Moses Mendelssohn was a German-Jewish philosopher and theologian.
19 Facts About Moses Mendelssohn
2.
Moses Mendelssohn learned to spell and to philosophize at the same time.
3.
Moses Mendelssohn then made the acquaintance of Aaron Solomon Gumperz, who taught him basic French and English.
4.
Moses Mendelssohn soon won the confidence of Bernhard, who made the young student successively his bookkeeper and his partner.
5.
Moses Mendelssohn became the leading spirit of Friedrich Nicolai's important literary undertakings, the Bibliothek and the Literaturbriefe, and ran some risk by criticizing the poems of the King of Prussia.
6.
Moses Mendelssohn was treated with China bark, blood lettings on the foot, leeches applied to the ears, enemas, foot baths, lemonade and mainly vegetarian food.
7.
Moses Mendelssohn was buried in the Jewish Cemetery of Berlin.
8.
Moses Mendelssohn is believed to be behind the foundation of the first modern public school for Jewish boys, "Freyschule fur Knaben", in Berlin in 1778 by one of his most ardent pupils, David Friedlander, where both religious and worldly subjects were taught.
9.
Moses Mendelssohn tried to better the Jews' situation in general by furthering their rights and acceptance.
10.
Moses Mendelssohn induced Christian Wilhelm von Dohm to publish in 1781 his work, On the Civil Amelioration of the Condition of the Jews, which played a significant part in the rise of tolerance.
11.
Moses Mendelssohn himself published a German translation of the Vindiciae Judaeorum by Menasseh Ben Israel.
12.
The interest caused by these actions led Moses Mendelssohn to publish his most important contribution to the problems connected with the position of Judaism in a Gentile world.
13.
Moses Mendelssohn maintained that Judaism was less a "divine need, than a revealed life".
14.
Moses Mendelssohn grew ever more famous, and counted among his friends many of the great figures of his time.
15.
Moses Mendelssohn then published his Morgenstunden oder Vorlesungen uber das Dasein Gottes, seemingly a series of lectures to his oldest son, his son-in-law and a young friend, usually held "in the morning hours", in which he explained his personal philosophical world-view, his own understanding of Spinoza and Lessing's "purified" pantheism.
16.
Moses Mendelssohn was thus drawn into a poisonous literary controversy, and found himself attacked from all sides, including former friends or acquaintances such as Johann Gottfried von Herder and Johann Georg Hamann.
17.
Moses Mendelssohn had six children, of whom only his second-oldest daughter, Recha, and his eldest son, Joseph, retained the Jewish faith.
18.
Moses Mendelssohn's sons were: Joseph, Abraham, and Nathan.
19.
Moses Mendelssohn's daughters were Brendel, Recha and Henriette, all gifted women.