Mendelssohn, Moses

Mendelssohn, Moses, 1729–86, German-Jewish philosopher; grandfather of Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn. He was a leader in the movement for cultural assimilation. In 1743 he went to Berlin, where he studied and worked, becoming (1750) a partner in a silk merchant's firm. In 1754 he met Lessing, and a life-long friendship began, out of which grew Lessing's play Nathan the Wise (1779). Mendelssohn's philosophy anticipated the aesthetics of Kant and Friedrich Schiller. His writings include Philosophische Gespräche (1755), Philosophische Schriften (1761), Phädon (1767), and Jerusalem; oder, Über religiöse Macht und Judentum (1783). He also translated the Psalms and the Pentateuch into German.

Bibliography

See biography by A. Altman (1973).

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Mendelssohn, Moses

 orig. Moses ben Menachem

(born Sept. 26, 1729, Dessau, Anhalt—died Jan. 4, 1786, Berlin, Prussia) German Jewish philosopher and scholar. The son of an impoverished scribe, he began his career as a tutor but eventually won fame for his philosophical writings, which would become influential among the 19th-century U.S. Transcendentalists. He combined Judaism with the rationalism of the Enlightenment, becoming one of the principal figures in the Haskala, which helped bring Jews into the mainstream of European culture. His works include Phädon (1767), a defense of the immortality of the soul, and Jerusalem (1783), on the relationship of religion and the state. His friend Gotthold Lessing based the protagonist of his celebrated drama Nathan the Wise on Mendelssohn. He was the grandfather of the composer Felix Mendelssohn.