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.

Entries in the Posen Library by This Creator

Primary Source

Reader for Jewish Children

Public Access
Text
The Lion’s Chancellor, the Wolf, was taken to court by all the animals, who complained that no living being was safe from his predatory jaws. “This insatiable creature…

Primary Source

Open Letter

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Text
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…
Painting of two men seated at a table with another man standing behind them, and woman in doorway carrying tray of tea.
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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.