Creative Writing: The [Self-] Identification of Mendelssohn as Jew

In the early nineteenth century, a process began that transformed the Jews living in German-speaking lands into Jewish Germans—a result of increasing acculturation, emancipation, and the continuing secularization of their Christian countrymen. The transformation from Jewish Germans into Jews alone, albeit now with German passports, was irreversible—the possibility of anything else being, at best, a distant memory. One aspect of the overstatement of Mendelssohn's Jewish identity has been the scholarly assessment of the anti-Semitic acts committed against him. While Mendelssohn clearly encountered anti-Semitism in his life, including from close personal and professional associates, the level of intensity was different and indeed less virulent than that faced by nonbaptized German Jews, and especially that faced by the predominantly ghettoized eastern Jews. The documents described here have always, based on their biased interpretations and mistranscriptions, stood apart from the remaining examples of Mendelssohn's writings, from the reminiscences of his contemporaries, and even from his creative output.