Metadata: Mendelssohn, Moses (1729-1786): Correspondence with Friedrich Nicholai
Collection
- Country:
- United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
- Holding institution:
- The Wiener Holocaust Library
- Holding institution (official language):
- The Wiener Holocaust Library
- Postal address:
- 29 Russell SquareLondonGreater LondonUnited KingdomWC1B 5DP
- Phone number:
- Telephone: +44 (0) 20 7636 7247
- Web address:
- https://www.wienerlibrary.co.uk/
- Reference number:
- 1437
- Title:
- Mendelssohn, Moses (1729-1786): Correspondence with Friedrich Nicholai
- Title (official language):
- Mendelssohn, Moses (1729-1786): Correspondence with Friedrich Nicholai
- Creator/accumulator:
- Wolff, Richard, 1886-1985, chairman of the Paulusbund
- Date(s):
- 1761/1785
- Language:
- English
- German
- Extent:
- 1 file
- Scope and content:
- Papers of Moses Mendelssohn, 1761-1785, comprise draft typescript transcriptions of Moses Mendelssohn's letters to Friedrich Nicholai, 1761-1785, along with a draft forweard by Richard Wolff and draft editorial notes.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- The principal editor (and probable creator) of this collection, Richard Wolff, is thought to have been one time chairman of the _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, 1933-1939' in _Leo Baeck Yearbook XXXIII_ 1988). He was born in 1886, emigrated in 1938 and since 1947 was a naturalised British citizen. He lived in Nairobi during the mid 1950s. He died 9 March 1985.Moses Mendelssohn was born in 1729 and 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. Mendelsohn died in 1786.
- Access points: persons/families:
- Mendelssohn, Moses
- Nicholai, Friedrich
- Access, restrictions:
- Open
- Finding aids:
- Online catalogue.
- Links to finding aids:
- https://wiener.soutron.net/Portal/Default/en-GB/RecordView/Index/69989
- Yerusha Network member:
- AIM25
- Author of the description:
- Entry compiled Howard Falksohn.
- Wiener Library
