Trudy Gold
The Unrequited Love Affair? Part 1

Trudy Gold - The Unrequited Love Affair Part 1

- We’ve begun looking at if you like the love affair that Jews of a certain level of education began to feel for Germany. And what happens? Now, I’ve already recommended books to you. I would, Amos Elon, “The Pity of It All,” “Einstein’s German World,” and also Michael Meyer, “The Origins of the Modern Jew” is very good; “Faust’s Metropolis” by Alexandra Richie. If you read all of those, you’ll be a real expert on German Jewry. And the source book I use, of course, is “The Jew in the Modern World.” So why was it that the Jews fell so in love with Germany? And of course, it all started with Moses Mendelssohn. Remember the little device, “The Crisis of Modernity,” and how in Chinese, crisis is recommended, is actually represented by both danger and opportunity. And that really is the story of “The Jew in the Modern World,” because of course, we’re going to see, as we did in France, an extraordinary success story on one level. But when the Jews became part of it all, they took it forward in every way possible, being in the arts, the sciences. But the question is, and this is one of the issues when you study Jewish history, the Jews are very much dependent on the outside world, and also, the whole question of Jewish identity. Really before this period, nobody would’ve questioned what a Jew was. But what did Mendelssohn say? What did Moses Mendelssohn say? Religion is a private affair. To paraphrase what was later said by a Russian maskil, be a Jew at home and a man in society, that was his view. You can be part of society, you can be part of the outside world, you can revel in its culture, but at the same time, in the privacy of your own home and with your own community, you are a Torah-True Jew.

And basically, I think that was Moses Mendelssohn’s life effort, and that’s what he really wanted. And remember also, he had come into Berlin at the time of the Enlightenment, and of course, the Enlightenment, the age of reason, you have these young intellectuals and young aristocrats for the first time, beginning to mix a little bit with Jews. Why? Because it was already explained, Frederick the second of Prussia, he sees himself as an enlightened monarch, an enlightened despot, but nevertheless, he does allow Jews into Berlin, who will help his economy. He keeps the numbers down. But on the other hand, what he wants is, as a figure of the Enlightenment, he’s going to let them live a reasonable Jewish life. And that’s why people like Moses Mendelssohn can come and live in Berlin as the silk merchant. And we’ve already seen all the categories under which Jews could live in Berlin, but the outside world is not a static thing. Ideas change. And a couple of years before Mendelssohn’s death, Kant actually published his critique of “Pure Reason.” The late days of the Enlightenment are going to, if you like, transform into the beginning of Romanticism. I suppose in many ways, Goethe’s Verta is one of the easiest examples. It’s the story of a bourgeois love affair where the man actually commits suicide, because he is rejected, he cannot marry the woman he loves. And it led to a spate of suicides. It’s almost as though the Enlightenment, which was the age of reason, does reason really satisfy? There is another world out there, a world of emotion, a world of passion.

And also, another very, very important point. What is the backdrop to this, the beginnings of this love affair? It’s a time of incredible political turbulence. Prussia may have had a charter which gives rights to Jews, but last time I looked at the affairs of the Jews of Frankfurt, and of course, Frankfurt was far more backward. There are 360 separate city states in Germany, and what unifies them? Language. But under the Romantic movement, you are also going to be seeing a movement that looks for the glories of the past. Because another important factor in all of this is what? It’s the French. The French Revolution of 1789 had the most extraordinary impact on European affairs. Think about all the Enlightened despots and how they reacted to the French Revolution, a French Revolution that killed a king and killed a queen. The ideas of the French Revolution are dangerous, but Napoleon goes a stage further, and he conquers parts of the German lands. He conquers parts of the Italian lands. What does he do? He emancipates the Jews amongst many other things. But the point is, the Jew is buffered between what’s going on in Germany and what’s going on in France. And then of course, Napoleon is defeated. But on the road to defeat, he defeats the Prussians in 1806, and that’s going to have extraordinary consequences for the Jewish people. So this is the backdrop to the heirs of Moses Mendelssohn. But now I want to talk about their children.

And can we turn to the first slide, if you don’t mind, Judy. Here you see Abraham Mendelssohn. Abraham was the second son of Moses. Joseph was his eldest son, and he was the only one, Joseph was the only one of Mendelssohn’s children to remain a Jew throughout his whole life. He was the eldest. His father had paid particular attention to his secular learning. You could just imagine the house of Moses Mendelssohn. It would’ve been filled with all sorts of figures of the Enlightenment. Remember, he had a court, he had a court of young disciples, including non-Jews. And you can see from the way Abraham Mendelssohn’s dressed, he’s come a long way from his grandfather in the ghetto, hasn’t he? Remember, Moses Mendelssohn was the son of a poor Torah scribe. And of course, Yiddish would’ve been his language. Here you see a sketch of his brother Abraham. And what do you see in that picture? You see a modern man, a be spectacled, rather gentle, modern man. But let’s go back to Joseph. Because what Moses Mendelssohn says, he makes sure that his son has a very good secular education. Remember, Moses Mendelssohn is known as the Jewish Socrates. So he’s introduced to literature, to philosophy, to sciences. He has a wonderful education. But he actually says that my son Joseph does not like to be coerced, so that I don’t. So for his Hebrew studies, his Jewish studies, he’s far less aware and capable than in his secular studies. And this is the problem. It’s the problem we still face today. Is it possible to be a Jew at home and a man in society? And what does the word Jew mean? We’re going to see at this stage, Moses Mendelssohn be a Jew at home and become a subject of Prussia, and later a citizen of Prussia.

