Lavater and Lessing Visit Moses Mendelssohn, 1856

Moritz Daniel Oppenheim

1856

Painting of two men seated at a table with another man standing behind them, and woman in doorway carrying tray of tea.
This painting portrays an imagined meeting of Jewish scholar Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786), playwright Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781), and the Swiss theologian Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801) in Mendelssohn’s Berlin home. In real life, the three never met together. Mendelssohn, considered a central figure of the Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment), and Lessing were friends at a time when it was highly unusual for Christians and Jews to socialize. Their friendship is considered a foundational moment in the history of German-Jewish relations. Lavater tried, but failed, to convert Mendelssohn to Christianity. In the painting, Lavater, it seems, has interrupted a chess game between Mendelssohn (left) and Lessing, and has brought a book he thinks will convince Mendelssohn to convert. Lessing is standing at the center, looking sternly at Lavater for his presumptuous behavior, while Mendelssohn listens to his argument. Through a doorway, under a Hebrew inscription, a woman is shown bringing refreshments. Lavater and Lessing Visit Moses Mendelssohn, oil on canvas.

Credits

Gift of Vernon Stroud, Eva Linker, Gerda Mathan, Ilse Feiger, and Irwin Straus in memory of Frederick and Edith Straus, Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 6.

Engage with this Source

Creator Bio

Moritz Daniel Oppenheim

1800–1882

Born in Hanau, Germany, Moritz Daniel Oppenheim is often regarded as the first modern Jewish painter. Unlike some of his contemporaries he did not convert to Christianity and did not hesitate to grapple with the subject of modern Jewish identity in his art.  A prodigy who trained at the Munich Academy at a young age, his work embraces his own Jewish identity and that of his people. It fully engages the experiences of German Jews who entered comfortable middle-class life while maintaining their traditions. His work overturned stereotypes of Jewish life held by most non-Jews and many enlightened Jews of his age. Yet by virtue of his own distance from the subject and his great talent, his paintings transcend the particulars. Oppenheim’s success was unique: most Jewish artists found that despite the growth of an art-consuming middle class of Jews, if they were confined to a Jewish market by genre or subject, they could not earn a livelihood as artists. Oppenheim became the first Jewish member of the Frankfurt Museum Society in 1825. Especially in the early part of his career, he painted religious subjects and portraits, including of the Rothschild family and Heinrich Heine.

Related Guide

Haskalah and Pedagogy, 1750–1880

The first maskilim ransacked both Jewish and European tradition to find new platforms for creating and transmitting the Jewish cultural ideals they conceived. Jews enlisted diverse literary genres to call for social, educational, and economic change.

You may also like