gb-003348-wl1437
type: RecordSet
archival history: The original letters, which were thought to be lost, turned up in the possession of the great nephew of a son of Mendelssohn (c1930s?). Nothing is known about the provenance of this collection.
biographical history: The principal editor (and probable creator) of this collection, Richard Wolff, is thought to have been one time chairman of the so-called 'Paulus Bund', a representative organisation for Jewish mixed-race Germans (See Werner Cohn"Bearers of a Common Fate? The Non-Aryan Christian 'Fate-Comrades' of the Paulus-Bund, 1933-193" in Leo Baeck Yearbook XXXIII1988). He was born in 1886, emigrated in 1938 and since 1947 was a naturalized British citizen. He lived in Nairobi during the mid 1950s. He died 9 March 1985. The following biographical information is taken from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Moses Mendelssohn (b. 1729, d. 1786) was a creative and eclectic thinker whose writings on metaphysics and aesthetics, political theory and theology, together with his Jewish heritage, placed him at the focal point of the German Enlightenment for over three decades. While Mendelssohn found himself at home with a metaphysics derived from writings of Leibniz, Wolff, and Baumgarten, he was also one of his age's most accomplished literary critics. His highly regarded pieces on works of Homer and Aesop, Pope and Burke, Maupertuis and Rousseau, to cite only a fraction of his numerous critical essays, appeared in a series of journals that he co-edited with G. F. Lessing and Friedrich Nicolai. Dubbed"the Jewish Luther" Mendelssohn also contributed significantly to the life of the Jewish community and letters in Germany, campaigning for Jews' civil rights and translating the Pentateuch and the Psalms into German. Not surprisingly, as a Jew with an unwavering belief in the harmonizing effects of rational analysis and discourse, Mendelssohn rankled both institutional and self-appointed advocates of Christianity as well as Judaism. Thus, Johann Lavater infamously challenged him to refute the arguments of the Pietist theologian, Charles Bonnet, or convert to Christianity (a challenge that Mendelssohn effectively disabled with a plea for tolerance and a series of reasons for refraini…
conditions of access: Open
has beginning date: 1761-01-01
has end date: 1785-01-31
has or had holder: gb-003348
has or had identifier: 1
has or had some members with language: deu
has record set type: Collection
identifier: WL1437
record resource extent: 1 folder
results or resulted from: 1
scope and content: This collection consists of the typescript transcripts (and editorial notes) of a series of letters from Moses Mendelssohn, the famous German Jewish writer and philospher, and his friend, Friedrich Nicholai,philosopher of the enlightenment.
title: Moses Mendelssohn: edited correspondence with Friedrich Nicholai