Now, what about the outside world? How do they see the Jews? And of course today, the word is still completely muddled. I’ve said this to you so many times over the course of the past couple of years. But if you think about it, before this period, it was easy. A Jew was a Jew was a Jew. Today, and I’m sure every one of you has got your own definition of, what is a Jew? Is it religious? And that’s what Moses Mendelssohn is saying. Is it a peoplehood? Is it cultural? Is it racial, as so many people who are not Jewish are going to say by the middle of the 19th century? And later on, by the end of the 19th century, a group of Jews are going to say, hold on a minute, aren’t we a nation? So this is really the beginning of the muddle and also how Napoleon and his liberation is viewed. There were many Jews, even in Frankfurt ghetto, who took the side of Frankfurt, who in the war in Prussia, took the side of Prussia against France. Napoleon might be liberating the Jews, but aren’t they living in Russia? And never forget the words of Zalman of Liadi, over the border in Poland, soon to be occupied by Russia.

What did he say? The man who created Chabad, , one of the most saintly of all the the rabbis. He joins the army of Alexander I. He goes with him into Russia and he says, I would rather my people be persecuted and suffer under the Czars than live in peace under Napoleon, because Napoleon will be the end of the Jewish people. So you see how complicated it is. You have a group of people who are now beginning to redefine themselves, but one of the problems is, what is their definition? And it’s the outside definition that matters as well. So Joseph, Joseph did identify. He remains the… So Abraham, I beg your pardon, Joe, I’m coming onto Abraham in a minute. Joseph does identify with people like David Friedlander, with the progressive section of the Jewish people. And in 1792, he was one of the founders of a group of young men interested in the Enlightenment of their fellows. Now Enlightenment in what? Enlightenment in the world of the Gentiles. Go back to what I’ve talked about before. What does it say in the Talmud? Never forget, there is wisdom amongst the Gentiles, there is no Torah. And it’s fascinating how the rabbanit in Eastern Europe are dealing with this. I talked a little about that when we talked about Salomon Maimon. They called him an ape, his works were burned in . because they are meddling with Torah. Did Moses Mendelssohn meddle with Torah? He certainly equated certain sections of the Talmud, which he said did not equate with pure reason. So is that meddling?

So he praised region, but Joseph praises reason in all things in religion. And he also rejected the authority of what he regarded as intransigent orthodoxy. We can now talk about the word orthodoxy. Out of this of course, it’s going to come reform Judaism as another group of Jews try to accommodate to the modern world, Judaism to the modern world. But we’re not yet there yet. He took an active interest though, Joseph takes an interest in his father’s life and wrote a biography, and also, he edited most of his main works. Now interesting, Joseph, the eldest son, he was the one who had more of a benefit of his father’s wisdom. His younger son was actually the last of the family to remain Jewish. His eldest son converted to Protestantism in 1823. Now, why did he convert to Protestantism? Was it a religious conversion or was it political? Because in 18… Because what had happened is Prussia, the battle of Jena, the French defeat the Germans. 1815, the French are defeated. Prussia emancipates the Jews in 1812. But after the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Prussia is one of the victorious powers. So consequently, Prussia is enlarged and emancipation is not granted in the enlarged part of Prussia. And by this time, German nationalism is actually becoming a very, very strong force. And although I’m going to talk mainly about Heine next week, I am going to give you Heine’s cynicism. Because in 1823, he also converted to Christianity. Heine, the great German Jewish alienated poet, who I’m going to talk about in his Jewish context on Thursday.

And Professor Piemer is going to give you a whole session on him on Saturday. So let me just find this letter of Heinrich Heine’s. He converts and he says this, “And it gives you a notion of the kind of pressure that is going to push something like a third of Berlin Jewry into Christianity. From the nature of my thinking, you can deduce that baptism is a matter of indifference to me, that I do not regard it as important, even symbolically.” He does it because he wants to become a part of the civil service. He wants a chair at a university and he says, “I hold it beneath my dignity and a stain on my honour to undergo conversion in order to obtain a position in Prussia, dear old Prussia. I really do not know what course to take. I’ll turn Catholic yet for spite and hang myself.” Of course, Prussia is Protestant. It’s the south of Germany that’s Catholic. “We are living in sad times. Scoundrels become our best, and the best must turn scoundrel. I understand well, the words of the psalmist. Lord give us our daily bread that we not his name.” And this is the famous quote, “The baptismal certificate is the ticket of admission to European culture. My becoming a Christian is the fault of those Saxons who suddenly changed saddles at Lisick, or Napoleon who really didn’t have to go to Russia, or his teacher of geography at Brienne who did not tell him that Moscow winters are very cold.”

