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Jewish Lives : Moses Mendelssohn : Sage of Modernity

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Jewish Lives : Moses Mendelssohn : Sage of Modernity MOSES MENDELSSOHN Moses Mendelssohn Sage of Modernity SHMUEL FEINER Translated from the Hebrew by Anthony Berris New Haven and London Frontispiece: A fictitious meeting of, from left, Moses Mendelssohn, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, and Johann Caspar Lavater; engraving after a painting by Moritz Daniel Oppenheim, 1856. akg-images. Copyright © 2010 by Shmuel Feiner. Translation copyright © 2010 by Anthony Berris. Hebrew edition copyright © 2005 by the Zalman Shazar Center, Jerusalem, Israel. First published in Hebrew as part of the biographies series Outstanding Minds and Creative Personalities in Jewish Histories. Chief Editor: Anita Shapira. Editorial Board Members: Avraham Grossman, Moshe Idel, Yosef Kaplan, Zvi Yekutiel. Published by arrangement with the Zalman Shazar Center. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Set in Janson Oldstyle type by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Feiner, Shmuel. [Mosheh Mendelson. English] Moses Mendelssohn : sage of modernity / Shmuel Feiner ; translated from the Hebrew by Anthony Berris. p. cm. — (Jewish lives) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-300-16175-5 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Mendelssohn, Moses, 1729–1786. 2. Philosophers—Germany—Berlin—Biography. 3. Jews—Germany—Berlin—Biography. I. Title. B2693.F4513 2010 193—dc22 [B] 2010020778 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 You must surely know what small part the members of my faith have in all the freedoms of this country. The civic oppression to which we are subject due to deep-rooted prejudice lies like a deadweight on the wings of the spirit and prevents any attempt to fly to the heights attained by those who were born free. —Moses Mendelssohn, 1762 I shall not deny that in my religion I have discerned additions and distortions made by Man which, alas, dull its splendor. What lover of truth can pride himself in that he found his entire religion pure of harmful man-made laws? We all seek the truth, we know the deleterious folly of hypocrisy and superstition, and hope we shall possess the ability to rid ourselves of it without damage to the true and the good. But I am truly convinced that the essence of my religion is immovable. —Moses Mendelssohn, 1770 This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS 1. A Stroll Down Unter den Linden, 1 2. From Dessau to Berlin: An Unpredicted Career, 17 3. Cultural Conversion: The Three Formative Years, 35 4. War and Peace, Love and Family, Fame and Frustration, 56 5. Affront and Sickness: The Lavater Affair, 83 6. Dreams, Nightmares, and Struggles for Religious Tolerance, 107 7. Jerusalem: The Road to Civic Happiness, 153 8. Specters: The Last Two Years, 187 Chronology, 217 Select Bibliography, 223 Index, 227 This page intentionally left blank 1 A Stroll Down Unter den Linden IN THE early evenings and on Sundays and holidays during the eighteenth century, many Berliners would take a pleasant stroll through the hunting grounds of the Tiergarten and down the linden-lined boulevard of Unter den Linden, which led to the royal palace. In the last decades of the century, the residents of the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia and numerous visitors to the city—who came to gain a firsthand impression of one of Europe’s nascent cities of culture—could see Jews mingling with the other strollers in the city’s parks and along its boule- vards. The presence of many members of Berlin’s Jewish com- munity, which numbered some three thousand souls, in public places and in cultural sites—particularly theaters and concert halls—was characteristic of life in the vibrant city. Wealthy Jews, successful merchants and entrepreneurs, promenaded with their wives and daughters in fashionable attire, elegant coiffures, and ostentatious wigs, their fluent German and their 1 A STROLL DOWN UNTER DEN LINDEN refined manners worthy of the cultured bourgeoisie. Many of them read belles lettres and journals in various spheres of sci- ence and attended lectures on innovations in science and phi- losophy as well as cultural and artistic events. Notable among them were the physician and philosopher Marcus Herz, a dis- ciple of Immanuel Kant, and Markus Bloch, the physician and scientist specializing in marine life, who were considered dis- tinguished scholars and sources of pride for the city’s residents. On a summer evening in 1780, the city’s most famous Jew, the eminent philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, was strolling through the city’s streets with his wife, Fromet, and several of their children. A gang of youths began taunting the family with rhythmic, goading chanting of “Juden! Juden!” and