frankfurt Museum and head of the Association of German Ethnological Museums. Among other grievances, he charged Lips with plagiarizing the anthropologists Fritz Graebner, Wilhelm Schmidt, and Wilhelm Koppers in his work Einleitung in die vergleichende Voelkerkunde. Lehmann and his assistants, Ernst Vatter and Paul Leser, documented the plagiarism and quickly became embroiled in the controversy. The case (or cases, as many different charges and countercharges were filed), eventually reached the courts and involved many prominent German and Austrian academics. It also became a political conflict, played out in the newspapers, as Lips was a member of the Social Democratic Party. The Social Democratic newspapers supported him, while the more conservative papers used the charges as an excuse to attack Lips' character. The case, for all intents and purposes, ended when the Nazis came to power in 1933. Beyond the political and academic aspects, the case is also of note as it helps to illuminate Leser's continuing interest in academic honesty, plagiarism, and the critique of sources.

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.