So here you have it. And so certainly, with the last of Joseph’s sons, he becomes a Protestant for pragmatic reasons. Now, let’s turn to Abraham Mendelssohn who you see the picture of. Abraham is the second son. He was only nine years old when his father died. And by the time hears of Moses Mendelssohn’s death, the family’s very well established, it’s wealthy. Abraham had a very liberal education. And in 1796, he made a brilliant marriage. We’ve already talked about Daniel Itzig, who of course was the court purveyor to the King of Prussia. And he was one of the richest Jews in Europe. He had 13 children, and he marries, Abraham marries Lea Solomon, who is the granddaughter of Daniel Itzig. So he’s wealthy, he’s had a very liberal education. In 1897, he studied banking in Paris at the request of his elder brother, who’d already formed a bank. So Joseph’s formed a bank. And Mendelssohn and Friedlander, this is the son of David Friedlander, they’re all interlinked, All these families of what I would call the court Jews and the women, the wives and the daughters, they’re all interlinked with each other. Just as when I talked about the Rothchild family, I had an extraordinary experience yesterday. I went with my friend Sandra Myers to the archives, the Rothchild archives, to discuss with the archivist who’s going to come in later on, hopefully in April or May, to talk about the family. And it’s absolutely fascinating, because with the Rothchild family, of the 24 marriages that proceed from the founder, 18 are interrelated into the families.

Others are with other court Jews. So you have this situation where they’re all really marrying each other. And he becomes a partner in Joseph’s bank. And the Mendelssohn bank is going to become one of the most important private banks in Germany. And ironically, of course, it exists until 1933. Because Hitler didn’t make much distinction between whether a Jew who’d converted, a Jew who saw himself as a Protestant, or whether he was a rabbi. However, in 1811, when the French, he was in Hamburg. And when the French occupied Hamburg, as a loyal Prussian, he relocated to Berlin. He had two very famous children. Fanny was born in 1805, and Felix was born in 1809. And they both showed remarkable musical talent. And in 1825, Abraham Mendelssohn is elected to the Berlin Town Council. So he’s very much part of German society, he’s part of the sophisticated elite, and he’s got two brilliant children, and he’s rich. He didn’t have any of his sons circumcised. He argued, in fact, with Lea’s mother, Daniel Itzig’s daughter, but he took the advice of Lea’s brother, Jacob. and changed his name to Bartholdy Mendelssohn after a property he had acquired.

Make it less Jewish! He later told Felix, his son, to drop Mendelssohn. There can be no more Christian Mendelssohn than a Jewish Confucian. He had both his children baptised in 1816, and he and his wife baptised in 1822 into the Protestant Calvinist Church. And their son later married the daughter of the former minister of the church, in which they were baptised. Now, I’m going to come on to Felix and Fanny in a minute, but what about Abraham’s young, what about Moses’s youngest son, Nathan Mendelssohn? Little is known of him, and we know except that he converted, so the three sons of Moses Mendelssohn. Joseph remained a Jew all his life. His one son did, the other one didn’t, and that was the end. One of the daughters, Brendel, I’m going to be talking about her. Dorothea Mendelssohn, she’s going to convert. And frankly, they were very typical of these wealthy, educated Jews in the generations after Mendelssohn. They’re industrious in business. Many of them become very wealthy. They have outstanding mental abilities, and they are bearers of this very highly, rational philosophy, which saw both Judaism and Christianity as mere forms of universal moralism. Abraham Mendelssohn did not convert, because he becomes a devout Christian. Ironically, two of their sisters, Dorothea and Henriette, become very, very enthusiastic Christians. But the men are really deists. So I’m going to read you a very, very strange letter. Because when Abraham Mendelssohn converts his children, he writes them a letter. And it’s when he converts, and this is what he says, “Why I have raised you as a Christian.” And it’s a letter to his daughter Fanny.

And he starts with philosophy. “Does God exist, what is God? Is he a part of ourselves? I do not know. And therefore, I have never taught you anything about this. But I know that there exists in me and in you and in all human beings, an everlasting inclination what is good, true, and right.” And then he goes on to say, “The example of your mother, the best and noblest of mothers whose whole life is devotion…” And he talks about the good way they have all been brought up. And then he goes on to say, “The outward form of religion your teacher has given you is historic and changeable like all human ordinances. Some thousands of years ago, the Jewish form was a reigning one, then the heathen form, and now it is the Christian. We, your mother and I, were born and brought up by our parents as Jews. But this is the point, did they have a really Jewish education?” Remember Abraham is nine when his father died. Nobody converted while from it was alive, whilst grandma was alive, nobody converted. However, the lure of the outside world, “the heathen and now it is the Christian. We, your mother and I, were born and brought up by our parents as Jews. And without being obliged to change the form of our religion, have been able to follow the divine instinct in us and in our conscience. We have educated you and your brothers and sister in the Christian faith, because it is the creed of most civilised people.” Let me repeat that.

