GERMAN STATES

In the late eighteenth century, kings and princes, bishops, and burghers ruled the more than 300 German states that constituted the Holy Roman Empire. Each of these polities had its own laws governing the Jews—all of them imposing economic and residential restrictions. Moreover, prejudice against Jews was pervasive.

The German Enlightenment movement (Aufklärung) advocated for toleration in a multireligious society. Some of its adherents believed that Jews were entitled to toleration and even equality. Napoleon’s invasions brought emancipation to Jews in some German states, but these rights were revoked with Napoleon’s defeat. In Prussia, the largest German state, Frederick Wilhelm III made the Jews citizens in 1812, although he withheld the right to hold government office. In 1866 Prussia fully emancipated all Jews. Germany’s unification in 1870 brought full civil and political rights to all German Jews.

It is an experience, saturated by many sad games, that some noble citizens and sons of citizens through usurious contracts with Jews ...

Augsburg: 1776

Center for Jewish History, Gift of Sid Lapidus

This broadside states that since citizens have been ruined by Jewish moneylenders, only citizens over the age of 25 with the permission of the mayor may enter a contract with a Jew. The notice goes on to outline the punishments for Jews and borrowers who violate the decree. Parents, guardians, and employers are also urged here to report any violations to the authorities.

Jacob Plessner (1871–1936)
Moses Mendelssohn

Courtesy of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York

Born in Dessau in 1729 to a Yiddish-speaking, observant family, Moses Mendelssohn made his way to Berlin to study. There he continued his Talmud studies, but he also taught himself modern European languages (including German), philosophy, mathematics, and literature. An observant Jew all his life, he became one of the first Jews in the German states to participate as an equal in European intellectual life and one of the most important figures in late eighteenth-century Jewish life in Europe.

Moses Mendelssohn
Jerusalem: Oder Über Religiöse Macht und Judentum (Jerusalem: Or on Religious Power and Judaism)

Berlin: Friedrich Maurer, 1783
Center for Jewish History, Gift of Sid Lapidus

Although some in Mendelssohn’s circle
assumed he would convert to Christianity, even challenging him publicly to do so, he refused. He published this book in response to one such challenge. Mendelssohn argues that religious communities should not have the right to coerce belief and that Judaism is a “revealed legislation” that enables Jews to practice their knowledge of the divine. He endorses emancipation, urging Jews to “bear two burdens”—that of Judaism and of civil life.

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Moses Mendelssohn
Phaedon; or, the Death of Socrates

London: J. Cooper, 1789
Center for Jewish History, Gift of Sid Lapidus

Mendelssohn became the model for Jewish participation in European culture. He published many philosophical works, including Phaedon, a Socratic-style dialogue presenting Enlightenment views about the immortality of the soul. On this page Mendelssohn writes, “We may therefore assume on good grounds that this striving for perfection ... is the vocation of rational beings and thus the ultimate purpose of creation.”

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Christian Wilhelm von Dohm
Über die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden [On the civil improvement of the Jews]

Berlin and Stettin: Friedrich Nicolai, 1781, 1783 Center for Jewish History, Gift of Sid Lapidus

In this work, solicited by Mendelssohn, Christian Wilhelm von Dohm articulates an Enlightenment position on the Jews: Jews’ negative qualities resulted from their inferior status. Releasing them from degrading and restrictive laws would transform them into respectable citizens. On this page, Von Dohm articulates that Emancipation is crucial to this process: “it is FIRST necessary to give [Jews] equal rights with all other subjects since they are able to fulfill the duties they should be allowed to claim the equal impartial love and care of the state.”

Comte de Mirabeau
Sur Moses Mendelssohn, Sur La Réforme Politique Des Juifs [On Moses Mendelssohn, on the political reform of the Jews]

London: 1787
Center for Jewish History, Gift of Sid Lapidus

Influenced by Mendelssohn’s work, French revolutionary Honoré Gabriel Riqueti (Count of Mirabeau) affirms here that history proves that “the Jews, considered as men and as citizens, were greatly corrupted only because they were denied their rights.” His argument supports that of Christian Wilhelm von Dohm—that “the Jew is more of a man than he is a Jew,” as written on this page.

