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The collection chiefly consists of Goldenweiser's American legal case files. There are also case files from his German years, and substantial materials on his research into the condition of Russian refugees and refugee problems in general in the 1930s. Much of the correspondence from the late 1930s and early 1940s concerns Jews in Germany and occupied Europe. Correspondents in the collection include Mark Aldanov, Abraham Cahan, Antal Dorati, Georgiĭ Florovskiĭ, Tatʹi︠a︡na Frank, Vladimir and Vera Nabokov, and Mikhail Karpovich; there are 1 or 2 items each from Dwight D. Eisenhower, Eleanor Roosevelt, Herbert Lehman, and Nikolaĭ Losskiĭ. Letters, manuscripts, and documents by Vera Nabokova contain considerable information on her and her husband's lives in Germany and in the United States. Many of the American case files concern (as does much of the Nabokova material) individual claims for reparations from Germany after World War II.

The collection includes seven volumes of scrapbooks containing clippings on current affairs roughly between 1939 and 1950 with particular reference to the trials of the German War Criminals at Nuremberg and the state of Germany after World War II. Also, general items on President Franklin Roosevelt and U.S. foreign policy. There are several complete copies of newspapers folded and inserted in the scrapbooks. The second and more important part of the collection consists of typescripts of Dr. Pfeiffenberger's writings. These occupy one and one-half manuscript boxes (Boxes 4 and 5). Included are about 45 pages of poetry in German, about 120 pages of selected stories of New York Life (in German), about 30 pages on The European State-System, 1848-1890 (in German), 127 pages of manuscript entitled "The Spirit of the Code of Hammurabi" (this is a preliminary draft in English of a short book or article by Pfeiffenberger), about 305 pages of typescript on "Compensation in the Western Zone of Germany" by Pfeiffenberger, Dr. H. Klein, and Dr. Klavehn-Berndt (there are many changes and notes in script, and this item is accompanied by another typescript of approximately the same size on the same subject), and several other items.