“We have educated you and your brothers and sister in the Christian faith, because it is the creed of most civilised people and contains nothing that can lead you away from what is good and much that guides you to love, obedience, tolerance, and resignation, even if it offered nothing but the example of its founder, understood by post, by so few and followed by so fewer. By financing your confession of faith, you have filled the claims of society on you and obtained the name of a Christian. Now be what your duty as a human being demands of you, true, faithful, good, obedient, and devoted ‘til death to your mother. I embrace you with fatherly tenderness,” et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So Abraham Mendelssohn, of course, converts both his children. And Felix becomes incredibly religious. There’s a wonderful description of Felix Mendelssohn and in fact, the excellent book genius and anxiety begins in 1847 with the deaths of both Felix and and Fanny. They both died the same year. Felix, Ab- Can we see the next slide please, Judy? Yes, here you see them. 1847, that is the, and the date that they both die. And Fanny dies first, she has a stroke at the piano. She was also an incredibly talented musician. And Felix never really recovered from her death. William Thackeray, he came… Remember, Mendelssohn becomes an incredibly important musician. He was a child genius. He came to England many, many times. He was a favourite of Queen Victoria’s.

William Thackeray described him as, quote, “the most beautiful face I have ever seen. It’s like what I imagine our saviour to have been.” Now, not only was he a genius, so was his sister. And this will give you an also an insight into the role of women, even women at that particular level of society. She was a brilliant composer. Her father actually told her to refrain from composition, so as not to detract from her brother’s talent. She married the painter Hensel, and what she was meant to be was a house frau, a good mother and a good house frau. But she rebelled, and she began to set some great poetry to music, poetry, of course, by Heine, poetry by Goethe. And Felix actually was against it. Felix didn’t believe that he’d married the daughter of this pastor. And he believed, in fact, he wasn’t Lutherian, it was Calvinist, I beg your pardon. And he believed very strongly that the role of the woman in the family. Abraham said to her, music will be his profession. for you, it can be only an ornament. Now, think about it. These are two of the grandchildren of Moses Mendelssohn. He had believed it’d be possible that they would be Jewish and that they were also Prussian citizens. To Moses Mendelssohn, to be a Jew meant being completely versed in Torah and Talmud. It meant you had to walk the tightrope. Now, his grandsons and granddaughter, probably his most famous grand, certainly his most famous grandson, knew nothing of his Jewish roots. And not only that, he begs very few references to it in all his published conversations. And the only time he makes a real reference to it is when he’s reviving Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion. Isn’t it interesting?

It was Mendelssohn who rediscovers Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion, which is one of the great Christian pieces of music. And he writes Bach, “A Jew goes back to the people, gives back to the people, the greatest of Christian’s works.” Now Heine, who was born in 1797, and of course as I said, I’m really going to devote a lot of time to him on Thursday. What did Heine have to say about it? Heine, the double alienated, Heine who himself had converted, and yet, went on mocking. And he said, and this was in Deutschland, he mocks him and he mocks his grandfather. He has ventured so far into Christianity that he is already a cattle meister. And this is a letter that Heine wrote to another very, very clever Jew, a man called Ferdinand Lassalle, who takes a completely different path. He never converts, but of course, he becomes part of the social democratic movement, aka communism, and creates the social democratic party in Germany, goes way, way away from… Never converts, because of course, religion is the opium of the people. But he goes a long way away from his Judaism. But you’ve got to know, they all know each other. Marx, Heine was a distant relation of Karl Marx. And when Marx was in Paris, Heine leaves Germany in 1831 for Paris. He and Marx become part of that avant-garde, really refugee society of clever Germans in Paris.

So they all know each other. And this is a letter that Heine writes about Felix Mendelssohn to Ferdinand Lassalle. “I cannot forgive the way this man of independent means put his great prejudice talent in the service of that religion. Remember, Heine himself has converted, but he hates himself for it. The more impressed I am by his talent, the more angry I am at its vile misuse. If I were the grandson of Moses Mendelssohn, I would never have applied my talents to set to music the urine of the lamb.” He was very, very scathing about Mendelssohn. He had no love for him whatsoever. I mean, he himself mocked his own talents. He said, I know I am a great part poet, but I mustn’t earn my living by it. Give me my daily bread so that I do not profane. Now, so, and of course, Heine mixes with this whole circle. And much more about Heine as I said on Thursday. But I think it’s very important that you understand exactly what happens to the children. Now, why? Mendelssohn has a sincere conversion. Because Mendelssohn is very much a figure of the Romantic movement. And maybe it is, and certainly more in Catholicism than in Protestantism though, and we’re going to find that many of these young Jews who become part of the Romantic movement find solace in what Patrick caused the smells and bells of Catholicism. Because is the Enlightenment the search for reason, the search for logic, the dream of education? Does it satisfy the soul? And these are characters of the Romantic movement. Just think about their music.

