Portrait of Heinrich Heine

Moritz Daniel Oppenheim, an observant Jew born in Hanau, Germany, became the first Jewish member of the Frankfurt Museum Society, in 1825. Early in his career, he distinguished himself as a pioneer of Jewish self-representation in the European easel-painting tradition with portraits of prominent German Jewish figures like the Rothschild family and Heinrich Heine and his famous meditation on Jewish integration into German nationhood, The Return of the Jewish Volunteer from the Wars of Liberation to His Family Still Living in Accordance with Old Customs (1833– 1834). In the latter part of the nineteenth century, Oppenheim produced many works portraying Jewish family life and scenes of Jewish observances in the home; these include his Scenes from Traditional Jewish Family Life (1866), some twenty works on the subject that received wide distribution in several portfolios and bound editions, and his late work, Das Licht-oder Weihe-Fest (The Kindling of the Hanukkah Lights).