The Jewish Enlightenment thinker provides the inspiration for Gottfried Lessing’s play Nathan the Wise
Born in Dessau to an Orthodox Jewish family on 6 September 1729, Moses Mendelssohn was a precocious child, learning two languages in addition to Yiddish. Aged 14, he followed his teacher to Berlin, where he soon mastered German, Latin, French and English. He studied the Enlightenment thinkers and became one of its best-known representatives. Mendelssohn came to public recognition after winning first prize in a competition at the Royal Prussian Academy ahead of Immanuel Kant. Mendelssohn’s house in Berlin’s Nikolaiviertel soon became a meeting place for well-known Enlightenment thinkers and writers. His writings on physics, philosophy and literature made him famous in Germany and beyond.
Mendelssohn urged other Jews to be open to new ideas and campaigned for Jewish equality. Although an Enlightenment thinker, he nevertheless remained a devout Jew. Mendelssohn’s friend and contemporary, the playwright Gottfried Lessing, took him as the model for the title character of his famous Enlightenment drama Nathan the Wise, which deals with religious tolerance. Moses Mendelssohn died in Berlin in 1786.
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