And the other point about the Romantic movement that is going to be so powerful, and in many ways, so dangerous, because of all the problems that Germany had faced, when had Germany been a united nation? In pagan times and in the mediaeval period under Frederick Barbarossa. So it’s also going to be that going back to the time of Germany, of German greatness, because we have to go back, and the the idealisation of the Middle Ages. So this is where you’re going to see the beginnings of the notion of German nationhood and also the idea, can Jews ever be part of it? Do you see how all these forces are coming together to swirl around the heads of these incredibly talented people who believe they are giving their all to Germany? Moses Mendelssohn, the Orthodox Jew. I’m using the word now for the first time, he would never have called himself that. His sons, apart from one, and his daughters convert. What about his grandson? Felix, the most famous, is a very religious Christian. So is Fanny. And they glorify in Christianity. But what about their sister, Dorothea Mendelssohn Veit? Now she is the oldest daughter. And can we see the next slide, please? That is the man she marries, Simon Veit. And before I get on to Dorothea, I’m going to talk a little bit about Simon Veit. Because he was one of Moses Mendelssohn’s disciples. Look at his dates, 1754 to 1819. Moses Mendelssohn dies in 1786. He had been taught by Moses Mendelssohn in the last years of his life, and he becomes his son-in-law. Moses Mendelssohn approves of him marrying his oldest daughter. Why? Because he was a banker by profession. He was a war merchant.

And as the founder of a bank, his family had been invited into Berlin, and he had special protected status. And Moses Mendelssohn wanted that for his daughter. And that’s why he’s chosen as a husband for the oldest child, Dorothea. And they married in 1783, and they had four children of whom survived. Later on, they’re going to be divorced. Dorothea, and I’ll talk about that when I talk about Dorothea. She was a creature of, really, of romanticism and the good, placid Simon Veit, the Pius Jew, who was very, very kind, after Moses Mendelssohn died, he looked after, Fromet Mendelssohn, his mother-in-law. He looked after her financially. Even after his wife divorced him and married a young Prussian nobleman, much younger than herself, who do you think kept them? Simon Veit. And also, his two sons, they all, his two sons convert and they become part of the Romantic poet scene, who of course, influenced the Pre-Raphaelites. He never converted. Simon Veit remained Torah-True. He did though begin to think about reorganisation of Jewish worship, along David Friedlander. He began, you see, what is happening if we are losing so many of our young Jews, how can we stop this? What can we do about it? Are there ways that we can make Judaism, not Jewish identity, Judaism, more appealing to young Jews?

And this is of course, where they begin to think about introducing the vernacular into services, where they begin to think about more decorum. And so, you can see out of all these kind of ideas, you are going to see the beginnings of reformed Judaism. So let’s have a look at the picture of Dorothea. Dorothea Mendelssohn Veit. And of course, she later marries Schlegel. Her mother, Fromet, now this is interesting. She was content to be a wife and a mother. She always wanted more. She was, look at the dates. We are now in, even though she’s the oldest child, Moses Mendelssohn dies in 17, remember 1786, when she’s 22 years old. She’s already drawn to the conception of the young Romantics. He has a glittering salon. She goes to other friends who have glittering salons. Everybody wants to be at the feet. And even though that salon is kosher, how much instruction did she ever have in Judaism? She also took on some of the ideas of… We could almost talk about embryonic feminism. Think Mary Shelley, think the ideas of the young Romantics. Amongst the better educated women, there is this notion that being a wife and mother is no longer satisfactory. And it’s the Romantic movement that also gives this, these women, a very small elite of educated women, never forget that the majority of women are still living miserable lives within the majority of the population of the world at this period, were living miserable, poor lives. But you have this small group of women who are beginning to challenge what it actually means to be a woman.

Is it possible to be intellectually and spiritually independent of your husband? But think law, if you think English law, I don’t know much about how it worked in Germany. But I know in England, women were men’s property in Victorian England. When a woman married, her husband automatically assumed control of her property. She had no rights. So you are looking at a world where you’re beginning to see certain women like Dorothea rethinking. And as I said, she marries, because that’s what her father wants. And she marries a protected Jew. And in the home of her wealthy husband, he allows her to pursue her own interests. And she’s very close to her sister, Henriette. And this is what she writes to Henriette. “The only way to happiness is to improve yourselves, accustom yourself to writing down every day, not only what you did and who you encountered, but also what you thought and felt.” She couldn’t obtain the emotional and spiritual satisfaction that she wanted from her very placid, very kind banker husband. So she is very friendly with a woman called Henriette Herz and another woman called Rahel Levin, Rahel Van Hargan. And the three of them host these incredible salons.

