Open Letter

David Friedländer

1799

Open Letter to His Most Worthy,
Supreme Consistorial Counselor and
Provost Teller at Berlin, from some
Householders of the Jewish Religion
But when the more perfect comes, the
imperfect will pass away. When I was a
child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a
child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a
man, I gave up childish ways.
1…
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Creator Bio

David Friedländer

1750–1834

David Friedländer was born in Königsberg and settled in Berlin in 1771. There he fashioned himself as a disciple of Moses Mendelssohn and became an advocate for the emancipation of Prussian Jews. In an infamous open letter to Probst Teller of the Lutheran Church in Berlin, he asked if Jews could join the Lutheran Church on the condition that they did not have to believe in the divinity of Jesus, as a means of gaining civic equality. The plan failed. He aimed at educational reforms and founded the Jewish Free School in 1778. He translated works by Moses Mendelssohn, translated a prayer book from Hebrew to German, and wrote textbooks to be used in liberal Jewish schools.

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