threw stones at them. “What have we done to them, Father? Why do they always chase and curse us?” his shaken children asked. At that moment their father—upset, frustrated, and helpless—was unable to find comforting words and only murmured to him- self with suppressed anger, “People, people, when will you stop this?” Mendelssohn was by nature a reserved man. He never pub- licly expressed his feelings about the humiliating and terrifying experience undergone by his family. Only in one private letter to Peter Adolph Winkopp, a young Benedictine monk who was one of his most fervent admirers, did he write candidly about the incident. The episode was unusual but not unprecedented, and it cracked the veneer of Mendelssohn’s respectability, dam- aged his self-respect, and shook his faith in his most treasured value, for which he had fought since becoming an important public figure in the intellectual world—religious tolerance. The country in which I live is allegedly a tolerant one, he wrote bitterly to Winkopp, but in fact I live in it under great stress, and the lack of tolerance assails me from all directions. What should I do? Perhaps lock up my children with me all day long at the silk factory where I work, just as you voluntarily imprison 2 A STROLL DOWN UNTER DEN LINDEN yourself in the monastery? Perhaps in this way I shall be able to spare them such cruel experiences? With cynicism tinged with despair and a sense of fatalism, he added: The situation cer- tainly does not stimulate the literary and philosophical muses of the intellectual. Then, as if regretting such rare candor, he quickly sealed the window he had opened onto his feelings of affront and his existential situation as a Jew in Berlin. He re- assured his Christian friend (and himself): Enough of these troubling thoughts! They only have a bad effect on my spirits and annoy me far too much. It would be better, Winkopp my friend, if I addressed the questions you asked about my philo- sophical book Phädon and not the frustrating and unresolved question of prejudice against the Jews. It would be better if I discussed with you the immortality of the soul, for that is a subject of great existential interest to all people, not only Jews. Mendelssohn never mentioned the street incident again. Some six years later, on January 4, 1786, at 7 A.M. on a par- ticularly cold winter morning in Berlin, Mendelssohn died in his home at 68 Spandau Street. He died young, four months after celebrating his fifty-sixth birthday with friends. Beginning at ten o’clock the next morning his coffin was borne through the streets of the center of Berlin to the old Jewish cemetery in Grosse Hamburger Street. Present at the well-attended funeral were his family, friends, and colleagues, including a large num- ber of Christians, the leaders of the Berlin Jewish community, and members of the wealthy elite. Intellectuals, Jewish and Christian alike, felt a profound loss. On the day of the funeral, shops and businesses in Berlin were closed as a mark of respect. Nearly a thousand people crowded into the small cemetery. Press coverage was extensive. Newspaper accounts of the great philosopher’s death included detailed medical descrip- tions of his fatal illness. His personal physician, Dr. Marcus Herz, told readers about Mendelssohn’s deteriorating condi- tion and final hours. The Austrian ambassador to Berlin sent 3 A STROLL DOWN UNTER DEN LINDEN a message to his foreign minister in Vienna: “The renowned Jewish scholar Moses Mendelssohn died of a stroke yesterday.” The eulogies were boundless. The maskilim, Jewish enlighten- ers, expressed their deep sorrow on the loss of an exemplary figure. They likened Mendelssohn to the biblical Moses and lamented his passing in biblical language: “Moses the man who raised us up from the mire, from the depths of ignorance to the halls of wisdom and knowledge, has left us.” They sought solace in his spiritual legacy: “He will still speak to us of knowledge, not in words but in spirit, for among the wise of Israel he is un- paralleled in his generation as a man so perfect of attributes and merit.” His Christian friends reacted emotionally to his sudden death in personal letters and newspaper articles. All agreed that Mendelssohn had been one of the leading lights of German philosophy and literature. He was a scholar of stature who had fought for truth, they wrote, and a man of exemplary virtue. They quoted his humanistic aphorisms, the watchwords ad- dressed as salutations and dedications to his friends: “Strive for truth, love beauty, seek good, and do your best,” “The world without love is chaos,” “Love truth and peace.” The eulogies were all but unanimous: not only thinkers and scholars but all citizens had lost a luminary, a symbol of hope for amity among men, and the prophet of the long-awaited day on which Jews and Christians would live as brothers.
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