Think about it, the stuffy Berlin courts, all these young aristocrats, thinkers, these wealthy Jewish bankers, their wives and daughters are now hosting very glittering salons. And a man called Wilhelm von Humboldt, who at the time was fascinated and madly in love with Henriette Herz, writes of Dorothea. She is indescribably unhappy. If you knew her husband, there is no expression for such shallowness and unanimity, crudeness, and of feminency. You see, and who was humbled, he is later going to create the University of Berlin with his brother. The University of Berlin is going to be created in 1810. So out of these salons, these salons, the bright, young things of Germany are meeting. And these Jewish women are particularly involved in bringing all the intellectuals together. Caroline Schlegel, who was later her sister-in-law, found her, quote, unquote, “Jewish in appearance, but in fact, there was very little Jewish about her.” Because she’d had no extensive training. And one of the problems was, she had been taught the prayers by . They lived according to the customs, but nobody had instructed her in the beauty of Judaism. So there’s a problem. And of course, she meets Schlegel at the salon of her sister, of beg your pardon, her friend, Henriette Herz. She becomes so unhappy, that finally, her very placid husband agrees to a divorce in 1799. And they move to Jena, which is the centre of the Romantic movement. And she is already having an affair with Frederick Schlegel. And they marry, and she converts to Catholicism, the treasure of the Catholic church.

So she plunges in and both her children, as I said, convert to Catholicism. Now, should we have o- She marries him in 1804. They lived together for five years, and they marry in the Swedish Embassy in Paris, where first, she converts to Catholicism. But it’s not enough. They make the final step. She didn’t find Protestantism, nor did he, emotionally satisfying or not. As Patrick said, smells and bells. So they become Catholic, and more and more opposed to the politics of political and religious liberalism. They are Romantics. This is the break with the Enlightenment. And the man she marries is Friederike von Schlegel, so a little bit about him. He was born in Hanover. His father was a pastor, Lutheran. He studied law at Gottingen, and he also became a friend of Shila. So you’ve got to see about a thousand intellectuals all interlinked with each other. And he endur- By 1893, he devotes himself entirely to the world of literature. And in 1896, he moves to Jena, where his brother, August, lived. And in fact, August becomes a professor and he has an affair with the extraordinary Madame de Stael, de Stael, the extraordinary, French woman. Now, he began publishing the story of Greek and Roman philosophers, and also, the history of the Greek and Romans. He’s fascinated going back to antiquity. And then he and his brother found a society known as Athenaeum. And it has a magazine, essays. And really, you can see this is the principle magazine of the Romantic movement. And Moses Mendelssohn’s daughter has married him.

So do you see how the con- All these conflict of ideas, and of course, the essays in the magazine, what do they focus on? Emotion, individualism, idealism of nature, which of course, the other point that I have to bring up is the reaction to the Industrial Revolution. Think about what’s beginning to happen in Germany. Think about what’s happening in England. But pressure is industrialising. That is one of the ways it’s going to become the prime German state. Think about what’s happening in England. There is on one level, it’s exciting, it’s modernity. It leads to the growth of cities. But what is the backdrop to it all? It’s misery, it’s terrible working conditions, it’s the black chimneys of the soot, the dust of industrialization. And you begin to see this hankering for the peasant life, the idealisation of the peasant life, the idealisation of the countryside. And going back to that time in history of a more Romantic time, go back to mediaeval time. So… And it’s called, of course, . And what, why? And also, the other part of it is , storm and stress, intense emotion is emphasised. Even fever, horror, horror stories. Let’s go deep in. Think about what Shelley’s wife wrote. She wrote Frankenstein. They had a competition, who can write the most extraordinary horror story. That’s where Frankenstein came from. So it’s about, it’s a complete reaction to the Enlightenment.

Rationalism has too many restraints. Let’s give vent to all our feelings, all our emotions. Caspar David Friedrich, the painter, he said, “The artist’s feelings is his law.” So Schlegel continuing with his biography, he moves to be Berlin, and that’s where he meets Henriette Herz, who hosts one of the most glittering salons, more about her in a minute. He also meets Dorothea and Rahel Van Hargan. Now in 1799, he publishes “Lucinde,” which scandalised society. It’s a scene of a, it’s an account of his affair with Dorothea. You see, they have no conventional morality until they convert to Catholicism. Because at this stage, it’s Romanticism. And somehow, it’s going to be filled through Catholicism. So he marries Dorothea, and also, he works with his brother, August, who was also one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement. His brother, August, is a professor of Sanskrit, and he becomes very much involved in the establishment of the Humboldt University, the Bill Humboldt and Alexander von Humboldt. And so, do you see how it all comes together? So can we move on, please? Thanks, Judy. Here you see Henriette Herz, who was the most beautiful of the Jewish women who hosted this glittering salon. And of course, she is married to Herz, the doctor, who also has a lot of money. And she is the very highly educated daughter of Benjamin de Lemos. He was a Portuguese, Jewish physician who was born in Hamburg. He was the court physician.