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Judenporzellan cup and saucer, 1797
Made by Königliche Porzellan-Manufaktur, Berlin (Prussia)

Courtesy of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York

To obtain marriage and death certificates and business permits, Jews were required by Frederick the Great to pay taxes in
the form of purchasing cheap porcelain, known as Judenporzellan. The porcelain was produced by Frederick the Great’s Royal Porcelain Factory, located in Berlin and still in operation today.

Moritz Daniel Oppenheim (German, 1800–1882)
Die Rückkehr des Freiwilligen (The Return of the Volunteer),
c. 1868

Oil on canvas

The Jewish Museum, New York; Gift of the Oscar and Regina Gruss Charitable and Educational Foundation, Inc., 1999-95

Known as “painter of the Rothschilds and the Rothschild of painters,” Moritz Daniel Oppenheim rose from an Orthodox upbringing in the Hanau ghetto to become known as the “first Jewish painter of the modern era.” Die Rückkehr des Freiwilligen portrays a soldier who has returned home from the War of Liberation, in which hundreds of German Jewish volunteers fought against Napoleon’s invasion. The soldier now wears an Iron Cross, a military honor but also a Christian symbol. This grisaille is based on the 1833 work Oppenheim gave to his friend Gabriel Riesser, an outspoken advocate of emancipation. In that original version you can see the tension in the father’s face: while he admires his son’s achievements, he knows that the son traveled on the Sabbath to return home with his Iron Cross. In this later version of the painting Oppenheim eased these generational tensions between father and son.

Moritz Daniel Oppenheim (German, 1800-1882)
Die Heimkehr des Freiwilligen (The Return of the Volunteer), 1833-34

Oil on canvas

The Jewish Museum, New York; Gift of Richard and Beatrice Levy, 1984-61

Lessing and Mendelssohn

Meet in a coffee house. Play chess. Become intellectual partners and lifelong friends. The unexpected, multidimensional relationship between Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, the son of a pastor, and Moses Mendelssohn, the son of a Hebrew scribe, is the mythic model for Jewish-Christian relations regarding German Enlightenment ideals.

Mendelssohn and Lessing’s friendship signaled that some Christian thinkers were willing to engage with Jews as intellectual equals and socialize with them as friends. Lessing presented Mendelssohn (the model for Nathan in his play Nathan the Wise) as intelligent, decent, and moral. In turn, Mendelssohn found in Lessing’s admiration the courage to present his philosophical views publicly. Both friends were humanists from deeply religious backgrounds who held each other in mutual esteem.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Abraham Baer Gottlober (Hebrew translator)
Natan ha-ḥakham [Nathan the wise]

Vienna: Schpitzer, 1874
Center for Jewish History, Gift of Sid Lapidus

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Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Nathan der Weise [Nathan the wise]

Berlin: Christian Friedrich Voss, 1779
Center for Jewish History, Gift of Sid Lapidus

As a writer and dramatist, Lessing gave the Jews access to European culture and supported Mendelssohn’s intellectual quest. Nathan der Weise, Lessing’s most famous play, served as a clarion call for religious toleration. Nathan, modeled on Moses Mendelssohn, is the fictional spokesman for the enlightened German’s ideals of tolerance, brotherhood, and love of humanity.

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Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Zevi Lazar Teller (translator)
Die Juden [The Jews]

Vienna: Georg Brög, 1880
Center for Jewish History, Gift of Sid Lapidus

Written in 1749 and staged in 1754 (when Lessing was 21), this one-act play is also an argument for religious toleration. A gentleman whom no one realizes is a Jew saves a German baron and his daughters from robbers. In his selflessness, generosity, and courage the gentleman refutes stereotypes of Jews—indeed, Lessing later argues that were Jews allowed to be equal citizens, none would be shocked to find that this noble gentleman was Jewish.

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Menasseh ben Israel, translated into German by Moses Mendelssohn
Rettung der Juden [Rescue of the Jews]

Berlin and Stettin: Friedrich Nicolai, 1782
Center for Jewish History, Gift of Sid Lapidus
Here, Moses Mendelssohn translated Menasseh ben Israel’s plea for the readmission of Jews to England. In his introduction, Mendelssohn argues that civil equality should be a process in which Jews themselves would be required to embrace freedom of the individual and freedom of thought.

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Johann Carl Wilhelm Aarland (1822–1906)
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, 19th century
Courtesy of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York

Menasseh ben Israel, 1642
(reproduction)
Courtesy of The Library of The Jewish Theological Seminary

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