Michael Beer

Poet and dramatist Michael Beer was born near Berlin to a wealthy German Jewish family. From age seventeen, he traveled extensively in Italy, visiting his brother, the composer Jacob (Giacomo) Meyerbeer. Beer’s first plays were influenced by his Italian journeys, Goethe’s classicism, and a desire for Jews to be accepted into European society. At nineteen, Beer was a founding member of the Verein für Kultur und Wissenschaft der Juden, along with Heinrich Heine, Eduard Gans, and Leopold Zunz, and advocated for the recognition of both Jewish peoplehood and Jewish artistic tradition. His play The Paria may be the first to have universalized a term for an outcast class in India.