She was brought up in Berlin, and she shared a tutor with Moses Mendelssohn’s daughter, Dorothea, who becomes her closest friend. So again, the interlinked lives. She had a brilliant education in terms of the outside world. She was a brilliant linguist. She was educated in, of course, in German, didn’t have much Jewish education at all. She was educated in French, in English, Spanish, Italian, and Greek. She had enough Hebrew to read the Bible and the commentaries. But the bulk of her education was very much in the world of the Enlightenment. But then comes the Romantic movement. And at 15 years old, this beautiful, young girl marries 32 year old, Marcus Herz, who, if you remember, he’d studied medicine at Coningsburgh, which was only one of… There were only three universities at this stage that allowed Jews in, and only in medicine. And then of course, he went to work with her father. And the two of them hosted salons. But the salons were split. The people who went to her, because he was also… Herz was not just a medical doctor. He was a very proficient scientist. And this of course is the development of sciences, and who came to his side of the salon? Doctors, scientists, and who came to hers? Those who were interested in the literature, in the arts, and poetry. And she was a very… All these women were incredibly intelligent.

The Humboldt brothers came, Shila came, Count Mirabeau, who of course, was so involved in promoting the course of Jews in France. Schlegel, and actually, Alexander von Humboldt received Hebrew lessons from her. Salomon Maimon, who of course, wrote that pamphlet, “There’s No Room in my Heart for Darkness.” He came to her salon. And she met Goethe once, he was her idol. And her salon was devoted works of Goethe. And as I said, think Verta, whose hero, anti-hero, shoots himself. And the theologian, Schleiermacher, also attended. Now after her husband’s death, she really falls under the spell of this man. And he actu- Now, I’m going to talk a little bit about Schleiermacher, because he’s important. I haven’t got a picture of him. He was born in Breslau into a family of pastors. He had a very, very good education at the… His dates, by the way, were 1768 to 1834, so very much concurrent with hers. He was influenced at university. He’s very much influenced by rational philosophy. He studied Kant, and then he breaks, because he studies Kant. And he begins to reject orthodox Christianity. But nevertheless, he has to earn a living. He’s a very paradoxical character. And he finishes up in Berlin as the pastor to the Charité Hospital, where one of the characters who comes to Henriette’s salon, an aristocrat, brings him along. And he becomes more and more interested, particularly after the French occupation, he becomes more interested in the ideas of the Romantic movement and a reaction against the ideas of the revolution. He changes. He becomes more and more interested in religion, and he begins to reconcile Romanticism to religion.

Later on, he’s going to have a… When the university is established in 1810, he’s going to have the chair in theology. He’s going to become an incredibly important figure. So having been through lots of stages in his life, by the time he meets Henriette, he is a figure of the enli- He is a figure of the Romantic movement. And for him, Christianity represents the highest form of religion. Judaism had once been a living religion, and it’s long since dead. And he meets the beautiful Henriette Herz. And particularly after her husband’s death, she falls completely under his influence. And she, in the end, converts. And now what’s interesting about her, when he dies though, this woman who had hosted one of the most glittering salons, so many men had been madly in love with her. But in the end, and after her husband died, she actually had to become a tutor. But she also began to write her story. And she recounted more and more to a man called Julius Furst, who combined the written and parts of her work into a memoir. It tells her story, the very important figure, Borne, later lived with them and fell in love with her. And she describes the great social gatherings of her time. And this is what she writes of her time as a salon hostess, “that no exaggeration could be reckoned amongst the most respected and fashionable houses in Berlin for many years of all of Berlin’s prominent people frequented us.” So having said that wonderful period, which she later writes about, because her husband has no money, doesn’t leave her his fortune, what happens is, even though she is courted by a young Prussian noble, she refuses to marry him.

And she opens up as a tutor, and then she actually opens up a school for young women. Again, she believed very much in education for women. Now because of people like Humboldt, who had once been in love with her, he persuaded the King of Prussia to give her a pension. But it was the theologian Schleiermacher, who had this incredible influence on her, and as I said, after his death, she falls under his spell and she converts. Towards the end of her life, she fulfils her dream. She’s in her fifties when she travels to Italy with Dorothea, who by this time, is Dorothea Schlegel, and Caroline von Humboldt, these three women. And it’s there that she begins to write her story. So the last of them I will deal with on Thursday, and that, of course, is Dorothea Mendelssohn. And then I’m going to look at another change, because you can imagine after the defeat of Napoleon, you begin to see real issues for the Jews, which I’m going to deal with, with the Hep-Hep riots and Heinrich Heine. So as we progress, thank you, Judy, for making sure all the pictures work for me. And let’s have a look at the questions.

Q&A and Comments:

This is, of course, Rose Mahame is talking about Rabbi Hirsch, who was a Talmud , who was afraid of the Enlightenment, what happened, and taught the opposite.

From David Rappaport on the question of circumcision, this ancient custom led to the death of too many Jews during the Holocaust, because males were identified, be the infants. Yes, yes, yes, yes. But it’s still the covenant, isn’t it, Sharon? Were these converted Jews circumcised? Well, it depends. It depends when they were converted. You see, the majority, the Abraham Mendelssohn never had his sons circumcised, so they weren’t. Many people who converted, many men who converted, converted in adulthood. Heine would’ve been circumcised, yes. Shelley, saying to be a Jew at home implies there’s something inferior about Jewish values as opposed to Christian values. Abraham Mendelssohn’s comments on raising his children Christian, because that is what civilised people believe is appalling.

Yes, Shelley, you may well say that, but they fell in love with Germany. You see, I think the mistake was they looked at the high society in which they inhabited. Remember, Moses mentored, Mendelssohn had come from the ghetto in Dessau. He looked at the condition of the Jews in the ghetto. He went for what we call the , self improvement. He didn’t compare like with like. He didn’t look at the Jewish community and compare it with Bavarian pig farmers. So on one level, it was never a level playing field. Ironically, so many of these Jews who plunged into German society, look what they created. They created the most incredible explosion of talent. You know, what was it Heine said? The two ethical nations, the Jews and the Germans, will create together a new Jerusalem. Heine was so conflicted and so doubly alienated. Yes, they died very, very long.

And of course, the book, Genius by Norman Lebrecht’s, “Genius & Anxiety,” begins with Fanny and Felix. Yes, there are, actually, David. And there are letters, I did mention a couple of them last week. The Rabbi of Lissa certainly wrote a letter. In Vilnius, they burned a lot of the… They burned Salomon Maimon. But the problem was, this is interesting. They concentrated, many of the rabbanit were in Poland and they concentrated more on the Jews of Poland. And it’s not Poland. Most of Poland is taken over by Russia. We’re going to talk next week on Thursday about a group of young, educated Jews who did try to bring the Jews back. We’re going to see what happened.

Q: Robert Turner, what was the Nazi view of Germans, Mendelssohn’s descendants?

A: Anyone who was of Jewish blood before 1800, was the takeoff, Robert. And Mendelssohn was banned in Germany. Of course his music was banned. It’s ironic, you see, that’s the problem. But we cannot define ourselves through the Nazis. Ironically, Heine, they couldn’t ban. Because just think how many great musicians had set his songs to music. List, Schumann, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Strauss, Richard Strauss, they all set their songs to music. So under that, they put anonymous.

Shelley, on Sunday, Patrick talked about German Romanticism, of love of the past, with gothic and mediaeval emphasis. That’s exactly what I was saying, Shelley. It’s lovely when David, William, Patrick, and coincide. Jews who converted seem to take this on. Jews who say Jewish, including reform, don’t look back for… Because for Jews, the European Christian pastor oppressed them. They looked at the future where they hoped they’d be allowed to participate. It’s a very good point, Shelley. Please don’t forget something else, as well. The Jews, through the… The Jews that first generations threw in their lot with the Enlightenment. They really believed that anti-Jewish feeling was irrational. But unfortunately, it’s so deep as we are witnessing today, it’s too deep to stick a plaster over it, believe me. But a lot more on that later on. I’ve already looked at theological anti-Judaism. And my plan, because obviously, we are with the German experience for quite a long time, having looked, taken us forward historically, I’m actually going to look in two sessions on German antisemitism and where it really comes from. Because we cannot deal with today unless we know what happened in the past. I really believe that.

Q: Do we know what happened with medicine ?

A: I do not believe there were any… I don’t think any of them were caught. I think most of them were living in America.

You mentioned the glittering salons. Why, what? Okay, they would’ve had wonderful furniture. The women would’ve been dressed very beautifully. They would’ve had choice wine and choice food. They would’ve read a aloud poetry, they would’ve discussed art. Remember, Henriette devoted her salon to Goethe. They would’ve read huge tracks of Goethe. The piano would’ve been played. You’ve got to think how people amuse themselves before the modern period. Think about middle class entertainment. It was people reciting and people listening up to music. So consequently, that would’ve been only more so, because think of the kind of characters. You would have the absolute pinnacle of German intellectuality. Look, the people who created the University of Berlin were all at the salons. And later on, of course, and in fact, when I do deal with Rahel Van Hargan, her husband, he was a diplomat. These salons also were in Vienna.

Q: But the Congress of Vienna, do you know how many of the figures who were discussing the future of Europe in 1815 were whining and dining in the homes of wealthy Jews?

A: Interrelated people. So many Moses who made the difference. Yes. I thought that if you had one Jewish grandparent, you were considered Jewish. David, it’s more complicated than that. And I’ll have to at some stage, we’ve done it before, but you need to look at the document. And so at some stage, I’ll try and work that out. So if I understand correctly, both Enlightenment and Romantic ideas were discussed in the salons. Oh yes, they were. But more and more, it’s varying towards the Enlightenment.

God bless, everyone, take care.

• [Judy] Thanks everybody, bye-bye!

• [Presenter] Bye.